I In 8 English Pupils Speak English As 2nd Language

Well, the figures speak for themselves.

1 in 8 pupils in England speak English as their second language.

Is this due to poor education or some anomaly in the figures? Means testing maybe?

No, the actual figures are that 419,600 pupils in primary schools (20.6% of all primary schoolchildren) and 314,950 in secondary schools (16.8% of all secondary schoolchildren)!

That's THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION children under 16 in this country! And this is set to rise between 1%-3% each year!

This is primarily due to the level of cultural diversity and influx of immigrants into this country.

Our schools, for example one school in Suffolk, teaches their primary schoolchildren to count from 1 to 5, not only in English, but also in Polish, due to the level of Polish immigrant children in the classes in the county.

I've said before that I am not xenophobic, but this strikes me as being a problem for our future generations. If teachers are having to spend more time teaching English, surely other subjects like maths and sciences are going to suffer?

And how will this affect the learning capabilities of none English speaking pupils?

Should we be looking at creating seperate schools for each of the ethnic groups, or would this encourage racism and anti-semetism?

I don't know the answers, but the questions ARE there and they need answering.....