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British school has no pupils who speak English as a first language
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British school has no pupils who speak English as a first language

Source: telegraph.co.uk


A primary school is thought to be the first in Britain that does not have one pupil who speaks English as a first language.

Gladstone Primary school in Peterborough, which has 440 pupils, is dominated by students from the Punjab, with smaller groups from Afghanistan, Lithuania and Latvia.

But despite the language barrier the school has scored highly in its Ofsted reports and the headmaster sees bilingualism as an advantage.

Christine Parker, the head, told the Sunday Times: "More and more of the world is going bilingual.

“The culture at our school is not to see bilingualism as a difficulty."

It is thought the school, in the immigration hotspot of the agricultural area of the Fens, is the only school with no pupils who speak English as a first language.

Department for Education figures show that 358 of Gladstone's pupils speak Punjabi Urdu at home, 23 speak Dari, the official language of government in Afghanistan, while there are also 15 Lithuanians and 11 Latvians.

There are 16 smaller language groups which are too small to be revealed.

The school was last week celebrating a “good” score from Ofsted, just a year after it had been handed an "inadequate" rating.

Ms Parker, 54, said teachers tried to make up for the absence of native English by providing running commentaries on even the most simple actions and mixing the pupils with those from a nearby school.

Ms Parker said children arriving in reception class struggle badly only if their parents have taught them snippets of English alongside another language.

The school has 28 teaching assistants, with 10 speaking Urdu and one speaking Polish and Russian.

Ms Parker said it was often harder to teach pupils if they had been already taught a mixture of English and their native tongue.

She said if they have been “mixing” up their native language with English teaching can be “very difficult”.

Jonathan Lewis, assistant director of children's services at Peterborough city council, said more than 100 languages were spoken in the city and the proportion of pupils in its schools classified as having English as an additional language has risen from 19 per cent in 2008 to 35 per cent.

Stewart Jackson, the Conservative MP for Peterborough, said the city was full.

He urged the council to reconsider proposals to accept large numbers of families being moved out of London because of the government's housing benefits cap.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

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