Oh piss off songs
You obviously have very bright kids.You aren't a teacher so with no due respect, I'm not interested in your anecdotal evidence of 2 children when I've spent 13 years teaching hundreds. I love the kids I teach (most of them grin) but it saddens me when many of them struggle more than they should because their parents don't expose them to the language of the country they were born and raised in, whether that be through choice or because the parents are unable to speak English (which is a problem).
@Mookie81 It's been a long day and this thread has moved on quite a bit. In my experience, and research has shown, that it takes only a year for pupils who struggle in a language to become proficient in it. For example then, if you have someone start school/Reception at age 4 not speaking a word of English, they will by Year 1 be pretty fluent. Statistically also, it is the white working class - traditionally those pupils who come from ethnically English backgrounds - which come out near the bottom at all stages of primary and secondary education (I take no delight in saying this). To then say pupils who are unable to converse well in English, at the start of their education, will be hindered for the rest of their school life is rather dramatic.
It makes me laugh. I clearly recall a member of staff in Yr 7 pressing me to say what language(s) my parents spoke. She then put that down as my first language...because my parents spoke it as their first language. English is my first language but I strongly suspect I was put down as speaking English as a second language. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but that is why I take these language stats with a pinch of salt. Most of my form group also probably were classified as speaking English as a second language, even though not one us of conversed with each other in anything other than English.
With regards to the census - I recall there being, for ethnicity, a box called "White English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish". I, not being ethnically white British of course did not tick that. However the term English is also a nationality.
Nationality is as, if not more, important than ethnicity as that concerns the present day and people's everyday experiences. An English person (i.e. an English national) is someone born and bred in England, embedded with the English values I mentioned previously. To assume then, that a non-white person who fits this description is not English is very insulting.
Finally @Mookie81 HelpMeFindAName going back to my example of no one speaking English around me from earlier, maybe John's friend is referring to this and not a lack of 'white' faces. And no, schools don't get money for labelling children EAL 
.
You appear to be conflating being English and monolingualism . To give another scenario: I've walked down famous London streets, with my non-white English friend (who fits the description of Englishness that I've outlined above and previously). She speaks 3 languages of which one she shares with her parents. She is speaking that language on the phone to her parents. So that makes it alright for someone like John Cleese to see her and make such a rude assumption?
Many English people, of all colours, speak multiple languages. It is likely that Mr Cleese walked past a white English person speaking another language they happen to know. The world is a larger place and it should be any country's privilege to have monolingual citizens. What John Cleese, and people such as yourself do, in expecting a country's citizen to only speak one language in order to be considered worthy of being a part of that country, is promote xenophobia, small-mindedness, intolerance and frankly a lack of love for education. Which is sad as you are a teacher. Assumptions ruin lives, so please be very careful.