Call for class help on languages

Schools need guarantees of support in helping new arrivals, says Portsmouth

The government should guarantee funds to help schools with children who do not speak English, a council says.

Portsmouth Council fears funding for schemes designed to help children and parents from different backgrounds to learn English will dry up.

Eleanor Scott, a Liberal Democrat councillor in charge of education in Portsmouth, says schools will struggle to cope unless more funding is secured.

She says new arrivals should be given intensive language and culture lessons.

A report for the council said that in May this year, there were 251 children from refugee and asylum seeking families in 46 of Portsmouth's schools.

The families came from 41 countries and spoke 32 native languages.

That represented a 12% increase in the numbers of pupils from refugee and asylum-seeking families from the previous year and a 22% increase in the numbers of countries of origin and new language groups.

The number of languages spoken in Portsmouth schools rises to 58 when children from families already settled in the city are included.

Portsmouth became a designated dispersal area for asylum seeking families under the government's dispersal programme in 2001.

Complex funding system

The council's report says the profile of the city has changed significantly in recent years and ethnic minority pupils now make up 9.3% of school population, compared to 4.3% in 1998.

It warns that secondary school-age children who arrive with little or no schooling in their home country or English language "pose a strong challenge to traditional educational provision".

Councillor Scott told the BBC News website that Portsmouth had a good service designed to support newcomers in schools, whereby someone came to help them in the classroom or give them extra English lessons.

But this was funded through "a complex system", primarily via the Home Office, and council officers were worried the funding streams could dry up.

"The schools are worried about the sustainability of the service but they cope brilliantly and celebrate the diversity of the languages spoken."