To think taxpayers shouldn't pay for people to learn English?

[angelos02]

£20 million to be spent on this. If you move to a country you ensure you can speak the language surely? It is being spent on female muslims not that I think this is relevant.

[Mistigri]

*a french-english translator by profession

[Alicewasinwonderland]

Whereas the threat of radicalisation in the UK is making helping immigrant women to integrate linguistically important

Recent events show how completely untrue that is. Research who the terrorists were in the recent 2 terrorists attack in France for example.

[Schwabischeweihnachtskanne]

Pretty much every civilized country offers integration courses which are free or subsidised.

Basic education is free in most countries which aren't massively socially divided, and language lessons are part of that.

Perhaps the OP also feels it is his or her duty to educate her children herself and save sufficient or take out sufficient private insurance for her old age or ill health or any periods of unemployment, as surely if you have any sense you know you are likely to get old, that illness is a possibility as is unemployment, and clearly angelose does not feel "the tax payer" should pay anything to help people in times of need.

It is in everyone's interests to live in a society where everyone is educated and able to communicate...

[IPityThePontipines]

For a lot of families in this situation, Mum is a SAHM while Dad works, so no they aren't huge "drains on the taxpayer".

I think this scheme should be available to all communities as a public good, without having to be dressed up as "preventing radicalisation".

[maybebabybee]

alice still waiting for you to answer the actual relevant questions on this thread!

Don't think OP is coming back, anyway.

[definitelybutter1]

The threat of sending back women who do not take advantage of this may be more subtle. The man will want to keep his wife around. It could look bad for him if he doesn't keep her with him, so he may not want to risk his wife being sent away. That may be a way of giving women a chance to access this.

Especially if it is kept as a threat.

[unlucky83]

I think it is a positive thing. We are trying to start a petition for the government to talk about women's rights in the light of what happened in NYE in Cologne (there are 6 threads in In the News about it - just waiting for the petition to be approved and we will be publicising it) and this ties in with our concerns.
I think to say they should pay for it themselves doesn't take into account that in some cases these women will be completely dependent on their husband/father/male relatives for everything - they will have no access to money apart from what they are given and will not be able or allowed to work to earn money. Teaching them English and therefore allowing them to become more educated about their rights in the UK will not be encouraged and in fact may well be actively discouraged.

[GruntledOne]

Why wouldn't you do everything yourself to learn the language of the country in which you live?

Try telling that to British expats in places like Spain and Dubai.

[Cavaradossi]

Alice, sorry I wasn't clear - I should have said the threat of Islamic radicalisation is making linguistic integration politically important right now. I agree that doesn't actually necessarily bear any resemblance to what is actually happening, plus I think that it's essentially a woman's rights situation, as other posters have said, and, definitely, it is a public good.

I had a friend some years ago who worked as a SALT in schools and in the community in the fairly deprived part of northeast London where we both lived, and her encounters with middle-aged and elderly women (grandmothers looking after young children she was seeing) who had lived in England for their adult lives but never learned English or spent/been allowed/encouraged to spend any time at all outside the family, were fairly eye-opening.

[Pipistrella]

We lived in the same house as a family of (I think) economic migrants.

They very rarely spoke any English at all, preferring to spend time only with others from their part of the world.

I don't think they would have wanted to take classes in English.

Their child was at an English school and obviously was very good at the language by the time he left.

It was a strange insight; there was a vast group of people who socialised, worshipped, shopped, lived and conversed almost entirely with others who spoke their language, within a very English bit of the UK (low numbers of immigrants).

It's not exactly what I would call integration.

There was a lot of disapproval towards me as well - I was a single woman with children and therefore commanded no respect. There were various conflicts.

[tb]

OK, not rtft but I'm an 'expat' in very rural SW France.

When we moved her 10 years ago, dh thought we could manage on my French and he could get by. We very quickly found that, despite all the research we'd done before, living in a country is a lot different from being on holiday there. We already had 50 copies of birth/marriage/death certs going back to my great grandmother and her inside leg measurement, the staple documents for dealing with French bureaucracy.

It wasn't enough! We started to have private lessons but could only afford an hour a week each. We spent £3k on a 4 week course for me in a private language school including accommodation. After 2 weeks, due to a missing/faulty lightbulb I had a fall on a staircase and sprained both ankles really badly and ended lying across the corner of an L-shaped corridor with my feet on the bottom step. I got up with my stiff upper lip and got on with it. No treatment, no redress. I had to give up the course and go home. Money down the drain.

In such circs, you do not under any circumstances move. You dial 15 (999) and tell them you've fallen. The paramedics are the only people allowed to give an account of your injuries that would have enabled me to get a refund for course fees or medical treatment required.

So, I went to register as looking for work. Pôle Emploi can, and will, pay for you to go on a course that will, hopefully, despite the 10+% unemployment in France help you to get a job. In 2009 this was relatively easy, and on demand, but now that they pay you 400+€/month depending on circumstances to be on the course access is restricted.

I've just finished a course that led to a diploma in payroll/hr management awarded by the French government. I had to do a maths/Excel/French grammar test before getting a place as well as 2 interviews. The qualification was at 2 years post 'A' level standard and it took 6 months, so not for the faint-hearted. However, but there is a growing demand as they are moving gradually to PAYE in 2017 if the laws are passed and they don't burn Hollande in the streets.....

However, it's very far from any and every course being paid for, and it's only available for the few who can show they will or are likely to benefit by paying the cost back to the state in the form of direct/indirect taxation.

We had to stop the lessons as we couldn't afford them, and dh still struggles a bit on the phone. Me less so. I had to put up with comments along the lines of that I was easier to understand on a Friday than on a Monday morning, by someone who insisted that she was tolerant and non-racist. She even did this in front of lecturers, but it back-fired a little - I'm on the list of examiners for obligatory oral exams in English for the centre! It might even be paid!!

However, we've had no access to state funds during our 9 years. Any such demand for the equivalent of income-based JSA in our first 5 years would have been proof that we had insufficient funds to mainttain ourselves. That is how the Freedom of Movement directive is supposed to work. You bring with you enough money not to live on the state unless you work and pay into the system for 5 years and then, and only then, you have the same rights as someone born in the country.

[Pipistrella]

They were Christian by the way, not Muslim.

[GruntledOne]

I would prefer that learning English be a condition of receiving benefits.

So traumatised people whose homes have been bombed out and relatives have been tortured and killed should starve if they don't rock up to English classes within a couple of weeks of arriving here? Really?

[Alfieisnoisy]

OP is clearly a GF or a journalist looking for quotes. Boring.

I support English language classes for those who need them and I don't care if my taxes go towards paying for them. If people have a good functional understanding of English then we'd need to spend less on translation services.

[tb]

Misti Je suis d'accord avec toi! Bonne journée

[Tamponlady]

You shouldn't be given a visa unless you have conversational English

Espically women it leave them vunrable to all sorts if they are totally dependant on there husbands can only seek support from their family

Also it mens they can't work we have enough Welfare Clements

And they can't partake fully in their child's education

[GruntledOne]

If people are really willing to integrate, they should learn by themselves, there are enough resources and help in this country.

Alicewas, think about a hypothetical situation where you have to flee your home because otherwise you and your family will be killed, and you fetch up with dependent small childrent in somewhere like, say, China or Russia where you don't understand the writing, let alone the language, and you know no-one. How exactly are you going to learn the language by yourself?

[Schwabischeweihnachtskanne]

Pipistrella there are communities of English speakers doing that all over the world, not just ex-pat retired people in Spain etc. but ex-pat individuals and families all over the world. Huge numbers of English speakers who live in their own English speaking bubbles and only interact with "locals" to buy products and services... some live like that for decades.

[Natsku]

I think its very wise to spend tax money on teaching them English as that improves their chances of getting a job and thereby contributing taxes back. Its an investment really.

Speaking from my own experience, as a Brit who emigrated to Finland, and their tax money paid for me to learn Finnish. I spent a lot of time around immigrants at the school where we learnt Finnish and thanks to those lessons quite a few of the Muslim women were going on to University to study nursing and everyone was getting a much better chance of getting a job other than bus driver, cleaner or postal worker which were pretty much the only jobs open to the immigrants if they didn't speak Finnish well enough.

[GruntledOne]

Tamponlady, I wouldn't normally pick up on grammar but it seems very relevant on this particular thread. I'm not sure you're in a position to criticise others for their failure to learn English.

[Pipistrella]

Schwabische - yes, it seems that is so. I find it quite distasteful when English speaking folk do it, and I think it's disrespectful to the people who already live wherever they have decided to colonise.

I think when you go somewhere else you have a bit of a responsibility to integrate yourself and not just communicate with people who are from the same place as you are.

[Pipistrella]

What I mean is, there's no way I'd emigrate and then expect only to interact with other people from the UK.

I think that whole attitude sucks, and the more I think about it, the more I resent the people we used to live with

They were reasonably nice people, most of the time, but I mean - why go somewhere and then be rude and dismissive to those who already live there? It does you no favours.

The guy got his car taken away for having a non UK driving license; he decided this was somehow my fault (I knew nothing about it until the police turned up!) and demanded to use my bike to commute, which he then left in the rain for months, often unlocked, broke the saddle - completely ruined it. He dropped cigarettes out of his window into our garden (it was a non smoking house, he took no notice) once burning our parasol, often just missing a small child.

They used their flat for church services (very noisy ones)

I could go on and on. But it's not what the thread is about. Just examples of people refusing steadfastly to integrate with what's normal and acceptable, wherever it is they decide to live.

[TheMouseThatRoared]

I thought there was already a requirement for non eu immigrants to pass an English test before being allowed certain visas. Is that not the case?

I think it's a great idea for refugees but how will they make sure women are allowed to attend?