School Pupils: English Speakers

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sharples]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their estimate of the number of children starting school for whom English is a second language.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, the latest school census in England in January of last year showed that 19% of pupils in year one, 113,000, and 14% of pupils in year seven, 75,000, have English as an additional language. More than 1 million pupils in schools, 13% of the total, have English as an additional language.

[Baroness Sharples (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware that certain schools are involved in considerable expense because they have to employ interpreters? What is being done to help parents learn English, so that it can be spoken at home?

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, it is for schools to determine how to respond to the needs of pupils with EAL, including how they support pupils’ families. We do not hold centrally a figure for the number of interpreters employed in schools. Local authorities have the freedom to allocate EAL funding to schools as they see fit. Schools may well choose to spend this on interpreters or on employing bilingual staff. For example, we know that in 75 local authorities, primary school pupils with EAL attract between £250 and £750 each. The Government are investing £210 million per annum in community learning language programmes to support families with EAL. We are also funding English courses for 24,000 adults with the lowest levels of English through the £6 million English language competition. There is no specific duty for schools to teach English to parents; however, schools have a key role to play in this. Parents of new pupils at, for instance, Millbank Academy—one of the primaries up the road, which is in my wife’s group—where 85% of pupils have EAL, are introduced both to other parents and a member of staff who speaks their home language, and are invited to the school every week to be updated on their pupil’s progress.