School to teach in native languages

The headteacher hopes the changes will improve results

A secondary school in north London where children speak a total of 65 languages is to offer lessons in some of the languages the children speak at home.

This term nearly 400 children at White Hart Lane school will have science lessons in Turkish and there are plans to run more lessons in other languages such as Somali and Albanian.

The children who will have those lessons are of Turkish and Kurdish origin.

Head teacher David Daniels says the initiative will help foreign pupils settle into the curriculum while they learn English.

Boosting results

He says many of the school's 1200 pupils arrive knowing no English, but with good skills in maths and science.

He wants the school to build on those skills by teaching some lessons in the child's first language while they also learn English.

Mr Daniels said: "Any day of the week, a child may arrive from any part of the world literally not speaking a word of English.

"Yet we have children in that position who may be quite able in maths and science."

The head teacher is learning to speak Somali and Albanian.

He believes the changes will improve results at the school.

He took over the school at Easter after a critical report by the schools' inspectors, Ofsted.

Many of the school's 80 teachers already speak languages additional to English.

They are all being encouraged to learn another language.

As well as Turkish, children at the school speak Hindi, Finnish, Cantonese, Swahili and Mandarin.