PRESS RELEASE
23 April 2007

Increasing pressure on school funding from migrant children

North East Cambridgeshire schools are suffering from a lack of funding to support the increase in the numbers of pupils clarified as English as an additional language learners (EAL), primarily from the migrant worker population.

Provisional 2007 figures from the schools census in North East Cambridgeshire, provided in a letter to Malcolm Moss MP by Gordon Jeyes Deputy Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council, show that numbers of EAL learners in both primary and secondary education have almost doubled in the last year, to 300 in Primary education and 150 in Secondary education; with towns like Wisbech being worst hit.

Recent comments by Government Immigration Minister Liam Byrne MP that the current levels of immigration are “deeply unsettling” for the country, highlight the problems being faced in areas like North East Cambridgeshire. Immigration adds 1% to Britain’s population every two years and more then 5% every decade. However public services are not improving in line with these increases. Funding is not available to allow school teachers to be trained appropriately and schools are not being given enough funding to deal with the problem of teaching the National curriculum to children whose first language is not English.

Malcolm Moss says:

“Unfortunately this rise in EAL learners has not come in line with increases in funding to support these school children by the Labour Government. Many of these learners arrive with little or no previous schooling and an increasing number are now identified as having additional learning needs. Additionally schools do not have advance warning of new arrivals which makes planning very difficult. The Government have failed to come up with workable policy to reduce the problems.”