Teachers struggle with immigration influx

Schools are struggling to cope with an influx of thousands of immigrant children, teachers said yesterday.

Addressing the Association of Teachers and Lecturers annual conference in Torquay, staff said many pupils were bright, but failed to reach their potential as schools were unable to teach them properly.

They claimed that they needed more money to cater for the dozens of languages spoken by pupils from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

It was acknowledged that small primary schools are under particular strain as teachers face classes in which a third of pupils speak English as a second language.

The comments follow the publication of figures showing that children with English as their first language are in the minority in more than 1,300 schools.

In some parts of London, children from ethnic minority families account for more than nine in 10 school places. The admission means that increasing pressures are being put upon teachers trying to deal with many children who struggle to speak English. This in turn could slow down the progression of learning in the classroom and getting through the school curriculum in what is already a very short space of time.

Stephen Holmes, a teacher from Coventry who was at the conference, said: “Day after day the elasticity of the teachers and support staff is tested as they plan and deliver lessons for groups with over a third of the children for whom English is a second language.”

“It’s about time we stopped hiding the problem behind classroom doors, challenged the Government’s glib euphemisms and insisted that despite its complexity, the problem must not be ignored.”

The news about these problems in classes, comes just a week prior to a startling House of Lords report published today that has challenged established thinking about the benefits of mass immigration into Britain.

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The report shows that net figures indicate that immigration has added 1.5 million people to the population over the last 10 years. Two-thirds of them have come from the continents of Asia and Africa.

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In 2006 the total UK population was 60.6m. If net immigration were to continue at its current rate, the total population in 2031 will be 70m, and by 2081 it will be 85m, as calculated by the government actuary’s department.

?The report by the Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs, has met stark criticism for supposedly being biased and missing out key arguments. The Independent is just one newspaper to disagree with much of the reports findings arguing that the study emphasises the negative attributes of immigration, while ?every piece of evidence that suggests a positive impact has been played down.?