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Number of Polish Pupils Have Doubled
THE number of Polish children in the county's classrooms has more than doubled over the past 12 months, making Polish the most widespread foreign language spoken by youngsters in the playground.
New figures from the 2008 Northamptonshire school census, compiled in January by Northamptonshire County Council, show primary and secondary schools had to cater for 824 Polish-speaking pupils, a rise of 430 on 2007.
But despite the increase, Northamptonshire County Council will receive £7,000 less for its share of the Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant from the Government, which is partly used for integrating migrant children in schools.
Reacting to news the authority will now receive £612,000 for 2008/9, a spokesman for the council said: "The recent demand in schools for support with Eastern European languages is part of a longer-standing pattern of immigration into the county and, as such, many schools have well-developed strategies and practices for working with newly-arrived pupils.
"The successful integration of Polish children into schools has been helped partly due to the support of the existing Polish community, who have given their time and energy into settling and supporting new arrivals. As a result, many Polish children are making rapid progress in school."
Last year Gujarati was the most popular non-English native tongue, with 417 children using the language in the county.
Other big language leaps in the county's school registers involved children speaking Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian with a combined rise of 38 to 90 – nearly triple last year's census figures.
The numbers of young Latvian and Lithuanian speakers has also doubled from 20 to 43, and 54 to 92 respectively.
Statistics giving ethnicity breakdowns by district also show Northampton has the highest number of pupils in the 'white other' category, which mainly covers Eastern Europeans – the biggest share in the county, equivalent to 35.3 per cent of the group.
Source: Northampton Chronicle & Echo, Lei Chan
21/04/2008
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