United Kingdom, 19th March: Contrary to common claims, immigrants from non-native English speaking nations don’t have any significant impact on British school standards.
This has been revealed by findings of a recent research by the LSE (London School of Economics).
Immigrants affect on British schools not detrimental--The UK need not worry any longer with regard to effect of non-native English speakers on primary schools in the nation, the findings by LSE research show.
That is due to the fact that factors like poverty level the worse effect of poor performance of native English speakers at British primary schools, study undertaken by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance affirms.
Increasing percentage of non-native English speakers in British primary schools is not affecting educational performance levels of native English speakers in any way, states one of the authors of the research, Sandra McNally.
It is because of the fact that majority of children from east European nations prefer going to Roman Catholic state schools than studying at other schools, the study asserts.
Hence, such schools witnessed increasing number of non-native English speakers, McNally clarified.
Immigration positive for the UK—Another fact brought forth by the LSE research is that rather than being harmful, immigration is beneficial for the UK economy.
And the effect of immigration on UK public services is also positive rather than negative, the director of National Institute of Economic and Social Research, Jonathan Portes stated while pointing out towards the findings of the LSE study.
Mathematics performance levels went up in British schools and the onus must go to East Europeans who impact other children or the environment positively, the study shows.
The message is clear to all those who are anti-immigrants-that non-native English speakers do not hinder progress of their native-English speaking peers at British schools.
The Coalition government has pledged to bring down UK immigration levels to ‘tens of thousands’ at the end of the parliament. Official figures for the previous year show UK immigration to be at 250,000.
The issue of public services of the UK getting unnecessarily burdened due to increasing influx of immigrants coming to the UK has been a bone of contention for the nation.