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Express
April 28, 2014
A SCHOOL with children from more than 50 different countries is set to become the first in Britain to teach English as a FOREIGN language.
City of Leeds School in Yorkshire is taking the drastic step of introducing classes teaching English as a second language to each of its 350 pupils – including all its British-born pupils.
The school says it has been forced to include British-born English speaking pupils in the programme, because their standard of English is so bad.
Head teacher Georgiana Sale said the school was having to “rethink the way we do things” in a radical bid to improve standards.
She said less than a quarter of its pupils had English as their first language and more than half of the children were new to the country within the past four years.
Ms Sale said it had been decided to include pupils who have English as a first language in the programme because in many cases their level of formal English was not good to achieve good grades at GCSE.
Last year the school had just over a quarter of its pupils, aged 11 to 16, achieve the national benchmark of five good GCSEs, including English and maths – the lowest score of any state school in the city.
But Ms Sale it was unfair to expect the school to reach national averages when so many pupils were new to the language.
She said that for pupils with English as a first language it would give them the chance to improve their spelling and grammar.
Chris McGovern, Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, raised concerns that the move might be detrimental to native-English speaking students.
He said: “Whilst it is very important that non-English speakers are properly looked after, this should not be at the expense of those for whom English is their mother tongue.”
Bradford mill worker’s son Amjad Bashir, 61, a Euro-election candidate and leading figure in the business community in Leeds, came to the UK in 1959 from the Punjab, speaking only Urdu.
“But my parents appreciated the importance of English language and culture and I was encouraged to learn English as soon as possible both within and outside school,” added.
“My father would even send me outside to play with local kids. He used to close the door behind me and said ‘You can’t come in until you learn the language’.
“I am very sorry for the 25 per cent of English pupils born in English house-holds. It is not fair they are being disadvantaged in this way and their progress held up.”
On its website, the school says it employs staff who speak Czech, Romanian, Russian and German to help children settle into the school and learn English.
The school is currently advertising for a new English teacher to start work in April on a pay band of £21,804-£37,124 a year.
City of Leeds, in inner-city Woodhouse, is aiming to become an academy.
The sixth form has already been axed at the school, which was at one stage facing closure and was ranked as unsatisfactory by Ofsted in 2012.
But education bosses in Leeds decided to keep it open and its Ofsted rating went up a notch last year to “requiring improvement”.
