Revealed: The areas where more than half of pupils don’t speak English as their first language
English is no longer the first language for the majority of pupils in one in 15 councils.
In 11 of England’s 153 local educational authorities, children speak another language at home, such as Urdu, Polish and Panjabi.
Daily Mail research of Department of Education data found English is not the mother tongue of 66% of pupils in Newham, east London.
Harrow and Brent, two other boroughs of the capital, had similarly high rates (63%).
Nationwide, English isn’t the first language of 1.8million pupils, or one in five.
Fuelled by immigration having spiralled to all-time highs, this has risen from 1.1million ten years ago.
Critics fear the slew of different languages now being spoken instead means societal cohesion is at ‘serious risk’.
Alp Mehmet, of Migration Watch UK, told the Daily Mail: ‘English has long been the glue that holds our society together, helping new arrivals, myself included, integrate into British society.
‘But assimilation, when families wish to assimilate (and not all do), becomes far harder in classrooms where children are multi-ethnic, multilingual, and English is not the main language spoken at home.
‘As the ethnic-minority share of the population rapidly grows, English could well become a minority home language nationwide within the next 35–40 years. The cohesion of our society is at serious risk.’
The figures come after it was revealed that one in three schoolchildren in Glasgow, nicknamed Britain’s ‘asylum capital’, doesn’t speak English as their first language.
Higher than anywhere else in Scotland, one politician called the figure ‘staggering’.
The impact of high numbers of children primarily speaking foreign tongues at home means schools have had to pivot their limited resources to provide for the needs of pupils who struggle with English.
Strain has been placed on their tight budgets due to providing translated versions of resources, adding subtitling and voiceovers, as well as funding in-class interpreters.
Teachers have previously said schools were under mounting pressure from mass immigration and called on ministers to fund them properly to cope with the array of different languages that pupils speak.
Robert Bates, of the Centre for Migration Control, told the Daily Mail: ‘It is sadly inevitable that English-speaking students will suffer, through no fault of their own, as a result of these huge language barriers.
‘The pace of teaching will be set by those with a less firm grasp of English, resources will be directed away from those who are fluent and towards supporting those for whom it is a second language.
‘Language is an acute expression of culture and these figures are demonstrative of the utter transformation seen in many London boroughs in just a few decades.
‘Mass migration and the twin ideology of multiculturalism are harming the people of this country, especially those who live in neighbourhoods that are culturally divided.
‘The problems are now so acute that government must be prepared to cancel visas and withhold settled status from groups that have simply failed to assimilate.’
Experts warn that kids who aren’t taught English before they get to school are less likely to do well.
Depending on how close they are to English, both phonetically and grammatically, some languages can be very difficult to switch from.
However, some studies suggest that pupils who speak English as a second language can outperform native speakers and their presence has no impact on the learning of other pupils.
At the other end of the scale, the data, taken from the academic year 2024/25, shows only 3% of children didn’t speak English as their first language in Northumberland.
Redcar and Cleveland (4%) and Cornwall (5%) came second and third, respectively.
Some campaigners have long argued that the Government needs to have more involvement in schools that have especially high numbers of foreign language speakers.
Chris McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education, previously told the Mail: ‘The Government should publish the data regarding the language of pupils in each school and ensure that non-native speakers do not outnumber native speakers of English.
‘This will benefit all pupils and allow our society to become more integrated, harmonious and at peace with itself.’
DoE bosses define the first language as ‘where the pupil has been exposed to a language other than English during early development and continues to be exposed to this language in the home or in the community’.
The Daily Mail’s investigation comes after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood last month announced a crackdown on illegal mass immigration.
Her plans include cutting the time refugees are initially granted to stay in the UK, from five years to a 30-month ‘core protection’ system, which can only be renewed if it is not safe for them to return.
Making it so that refugees will have to spend 20 years in the UK before being allowed to apply for settled status, up from five years.
And there will be no automatic right to family reunion for refugees under core protection.
Housing and weekly allowances will also no longer be guaranteed for asylum seekers and those who can work or have valuable assets will have to contribute to their costs in the UK.
Families with children could also be subject to enforced returns under measures to remove those with no right to be in the UK.
- Is Britain’s open-door immigration policy silently straining schools with over a fifth of pupils speaking English as a second language?
- How are schools managing the alarming rise in non-English speaking pupils driven by record immigration?
- Staggering stats: Why are nearly a third of Glasgow’s schoolchildren speaking English as a second language?
- Are classrooms across the UK overwhelmed by a growing linguistic diversity, with English losing its top spot at more than 2,000 schools?
- Will Labour’s bold English language overhaul finally stem Britain’s runaway migration tides?
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