If your child was the only English child...

[ALovelyBunchOfCoconuts]

Would it be an issue for you?

DD (4) is starting school Sept and we had her first intake day today where she met her teacher and peers and had a play.

None of the children in her class spoke English. The parents were also pretty vague in their understanding.

DD will therefore be the only English child in her class (also the only one from her preschool setting, in a faith school which was our third choice)

Does anyone think this will be an issue? Do I need to ask the school about any provisions they have to assist the foreign children? Will DD get left out because she is English? Am I thinking about this too much?

i think i would be concerned. yes

the other children will quickly form bonds with other children who speak the same language.
while I appreciate that they will pick english up quickly, and that your DD will be able to play still despite the language barrier I would still worry that it will be much harder for her to make friends with them.

I am assuming this is a normal type of intake for the school so they will be very used to dealing with every type of child they serve. Learning the beginninngs of reading and writing at 4 are the same for all, so I wouldnt worry. Your child is learning to read english and so are all the others!!

I live in an area where when my daughter starts school in 2 years she will more than likely be the English child there and we are now looking to move out of London simply for this reason!

I've worked in the schools and see that some children do suffer if everyone around them can't speak English very well, but for me the learning side didn't worry too much as eventually all the children catch up with English and also I found the teachers worked brilliantly having such a mixed variety of languages but I worry that my DD won't make many friendships, Or that she will feel slightly isolated might be silly but personally I'd rather her be in a school with quite a few other English speaking children.

no, my aunt works at a school that has in recent years changed to mostly english as second language kids, she said it raised the standard of the english first language kids attitudes to learning because the EASL kids are so keen to learn that that attitude to learning is contagious.

I don't think it'll be a big issue, they'll speak it quickly and OF COURSE she can play with kids of a different language! Coconutty have you never taken your kids abroad? kids play with other kids they don't need to speak the same language - its as if they're telepathic or something. There is absolutely no difference in how DS plays with non English speaking kids in his preschool as with the other English speaking kids, and as his preschool are used to it it doesn't hold anything back at all!

and as a bonus its good for his ear to be accustomed to a variety of languages/diction if he wants to learn languages in the future

Obviously there are some schools that will use it to their advantage and see it as a bonus and work with it like my aunt's school, and others that'll be a bit shit and use it as an excuse for everything that fails. Out of the local schools here the one with the most EASL kids is the one with the best standard of teaching but that is a different issue

The phrase used in schools is "Children with English as an Additional Language", or "EAL", rather than 'foreign'.

Schools with a wide variety of languages usually embrace the benefits of the cultural diversity. Some schools have as many as 40 or 60 home languages. Your DD will be fine.

I would worry considerably if my child was the only monolingual English child and all the other children shared a common language. I would see it as positive if the test of the class spoke a variety of different languages at home.

Our school has 54 languages, nearly all the children have at least one parent who is not a native English speaker. It makes no difference to the children in terms of friendship, they pick up English so quickly and don't speak their native language at school. (BTW, The children are non-native English speakers rather than 'foreign' as they may well be Englsh).

The only issue I note is that mums from the same country tend to hang out together and the parents with poor English tend to join in less with PTA stuff and nights out but this is often down to personality as well.

If she was the only one, yes.
And I would worry about friends for tea etc. my dd was in a school which had many Korean children, none of whom came for tea, to parties...they just didn't integrate.

I wouldn't choose a school where there weren't some people like us.
Whether religion colour class.

wtf has religion or colour or class got to do with anything?

so I am brown?

guess what I am English, My first language is English,

scratch that, my ONLY language is English.

Children with a second language have better outcomes at age 11 then those without. Parents are advised to focus at home on the language which is not English as kids will pick up English in a few months of school/nursery anyway, and if the foundation of the other language isnt laid early, then the stage of development is missed as by age 7 children learn a language in the same way as an adult.

My DD has never been invited to a birthday party from school, or round a school friends house for tea. I dont really see that as a major impact on her life as she has out of school friends. School is not the be all and end all. She gets on well with all the kids in school.

What issues does the parents not speaking English create?

When we were kids we had family friends who spoke urdu at home, their dd was around 3 same age as my bro and she didnt learn English until she started schools at 5. but between 3 and 5 my db and her used to have whole conversations, him in English and her in Urdu.

Hmm, I'm not sure. If all the other children spoke the same language and little English and it were the same for their families I would be a bit concerned. If there's a mixture of lots of languages/cultures, not so much. The latter is the case for my DSs' school - a sprinkling of most backgrounds and no dominant group.

My friend's DS attended a school where in his class he was the only white British child - all the other children were British Bangladeshi. He was happy in the younger years but as they got older and more social stuff came into play (haircuts in particular for some reason) he became more and more unhappy and isolated and she moved him eventually.

All that said, I'd see how she gets on. Perhaps go and see some of the other schools in the area to see if you prefer them or if they are a better fit then go on the waiting list?

X post nailak , sorry - my 'not sure' was responding to the OP!

"raised the standard of the english first language kids attitudes to learning because the EASL kids are so keen to learn that that attitude to learning is contagious Have just stopped laughing at this bit"

In that case I sincerely hope you are not still working with kids!

As others have said I think there's an enormous difference between a polyglot school with a lot of different languages and cultures and one where most children share a common language and speak little English. I wouldn't want my child in the second situation.

"Ooh Yes I am, which is why I can speak from experience "

I am saddened that someone who works in schools doesn't understand the correlation between peer's backgrounds and aspirations/attitudes to learning

You should consider the fact that the other children aren't necessarily foreign just because English isn't their first language. As such your DD is unlikely to be the only English child.

If you start assuming everyone else is foreign you may well cause offence.........

Unless you spoke with every child you can't be sure that your DD is the only child with English as their first language.

the ideal world school as you put it is possible, it requires the teachers to have the right ethos.

"It's the generalisation that children with EALs will all be so keen to learn that I have to strongly disagree with. Some are, but IMO most certainly not all."

no it's not that, its the fact that where you have a MIX of languages, you also have a MIX of backgrounds, a MIX of academic backgrounds (parents etc), and a MIX of attitudes to learning

so in an area where there was a static lack of aspirtions or belief in education (generations and generations of disillusioned disadvantaged English only speakers), a MIX of languages meant that there were now some peers who always came in with their homework done, as opposed to none. Paying attention and doing homework was no longer universally "not done". And in my aunts school where they had battled the lack of aspirations for DECADES, the MIX of backgrounds that came with the mix of languages had helped the kids who come from generations of that area where it really wasn't valued, and now the kids from those local families are doing much much better overall. Same teachers - more mixed backgrounds.

I don't know what is funny about that?