How difficult is it in a class where half do not speak English as their first language?

[cherylforPM]

Post regularly on mumsnet but name changed for this as scared of being misconstrued - please try to understand what I am saying.

Nearest school to us got a bad Ofsted a couple of years ago but says it's improving and I have no doubt it will pull itself up from its 3 rating by the time DD should be due to go there in 2 years time.
My concern is - and would be interested to hear from teachers and parents in same situation - is if you live in a deprived area where half the kids do not speak English as their first language, whether it means that those who do then don't get challenged as much at school? Does this turn out to be a problem?
Please don't flame me for this because I realise this could sound like I don't want my child to go to a multicultural school. I do very much. However I don't want to sacrifice her education on an ideal.....

Haven't read all responses, but just wanted to show the flip side of OP's point, our situation.

We're raising our children bilingually in German/English and try to speak as much German at home as we can, and I particularly 'pushed' German before they started school so that they had a good foundation before starting English.

Both my children (not Y3 and Y1) have learned English extremely well, and in fact are slightly above average in reading and writing than their monolingual English peers. They are also picking up French very quickly (perhaps because their brains are used to the concept of a thing having different 'names'?)

So many studies have shown that bilingual children do better academically, including at English than monolingual children.

I therefore feel so strongly that parents who are fortunate enough to speak another language than English, to speak that langugage to their children! They will learn English anyway and very easily. In fact, I am now struggling to get my two to answer back in German - so strong is the 'majority language' environment.

So please don't assume that speaking two languages hinders childrens' academic abilities - the contrary seems to be true .

Of course, what you may be concerned about is not the fact that these children speak another language, but that these childrens' families are not supporting them in other ways and that this may hinder their academic development - but that is an entirely different question imo.

I think it depends on the circumstances. At my DD's school there were 2 kids who started reception not speaking any english at all, plus 2 kids who hadn't spoken any english when they started nursery a year earlier. they are now in year 1. the 2 who started in the nursery are now totally fluent and the two who started in reception have reasonable english.

as others said kids pick up quickly and its much more of a problem if lots of kids speak the same foreign language so playground chat is not english..

what would concern me is the turnover rate... eg now in year 1 there are 2 new non english speakers so additional pressures in the classroom because of 2 new kids who need extra help... if the turnover rate is low then the kids in the class will pick up english quickly and it shouldn't be a problem

MUCH more important than the number of non-English speaking dc is the question of ethnically mixed the school is. If the children are from a range of different language backgrounds, then they will have to speak English in the playground in order to communicate, so socially it won't be a problem and shouldn't be a problem academically either as long as the school is a good one. Also if the parents don't all come from a single community then they are more likely to be open to their dc meeting up out of school for eg. birthday parties or trips to the cinema.

If a very high proportion of the dc are from the same non-English speaking community (eg. there are some schools near us that are 97%+ Sylheti Bangladeshi kids) then I would want to be very sure that the school was outstandingly good and had an extremely clear strategy for integrating kids who didn't share that background. I would need a lot of persuading that my child would be able to achieve the full range of educational and social experiences in an environment where they were the only child who didn't belong to the local ethnic community and speak their language. That's not snobbery, it's about not wanting your child to be in a linguistic and cultural minority of one.

FWIW at least half the dc in my kids current primary school aren't native English speakers, although most do have reasonable English (though some don't, and many of the parents def dont). But because the mix is so heterogenous, they all somehow muddle along together and it's socially good fun, and academically v. good with very imaginative and slightly wacky teaching. The school was Ofsted 'satisfactory' when we started, but has just been given an 'outstanding'. We're hoping this won't encourage the wrong (=pushy) sort of parent to try and sign up.

Don't worry frogs, the wrong parents won't sign up. DS's primary's similar. Very mixed culturally and celebrates that as a positive. It got a good with outstanding features ofsted not v. long ago, but still a lot of parents won't touch the school or even look round it. I've been shocked by the number of negative comments I've heard since DS started. It's been a real eye opener how ingrained prejudice is, even amongst the more liberal minded parents round here.

this all v interesting and has given me a lot to think about - thank you so much. I think you're right - the issue may be monoculture rather than multiculture. there is also a lot of movement in the school - pupils coming in at different times and a high number of SENs.
Have rung school twice to see if i can look round - and while both times whoever has answered the phone has been perfectly nice, no one has as yet called me back....

I live in a similiar area, many schools are majority pupils from other countries, many of which do not speak any English. There are lots of social housing estates and because of this most schools have a really high pupil movement rate.

I researched further and picked the one where they have good ofsted grades (1's and 2's) and the majority of pupil are British and speak English.

I know it is far harder for the teacher to teach a class of 30 kids in English when the majority do not speak English. Often there is enough extra help for the teacher. I cannot see how my daughter wouldn't fallbehind and have less time and attention than the nopn English speaking pupils.

Our school has a broad range of pupils, but almost all have English as a first language.

If I were you I'd pick another school.

Alos, just saw avenging gerbils post. When I went to secondary school we had a huge amount of pupils who were all from the same countries. The "playground/classroom chatter/corridoor talk" language was not English either, something many parents fought have have changed. English schools should be English speaking. There were mnay incident of attacks on the British pupils and we constantly felt like the teachers were far too scared to take action for fear of being branded "racist". Horrible school, hence I moved in yr9. I would NEVER send my dd to a secondary school were a large majority of the children there are not English.

It's a little over half at dd's school.

Generally I think it causes no problems at all if children are coming in to Nursery or Reception with little or no English. More of a problem if the area has a transient population with a lot of children coming in further up the school with not much English. But as others have said, it all depends on whether the school is on top of the situation or not.

I worried about this last year and did think about posting on MN, but like OP thought that I might get flamed.

We had 3 potential schools - all ok Ofsted reports. We looked at all of them and decided we liked the ethos and atmosphere of teh CofE school best (we are occasional churchgoers). It is in N London and there is a good racial mix.

One concern I had about one of the other schools was the high percentage of EASL pupils. I take your points that this should even out fairly soon. However, what was even more concerning for me was that it looked like it would be very likely that my son could be the only white child in his class. Maybe this isn't a problem, but I didn't think it was particularly healthy for reasons stated above.

Frogs - do you live in Camden

We are contemplating this issue right now. DH is from the majority ethnicity and I have dual heritage.

I think having a multitude and nationalities and languages in amazing and grew up this way myself and am trying to bring my children up the same way, where I think the concern is is in the mono-culture already mentioned. DH is from the majority ethnicity and feels more passionate about sending DS1 to a school which is predominantly his background than I do as he feels he understands the values and mind set of the parents and he feels they are not the same as ours and because I am not from their community they wont embrace play dates etc so there are a whole lot of factors and the social one is a big one in my opinion.

I taught in schools as you describe. It is impossible to generalize as it depends enormously on the schools and the intake. My top groups always had children with English as an additional language. They were well-supported at home and spoke English fluently and sophiscatedly. They came from a wide range of backgrounds (Bengali, Iranian, Pakistani, Albanian).
I also taught children at lower stages of EAL and never considered it a problem but I would be lying if I said they didn't sometimes need more attention. The trickiest time was when a non-English speaker had newly arrived and was perhaps feeling nervous to boot. Even with assigned hours with a translator and with additional assistance there was still plenty of time when I needed to give them some input when I could have been with other classmembers.

All bar one on the top reading table in my son's yr 1 class are children who have English as a second language.

Due to a house move, I ended up sending dd to a school with a fairly high % of EAL speakers. I was concerned but during a tour of the school I spoke with the head and she showed me how well children did who had been at the school from reception (far better than the overall SATS for the school). DD is in Year 1 and started in Sept.

Since starting the school, there have been good and bad points. The head has been very successful in getting additional funding and dd's class has 2 TAs (I've never seen a Y1 class with 2 TAs, 1FT and 1PT). Educationally, I'm pleased with the school.

Socially, it can be difficult. I think the point about monocultural is really important. Dd's school is mixed but there are some more dominant groups like Kosovans and Somalis - and they do tend to hang out together and speak their own languages at playtime. It's hard to arrange playdates especially because dh tends to do the school run. THe one time he asked some Kosovan mums whose dds were friends with mine if they wanted to swap numbers, there was a shocked silence and now they won't talk to him and avoid him like the plague .

If I were you, I wouldn't reject the school out of hand but it is important to make sure the school has its act together regarding support to EAL and also check that there's enough of a mix that you and your child won't feel isolated.