DDs friend is leaving the school because "there will be 50% polish children."

[LesAnimaux]

DD told us in the car on the way home. I gasped

DS shot back with "If she says that again, tell her you aren't friends with racists."

Cue DD getting upset and saying "but I like her".

The mother of this child is a parent governor. I wonder what reason she will give the school for moving her DD?

Is this racism? Or if there are a large proportion of children for whom English is a second language and have been moved into the school/country after reception is it a legitimate concern for other parents? Personally I can't see how it would affect my DCs education adversely. What am I missing?

[Moominsarehippos]

The school next to us has 71% of children with english as a second language. It has an awful reputation (but has for many years way back even when it was predominantly white working class).

Our neighbours fantastic little girl sat for 3 of the top girls' schools in London and got accepted into them all.

[dixiechick1975]

I agree there is a big difference between monocultural and multicultural.

Our local schools are monocultural - the local paper publishes photos of new reception classes in September and it is startling how divided things are.

The issue for me would be social - if the language of the playground isn't english, if all children go to mosque/polish school etc every night at 4pm opportunity for playing with friends after school is non existent.

[telsa]

I chose a multicultural school for my DD. She is one of 2 monolinguists in her class (despite all my efforts to get her to pick up another language, somewhat artificially). all the children, except one new Russian, speak very good English and that is the case even for those whose parents do not speak any. The closer school I rejected is mono cultural and what seems to be a fairly insular culture at that. The head told me that being invited round after school or having sleepovers does not happen at all. Poverty and cramped living conditions probably has something to do with it too. That concerns me, as I felt my DD would not really develop strong friendships. So, I think it really depends on a number of factors.

[Sprink]

Pyrrah,

"I totally understand parents worrying when 90% of other students are of ONE language, culture or gender as this lack of diversity can prove problematic in terms of friendships for the minority."

What, like if 90% of the students were English-speaking White British Christians? ;-)

[ReallyTired]

"What, like if 90% of the students were English-speaking White British Christians? ;-)"

Such classes only exist in popular church of england schools. Even then there are plenty of black, indian christians in our area.

There is a difference between choosing to immigrate to a different country and hence being the only child who can't speak the majority language and being an ethnic minority in your own native country. I imagine a class that was 90% first generation immigrant X nationality would be hugely challenging to teach especially if the children had limited English.

Second generation immigrants or their children do not have the same issues of integration as new families. I imagine that a second generation immigrant would have no issues being in a class of english speaking white British christians as they can speak english as well as any other child.

[Sprink]

ReallyTired,

Yes, thanks for that. I was making a little joke.

[Ellewood]

I don't think it's racist at all. I find it quite short sighted to say that. I have just come from abroad where my daughter attended an English school in a foreign country. The majority of pupils were not native English speaking and this massively affected the level of learning. Teachers aim for the middle point in a class and if a class has a large amount of non-native English speakers,t he level will clearly be lower and the pace slower. This is my opnion, based on observations and personal experience. The key question to ask the school is how they will cater for the range in needs. I am sure they will provide some answers but ultimately it all comes down to resourcing and how good the individual teacher is. But even then, it's a gamble.

[cory]

Before worrying that it will pull standards down, you would want to know

a) how the performance of Polish children generally compares to that of British children (I know children from Asian families tend to outperform native British children)

b) what the level of English is among these particular Polish children- speaking Polish doesn't necessarily mean you cannot also speak English

I still don't get how being different from 50% of the school puts you in the minority.

[LesAnimaux]

DD told me today this child was leaving because the school is concentrating on the progress of children who don't speak English as a first language, and other children aren't making enough progress.

I guess a parent governor would know this. Ofsted also know this (last inspection was earlier this year).

[8wellyspider]

I wasn't at all concerned about the recent upsurge in ESL entrants to our school, until my (Polish) friend mentioned recently that she was getting annoyed that her child was being used as a class interpretor for a recent new child with poor English. Hadn't thought about it from that perspective.

[PastSellByDate]

LesAnimaux:

For the moment at least, Britain is part of the EU and therefore belong to that group of all EU citizens (including Poles) - they're one of 'us' as it were. I don't think you can order your DD to be friends or not - but you can suggest that you disagree with that view and why. Possibly more useful to teach your DD that everyone has different points of view and it's o.k. to disagree (after all you can't force this child or the parent governor to agree with all you believe can you?).

My DDs go to a very multicultural inner city school near University & Hospital. (If you haven't noticed most hospital nurses aren't English these days folks). So it's a veritable UN. I can say hand on heart that the group of kids that are the problem (rowdy, often in trouble, fail to ever do homework & are lagging behind in class) are homegrown, white & Afro-Caribbean boys with English as their first language.

Our governors decided to blame last year's appalling SATs results on foreign students with EAL - but in fact if you look at official statistics on that cohort that was an unfair conclusion which is not supported by the facts. 2 pupils had EAL - one of whom got into the grammar school after only attending for 3 years (he was Korean and did most of his learning through Sunday Korean school - as most Korean/ Chinese & indeed Indian pupils do here - this isn't a specific response to our school, but a general remedy they've come up with to deal with low standards in primaries across this LEA. Many parents come over with companies for a few years and then return to thier home country - if they don't do more, their children fall hugely behind).

The reality was FSM clearly accounted for all but 1 pupil's poor performance (below NC Lever 4 in Maths/ English combined).

Unfortunately until schools openly come to terms with this and address this trend I don't think things will improve.

[vikinglights]

ellewood
you have experience with a english language school in a non english speaking country
I don't think it's racist at all. I find it quite short sighted to say that. I have just come from abroad where my daughter attended an English school in a foreign country. The majority of pupils were not native English speaking and this massively affected the level of learning. Teachers aim for the middle point in a class and if a class has a large amount of non-native English speakers,t he level will clearly be lower and the pace slower. This is my opnion, based on observations and personal experience.

and that is hugely different to a school in a country where the community language is english. I agree that english speaking international schoosl can be a hot bed of poor english, but in that case school is often the only exposure to english. A family in the UK would have to try pretty hard to remove all other english trom their lives apart from school.

Of course lots of kids who don't speak the language is a challenge for a school, but it is only one challenge of many potential challenges, and importantly a 'temporary' challenge (as the kids learn the language the degree of challenge becomes less) that also brings enrichment.

[adoptmama]

You don't really need to worry.

Firstly the children/families will all have come at different times, so many of them will be fluent or functional in English. Many of the younger children will likely have been born in the UK and have been exposed to English since birth. The fact they are bilingual is a benefit to them and not a hindrance to your children. It's a shame that the mother of your DDs friend didn't stop and use some rational thought after reading the Daily Mail and spouting nonsense in front of her children. A best she is being foolish and ignorant. At worse she is being racist and teaching the same to her children.

It takes approximately 2 years to gain social fluency in a language, 5 to catch up with academic language. However it takes only a few weeks for children immersed in English to be able to follow along with much of what is going on. Children who are beginning school with no English will have support. The benefits of being exposed to other languages and cultures are far greater for children than the negatives; and it has long term positive impacts on learning.

My children go to a school with over 40 nationalities; it is wonderful. My elder (bilingual) DD has 6 nationalities in her class and is the only native English speaker. She is by no means the top reader ;) which just goes to show that being a second language learner neither means you will hold back others, or fail yourself. Parents' cultures does influence children, of course, and my long and lovely experience of Polish culture is that the parents will be involved, positive and pro-education. I would be delighted my children had the chance to make friends from other countries and cultures and would be encouraging her to learn Polish from her friends.

[orangepudding]

It really does depend whether the children can speak English as well as Polish.

When looking at schools for Dd1 I realised that the catchment school had a large proportion of Turkish speaking children. Many children came into the school not knowing English. A neighbour as Turkish and didn't speak English to her daughter as she would learn it at school. This did worry me as the teacher would have to concentrate on teaching English to those who didn't learn it at home.
We had the opportunity to move house before application so we did.

If the majority of the children can speak English then it won't be a big issue. Also there aren't big cultural differences between English and Poles.

[cory]

Dd had a friend who arrived from Poland with no English at the start of junior school. By the end of the first year she was socially fluent and keeping up in lessons. By the end of the second year she was doing very well indeed.

[Trinpy]

Just wanted to add: Poland is in central Europe, not Eastern.

[Farewelltoarms]

Do you (plural) ever worry that you respond differently depending on the provenance of the children? My Polish friend with very high achieving children is very rude about all the Turkish families at school who, in her kids' school at least, don't seem to be as invested in education as she is (e.g. girl in y6 still on level 2 etc).

I notice that certain groups in our school really raise attainment and others cause real problems in terms of attendance, attitude, language etc. Silly things like a school-trip packed lunch consisting of just a croissant.

In other words, though I generally don't have a problem with the very high EAL numbers in my kids' school, it's quite nationality-specific. Which makes me feel very uncomfortable.

[telsa]

I feel uncomfortable, but again I think this is often correlated to poverty. The largest ethic groups closest to me happen to all be very poor. Poverty does not mean disinvestment in a child's education, but it does have all sorts of knock on effects.

[daytoday]

It isn't necessarily racist etc especially as you seem not to have spoken to the parent to hear their reasons. You've just heard Chinese whispers through children. I suspect the parent has a myriad of reasons for moving. Perhaps as a governor they are unhappy with the leadership, or perhaps their child is unhappy, or is struggling.

[LesAnimaux]

telsa, from what I can tell, there is no issue with poverty connected to the ESL children in DDs school.

I agree, this is a case of Chinese Whispers. I guess I'm just disappointed as I thought this family would stay and support the school. Quite a few non-Catholic families left after the last Ofsted, but I thought this family would stay as they're Catholic. I suspect the DD may be going to an independent school, but haven't had the chance to talk to her parents.

[Farewelltoarms]

Thanks Telsa, that's a pertinent point.
LesAnimaux, if they're off to a private school then in my experience you'll hear lots of different reasons given by the parents, all of which cannot help but slightly irk those left behind. We had family recently and the mother was very adamant they were leaving because of the dd's dyslexia which seemed a good and understandable reason. Then the dad failed to tow the party line and told everyone else it was because the ds was too intelligent for state school. Which those of us with children stupid enough for state school couldn't help but slightly grrrr at.
In other words, there will be lots of self-justification and it boils down to them feeling their child would do better elsewhere. You have to not let it reflect badly on your own choices.

[notcitrus]

I was a bit flabbergasted some months ago to meet a couple Polish mothers who said they weren't applying to their local Catholic school as they didn't want their children to be educated with 90% other Poles in the class - they wanted a school where there were native English speakers or at least enough kids from different backgrounds that Polish wouldn't be used in the playground. So same issue, just not xenophobic - possibly bog-standard snobbery?

[Pyrrah]

Spink - you do get parents who worry about exactly that. Over on the Education board, there is an American mother who is moving over to the UK and looking for a private school where her black daughter won't be in the minority.

I was at a grammar school where there was one black girl in the entire school - I don't even recall an Asian child there. She obviously fitted in totally fine with everyone - the only differences were the colour of her skin and her historical ethnic background, but I remember well how excited she was when we went to an athletics match at another school where around 40% of the children were non-white and a couple of the black guys were flirting with her - it was a bit like I felt when I lived abroad and once in a while met another Brit... even if they weren't someone I'd choose to be friends with if we met in the UK, we had things in common immediately and especially could have a good giggle about some of the idiosyncrasies of the country we were living in.

She also had to endure a certain level of racism from some staff members (appallingly) and it was hard as it was just her on her own.

Some Muslim children could find it very hard if their parents prefer them not to mix outside school with people outside their own community, or if everyone else has got boyfriends/girlfriends and the kind of social life that many white Brit teenagers have. At least if there is a decent cohort then there is a chance for friends that the parents will find acceptable or not being the only child that is not allowed to wear a swimsuit in front of the boys etc.