ONE in eight primary school pupils in England now speaks English as a second language, The Daily Telegraph has reported.
The figures published by UK's Department of Education show that 12.5 per cent of primary pupils need extra assistance from schools. The number has gone up by one per cent over the last year with much of the increase attributed to an influx of families from Eastern Europe.
There are now 419,600 primary pupils speaking other languages at home, a rise of 42,000 on last year, and 314,950 secondary pupils, an increase of 16,000, representing nearly one in 10.
London has the highest proportion of primary and secondary school pupils speaking English as a second language. In 348 of inner London's 695 primaries, at least half of pupils do not have English as a mother tongue. In outer London, more than one in four primary schools has at least half of pupils not speaking English as a first language.
Multilingualism is becoming a feature of rural counties such as Suffolk which has seen a 45 per cent increase in children from abroad over the past year. Twenty-one languages other than English are spoken by Suffolk pupils, including Polish, Estonian, Malayalam and Icelandic, according to BBC news.
In January the annual schools audit revealed there were 15,000 non-English speakers in Suffolk schools and the council expects this figure to rise for January 2007. So far this year there have been 467 new pupils speaking languages other than English to the county's schools, mostly from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.
The county council runs a minority ethnic and traveller achievement scheme in which specialist teachers offer advice and guidance for schools on how to help these children integrate into classroom life.
Advisory teacher Anita Jennings said the key was using lots of visual material. Jennings said "lots of talking" was very important, as was valuing the language skills that the pupils already have.
"We try to make languages really valued in the classroom and get the other children involved for example by teaching them to count to five in Polish or by learning songs."
But Tory education spokesman David Willetts said it's tough to teach high-quality education when more than half of pupils don't have English as their first language.
He said that some schools spend too long teaching pupils in their native language rather than forcing them to use English. "There has been what I would call on extreme form of multiculturalism," he said. "We have got to get them speaking English as fast as possible, as young as possible. It's a great pity that the government's current investigations into multiculturalism don't seem to include English and schooling."
Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said it was difficult for schools to know what to do with pupils who spoke no English.
"It is yet another challenge for schools and they need significantly more resources but it isn't all bad news because many of these children from Eastern Europe have already learned some English and they progress very quickly," he said.
