large numbers of children with English as a second language

[Jixin]

Do I need to be concerned about a school which has, on average, 13 children out of 30 for whom English is a second language? One of the local primary schools we are considering for our daughter for next year, has a very good reputation and gets great results. But the head said to us when we looked around the other day that in recent years the number of children starting in reception with either no English or English as a second language is growing enormously. In many ways I like the idea of our daughter attending a mulit-cultural school but I am just wondering how a school with large classes (30 in reception and 34 higher up the school) copes with this. Could it put a strain on the teaching, meaning there is a chance everybody suffers? Would really appreciate any thoughts/experiences from parents/teachers. Thanks.

My school has about that proportion of EAL kids - and it is an absolutely fantastic school. I have found it forces good teaching - because they can't rely on parents to pick up slack....

It definately does not detract from my kids education.

I have had far more problems with a school with very low numbers of EAL kids because, frankly, the teaching was appalling....

ALso, English as second language might mean all sorts of things.

On these forms, there is no box for children who are actually completely balanced bilinguals, so my children (who were born and educated in the UK and have an English dad, but a foreig mum) sometimes go down as having English as their first language and sometimes as having English as their second language.

How should I know which was their first language? I can't remember which one of us spoke first in the delivery room. For plenty of people, there is no such thing as their first language or their main language.

Also, some children who speak another language at home may still be completely fluent in English, but would tick the box for EAL.

As cory said, second language can mean so many things.

After an initial slow start, ds (2.5) now has a very good vocabulary, both in English and his "first" language - more so than some of his friends. I put "first" in quotes because, despite the fact that dh and I only speak to him in our first language, I think his first language will end up as English, as he seems to prefer using that. He goes to nursery 3 days a week and his friends are English speaking. Officially though, we always say that English is his second language.

Personally I do not think it matters that much anyway, children communicate in many ways and pick up other languages extremely fast, so even if a child wasn't fluent in English when they started, they'd soon be fine.

I see children at my DS class who share the same mother tounge talk to each other only in English while their parents prefer to speak in their native language.

I wouldn't worry. DD's class is similar (she's in reception) and already most of the ESL children have picked up some English already. Some of the quicker and more sociable English speakers have also picked up another language.

The children with English as a second language often do much better than those whose first language is English.
When i was at primary school,a Polish boy joined our class, he couldn't speak a word of English. Within a year, he was speaking English despite the fact that he had very little help from the school.
He excelled at school and won a place at grammar school.

Just looking at the social side, check how many languages are spoken in the school.
I taught at a school where over 99% of the 400+ students were EAL but only two languages plus English were represented.
It can lead to isolation for some if you have a very large % speaking one language, depends how the school handles it.

DD has always been at International schools, where by definition ESL is extremely common. Her current school in Belgium has a maximum class size of 20, of those 20, only four have english as a mother tongue.
Her BFF is Italian, started eight weeks ago with hello, please and thank you and had a converstation with me today in pretty decent english.
Don't worry too much, embrace it.

Thanks everyone for your views. We have been given the impression that the majority for whom English is a second language in this particular schol are fairly new arrivals to the UK with limited English on entry to the school. However I have found your views reassuring as I do see it is as a plus point in many ways.

My childrens school has a large number of languages in addition to English. I dont see it as any problem at all - I think that the educational standards are good, and the exposure children from other cultures is good to, IMO.

The only question I would have is if - as Goblinchild says - there is a very large majority that speak the same other language.

DD's school is like this - it is a Welsh medium school, but at my estimate 90% of the children start with no Welsh (including my dd). It doesn't seem to affect their learning, but the playground and social language is almost exclusively English, and I know Welsh first language parents who have chosen to send their children elsewhere because they (not unreasonably) want their children to be able to socialise in their own language.

I know this is a bit of a different situation, but I imagine that it could be very similar in a school where, for example, 90% of the pupils were from Urdu speaking families - so not an educational issue, but a social one, unless the school takes care to address the issue.

However, I think this is pretty rare, and generally 90% EAL will mean a lot of different languages, and hence English as the common school/playground language.