New school language barrier

[slipperthief]

We're moving to Sheffield and have just got through our school place allocated for DS to start reception in Jan.

Everywhere we'd put down seems rather full and he has been given a place at Abbeydale Primary. From a quick scan through anything I can find, it sounds lovely but almost none of the children there speak English when they start.

We don't know anyone in Sheffield at all and I was hoping he'd quickly make plenty of new friends. I'm now a bit worried that the language barrier could make the whole move rather difficult, esp as we've been hyping up the new friends thing to soften leaving his fab school he started here in Sept.

Has anyone else been in this sort of situation? Did it all turn out fine? Am I worrying needlessly?

Anyone? Any opinions out there?

Very much depends on whether all the kids speak the same other language, or if they come from a variety of ethnicities.

If it is heavily dominated by one culture I would be far more concerned than if it was lots and lots of different cultures.

But I'm sure if you're pro-active about helping your child negotiate the playground it will be fine.

(No experience - just giving you an opinion because you bumped :) )

Thank you for replying.

I have a feeling any kids that don't speak English yet speak Punjabi, so DS and I may well end up picking up a few phrases ourselves.

Am heading up next week for a new intake walkround so will get to chat to the teachers then. I'm sure we won't be the only family in the situation and the school do sound really quite good at meeting the language needs for the majority of kids so hopefully it'll be fine.