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WTF?!?! How can this happen? How can a primary school accept childeren that cant even speak english??

wow

Maybe they have multi lingual teachers or multi lingual texts which seem very popular and topical.

Before I opened this I knew exactly where the school would be.

My auntie was head of a school in Bradford where 1 in 15 kids were British, and she said it was a nightmare. But what can you do? If we continue to let their parents into the country officially then we have to put up with the kids that they have whilst here.

Definitely strengthens the argument that was brought up a few days ago on whether we should allow people into the country who can't speak English. If they can't speak English then they are raising kids who can't speak English. What they need to be doing it speaking English at home from an early age.

It's the way our society is turning now.

That is a very bad statistic for that school. You can't blame the school really - you have to blame the government and the way they run the country. It's like a gentleman who refuses to learn english in Leicester because so many people know his language he doesnt need to speak English.

It's just as bad as the stats for children leaving primary school not being able to Read,Write and do basic maths.

'In all, just over one in four of the 600,000 age cohort (26 per cent) fell short of what was expected of them.' - Independant

Our whole country is just falling to pieces.

TBH they should be able to speak the language - when in Rome and all that.

Why should they be taught in an english school, when they havnt been taught the language used in that school. If the parents expect schooling for their childeren, then the schools should expect the parents to teach their childeren the language in which they would be taught.

If you moved to one of the countrys most of these people come from, would you a) expect a good quality school b) even expect a school and c) even if there was a school, do you think they would get somone in especially to teach you in english?

Answer is NO, so why the fook should we do it?

I agree with you StuyMac, I never said they were right for not speaking English.

TBH most of the countries in the world now speak english aswell as their mother tongue language.

I know when I was in Saudi, it was the law that if you owned or worked in a shop, you had to know English - because of the rate of western people in the country.

I haven't visited many other countries - but I would go as far as to say that many people speak English in some way whether it's a native lagnuage or second language.

Another thing is to be honest, I think most countries now have schools where they speak English - due to the fact that the world mostly speaks English. It's a sad time when people in the UK can't speak English when most people in the world can.

Some of your posts are interesting, but picking out typos!?

Obviously has some growing up to do! the uneducated and uncultured people need something to pick on..looks like it's now typos

I don't think you can generalise the whole state of the nation by one school in Bradford. Also, this story comes from the Daily Mail.

A personal experience (while doing teaching experience work in 2009):

There was a girl (Indian) in my son's year of primary school (local in Birkenhead) who joined in Yr 3 (age 7-8) who did not speak English. She was immediately started on learning the language, reading it, writing it and speaking it. Her parents were encouraged to speak English to her at home as well to help her learn faster. I used to sit and help her with reading. She was very good and learned quickly.

Second experience in my current role:

A girl comes from a South American country with her family to live here. She speaks only Spanish. She joined in Yr 10 (age 14-15). She is accommodated well to help her with the language barrier - a member of staff from Modern Foreign Languages helps her adjust to everyday activities at school with explanations in Spanish. She is actively encouraged to learn to speak English as well as this. She is even being prepared to take GCSE exams in English, as there is no provision to take them in a different language. She is expected to have a good grasp of the English language in order to take these exams - which have started this year and will continue in her final year next June.

In both these experiences, the pupils were actively encouraged to learn to read, write and speak English. Now I doubt that Wirral is especially tuned into this. I expect that many local authorities across the country employ this policy.

Bradford is Bradford. We dive straight in without looking at the political landscape there and the policies they have in place.

Not trying to dilute the arguments but just saying, don't generalise.

Irony is lost on you 2

He's posting about education and the English language ..

I geddit...oops, I mean, I get it

This was (correctly) raked up by Frank Field, he dug out the statistics showing that nearly half a million primary kids do not have English as their first language out of about the three million primary kids as well as many other statistics.

Labour MP Frank Field, the co-chairman of the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration who unearthed the statistics, said: "These figures make a nonsense of the Government's aim of integration and show the very real strain that uncontrolled, large scale immigration is already placing upon our society."

not that you get english only speaking schools in europe

sits back and reads the "i'm not racist but..." blatherings of mail readers...

It didn't say they could not speak English - it was just that their first language is something else. Its not unusual for children to communicate initially in their parents own language then learn English as another language parallel to this. The press always try to manipulate situations with statistics to stir up resentment and trouble. It states that 4 pupils speak initially in English, do you not think they would want to speak the language of thier native tongue also as their second language?

It wasn't the newspapers that brought this up recently, it was Frank Field who was concerned at the cost and disruption by having significant amounts of pupils who could not speak English.

Having taught classes with non-English speaking students, it is hard work, and while the higher ability ones were not much of a problem, the lower ability pupils took a dis-ordinate amount of effort to accommodate in classes which already needed maximum effort and flow.

I also came across schools that automatically put non-English speaking pupils in lower ability classes against guidelines which suggest that they should be graded by ability ignoring the language barrier. I concurred with the guidelines.

The beauty of being an agency teacher was seeing the different effects that different methods produced across a wide range of schools.

Lol'd at this. Stuy sure does love these threads.

The word racism is quite stupid when applied to humans. According to biologists, there just isn't enough diversity among humans for us to be put into different races.

Whenever I have to fill in some stupid diversity form asking me what race I am, I just leave them blank or write in Human. Dividing people up by skin colour is also ridiculous. I'm white. My missus's skintone is very similar to mine. She's Japanese. Is she white too? Or yellow? Black?

Also, disliking Islam or Muslims isn't racist. Even by the rather silly definition of race, Islam isn't a race. It's a religion. Or fairy tale. Whatever you want to call it.

Boring, rambling rant over.

I appreciate these threads, as they do give me cause to sit back and reconsider my views.

Don't get me wrong, I won't stop my daily Daily Mail delivery just yet but there are some people on here with some opinions worth considering.

You'll be reading the Guardian or Morning Star in no time.

This was in the Daily Mail.