Bullock (1975)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents, Introduction

Part 1 Attitudes and standards
Chapter 1 Attitudes to the teaching of English
Chapter 2 Standards of reading
Chapter 3 Monitoring

Part 2 Language in the early years
Chapter 4 Language and learning
Chapter 5 Language in the early years

Part 3 Reading
Chapter 6 The reading process
Chapter 7 Reading in the early years
Chapter 8 Reading: the later stages
Chapter 9 Literature

Part 4 Language in the middle and secondary years
Chapter 10 Oral language
Chapter 11 Written language
Chapter 12 Language across the curriculum

Part 5 Organisation
Chapter 13 The primary and middle years
Chapter 14 Continuity between schools
Chapter 15 The secondary school
Chapter 16 LEA advisory services

Part 6 Reading and language difficulties
Chapter 17 Screening, diagnosis and recording
Chapter 18 Children with reading difficulties
Chapter 19 Adult literacy
Chapter 20 Children from families of overseas origin

Part 7 Resources
Chapter 21 Books
Chapter 22 Technological aids and broadcasting

Part 8 Teacher education and training
Chapter 23 Initial training
Chapter 24 In-service education

Part 9 The survey
Chapter 25: I Introduction
Chapter 25: II Primary commentary
Chapter 25: III Secondary commentary
Chapter 25: IV The questionnaire forms (not online)
Chapter 25: V Technical notes (not online)

Part 10 Sumary of conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 26 Conclusions and recommendations

Appendix A Witnesses and sources of evidence
Appendix B Visits made
Glossary
Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock FBA

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1975
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 20 Children from families of overseas origin
[pages 284 - 295]

20.1 Since the mid-1950s schools in most large cities in England have received children whose parents are of overseas origin. The majority of these are children from the West Indies, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, whose parents have come to seek work in Britain. Others are children of Italian, Spanish and Cypriot workers. In addition there is a scatter of Chinese children whose parents are engaged in the catering industry. There are considerable numbers of Asians from East Africa, including the refugees expelled from Uganda in the last two years. Some of the families have now been settled in Britain a decade or more, and their youngest members have been born in this country. The great majority of the children, born here or brought from overseas, have a big adjustment to make when entering school. For most of them this adjustment includes a linguistic factor, either that of learning English as a new language, or of learning Standard English as a new dialect. The children's linguistic adjustment relates in many ways to their educational progress, and it is to this issue that we turn in this chapter.

20.2 It is, of course, helpful to have some idea of the number of children of families of overseas origin at school in Britain, though there is considerable difficulty in arriving at useful statistics. In 1973, by the DES definition (1) then existing, there were 284,754 'immigrant children' in maintained primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, comprising 3.3 per cent of the total school population. More significantly, since immigrant populations are concentrated largely upon Greater London and industrial cities in the Midlands and North, individual local education authorities can have as high a proportion of immigrant children on roll as 27 per cent. Raw statistics such as these help to show why such a large measure of attention has to be paid in some areas, much more than in others, to the educational needs of the children labelled 'immigrant'. Obviously what is needed is as sharp a measure as possible of these special educational needs. An immigrant child does not present problems to a school simply because he is an immigrant child. Centrally collected figures cannot, for instance, indicate exactly the numbers of children with linguistic needs nor give any measure of these needs. The only people who can do this satisfactorily are the people on the spot, the teachers in the schools and the local education authorities. A few authorities have already had considerable practice in making such assessments. Bradford is notable in having carried out for several years an annual survey of immigrant children in its schools, distinguishing between their different ethnic origins, identifying their levels of proficiency in English, and making flexible educational arrangements accordingly. We recommend that all authorities with immigrant children should make similar surveys regularly, in order to achieve a greater refinement in their educational arrangements. Now that the NFER's English language tests (2) are available, it should be possible to give an accurate assessment of proficiency in understanding, speaking, reading and writing English on the part of children for whom it is not their native language. It is clear from the available reports that comparatively little provision is made in some areas, that the education of children of overseas parentage is given a low priority, and that many of the existing arrangements do little more than meet the initial language and adjustment needs of new arrivals. It is, of course, at that point that the need for intervention is most sharply felt in the schools, but the adjustment of immigrant children to their new environment and to learning elementary English is only the beginning of what for most is a long process. It is a process that consists primarily of learning to live in or between two cultures, and of learning to handle two languages or dialects.

20.3 The term 'immigrant' is sometimes used in a very general sense, often to mean anyone of overseas parentage, or with a black skin. It is not uncommon to meet teachers and members of the public to whom all Asian immigrants are the same, irrespective of their country of origin, and for whom there is no difference between India and the West Indies. It goes without saying that teachers and others should have an informed and sympathetic understanding of the children's different origins, the cultures of their homes, and the very real link between some of their countries and Britain. No one should accept a stereotype of 'the immigrant child', but should acknowledge the very great differences there are between children who fall into this general category. There are differences not only of language and culture, but in the manner in which families succeed or fail in settling here, and in providing a secure home for the children. Many immigrant children come from stable supportive families in which the relative affluence of the parents is evident; others face grave problems of insecurity and hardship, and in many respects resemble some of the indigenous families in the same inner city area.

20.4 In urging a greater measure of attention to the education of immigrant children, we want to emphasise the long-term nature of the issues involved. The inflow of newcomers and their families has slowed down considerably in the 1970s, but the needs of the children who are already here are continuing ones. They cannot be dealt with briefly and then forgotten. Although there has been little sustained research describing the comparative performance of children of minority groups at school in Britain, there is enough to show a disturbingly low pattern of attainment. The Community Relations Commission underlined this in its evidence to the Committee, and in its report to the Home Secretary, (3) as did ILEA in the details provided of the 1968 Literacy Survey in its schools. This survey included a census of the reading attainment of eight year old children in ILEA primary schools, and it is worth remarking that in 1972 23.3 per cent of the immigrant children in school in England and Wales were concentrated in ILEA. The evidence as we received it made no distinction between children of West Indian and Asian origin, and it is clear that there are special reasons for the failings of both groups. The figures are disturbing in showing the markedly lower reading standards of immigrants. A high proportion come into the category of poor readers: 28.5 per cent as compared with 14.8 per cent of non-immigrants. Conversely there is a low proportion in the category of good readers: 3.5 per cent as compared with 11.4 per cent non-immigrants. An unpublished analysis of all ILEA pupils transferring to secondary schools (quoted in the Community Relations Commission report referred to above) indicates that of immigrant children who have received their full education in this country, those of Asian origin are in fact performing at a level comparable with the indigenous population. Pupils of West Indian origin, on the other hand, are performing well below average. The EPA study in Birmingham was another source of disturbing results, and a good deal of publicity has been given to the high proportion of West Indian children in ESN schools in London. This is partly attributable to their poor performance in primary schools, particularly in the skills of reading and writing. Further evidence, relating to the nation at large, comes from the NFER studies, which show the generally low placement of West Indian pupils in streamed schools (lower than that of Indian and Pakistani pupils), and a low transfer rate to selective schools: 4 per cent for West Indians, 9 per cent for Indians, 9 per cent for Pakistanis, 25 per cent for non-immigrants. In common with the Asians the majority of West Indian pupils staying on for fifth and sixth form courses tend to take either low-level examinations or no examinations at all; only a small proportion of West Indian pupils take A Levels, a disturbing fact again in view of the long-term needs of the community.

20.5 Immigrant children's attainment in tests and at school in general is related not only to language but to several other issues, particularly those of cultural identity and cultural knowledge. No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of the home as he crosses the school threshold, nor to live and act as though school and home represent two totally separate and different cultures which have to be kept firmly apart. The curriculum should reflect many elements of that part of his life which a child lives outside school. Some schools and authorities are already dealing wisely and boldly with these matters, and there are interesting examples in the recent Schools Council Working Paper, Multiracial education: need and innovation. (4) But many more schools in multiracial areas turn a blind eye to the fact that the community they serve has radically altered over the last ten years and is now one in which new cultures are represented. We see implications here for the education of all children, not just those of families of overseas origin. One aspect of the question which we believe merits urgent attention is the nature of the reading material that is used in schools. In their verbal representation of society, and in their visual content, books do a great deal to shape children's attitudes. We would urge that teachers and librarians should have this in mind when selecting books for schools. If the school serves a multiracial society, does it have books about the homelands of its immigrant families, about their religions and cultures and their experiences in this country? The Library Association catalogue (5) of books for the multiracial classroom makes some useful suggestions of titles. Even more important, has the school removed from its shelves books which have a strong ethnocentric bias and contain outdated or insulting views of people of other cultures? These questions are relevant across the entire age range. The reading material used in infant schools should be truthful and unsentimental in its visual and verbal content. Equally, the social studies texts in the secondary school should place in fair perspective the events and movements in history which have affected the peoples from whom the immigrant families spring. A survey (6) of children's books revealed much inaccurate, thoughtless and downright offensive writing about people from other countries. We strongly recommend the report of this survey, published by The Institute of Race Relations, to all who have responsibility for book selection in multiracial schools. Similar surveys could be carried out by groups of teachers, who would be providing a useful practical service while developing their own sensitivity to the issues involved. These and related questions should also enter the initial training of teachers, for whether or not they go to teach in schools with immigrant children it is right that they should have this kind of awareness. This is an appropriate point to record our conclusion that there are not enough books available which represent children of overseas backgrounds in the ways we have been describing. We address this observation to publishers, whose contribution in this whole area is potentially very considerable.

20.6 In discussing the language needs of immigrant children it is important to distinguish between two broad groups. The first consists of families from the Caribbean, whose mother tongue is English - even if in several respects it differs from the kind of English spoken in England. The second group is made up of those whose mother tongue is a totally different language and who speak little or no English on arrival. We will consider these in turn. The 1972 DES statistics revealed that there were 101,898 children of West Indian origin (including Guyana) in the schools. Other evidence suggests that about half of these were from Jamaica, the remainder from the smaller islands in the group. For most of them the language of childhood and of the home is an English-based Creole, a variety or dialect of English. Jamaican Creole has been extensively studied and described over the last 20 years. It is recognised by linguists as being a well-developed language, with a sound system, grammar and vocabulary of its own, and capable - like other varieties of English - of being used expressively and richly. However, the West Indian situation is very complex, since in most schools in the islands a standard form of English, very close to Standard English in England, is the medium for formal education and is the language the children are expected to read and write. There are already, then, linguistic difficulties for pupils and teachers alike in the schools of Jamaica and other Caribbean islands; and there are difficulties, if of a rather different order, for the West Indian children at school in Britain. For most of them the language of infancy and of the home will almost certainly be a form of dialect, though some members of the family will be able to switch to a more standard dialect for certain purposes. The child attending school will be likely to have teachers who know no Creole at all and who will expect him to understand and respond to a dialect that may at first be very strange to him. The teacher's ignorance of Creole, and perhaps his traditional attitudes to non-standard forms of English, will tend to make him dismiss Creole features in the West Indian child's speech as incorrect or 'sloppy' English. The issue of dialect thus raises many problems. It is clearly important that teachers should be fully aware of these and that they should recognise dialects for what they are. In assisting children to master Standard English, which in effect is the dialect of school, they should do so without making children feel marked out by the form of language they bring with them and to which they revert outside class. A positive attitude to West Indian dialect - as to West Indian culture - would help teachers and children alike in multiracial city schools. This area of study should therefore receive attention in both initial and in-service teacher training. Useful support for this work can be derived from the findings of the Schools Council project on the teaching of English to West Indian children (7), and we would draw attention to the strong interest in Creole language studies in several university departments of linguistics in this country. The information and expert guidance is available for those willing to draw upon it.

20.7 The Schools Council project carried out tests which showed that dialect impeded the children's learning of English in the areas of oral comprehension, spoken intelligibility, reading, writing and spelling. It also developed some material to help teachers counter the effect of dialect interference in children's written work. The main effort, however, was directed to materials for promoting communication skills in the multiracial class and neither this project nor any other as far as we know has studied the specific problems experienced by West Indian children in learning to read. It is reasonable to assume that if these problems were better understood by teachers there would be a general improvement in the literacy skills of West Indian children, with possibly far-reaching implications for their all-round performance at school and their social adjustment. There is urgent need for work of this kind to be carried out and for its results to be disseminated on a wide scale, and we believe that support should be given to appropriate research and development projects.

20.8 Little evidence was received about positive measures carried out in schools or centres to help West Indian children develop their language skills. However, we were impressed by what we heard of one outer London borough which has organised a 'supplementary service' for West Indian pupils. The children are selected according to need and taught in small groups for an hour a day, considerable emphasis being placed upon language. They are helped to distinguish Standard English from other forms, and to practise those English structures where there is most interference from dialect. This part of the teaching is fairly formal. The children are also encouraged to talk about themselves, and they have books and pictures in which black children figure as well as white. An important part of the work is helping children to have a positive attitude to themselves and to school, and West Indian teachers are among those who teach the groups. The scheme operates flexibly, with the teachers meeting once a week to discuss their work and plan materials. Similar schemes could be operated in other authorities where there are concentrations of West Indian pupils. Schools should also be encouraged to try different approaches, and to share their findings with one another. Work relating both to dialect and to improving the ability to communicate should be encouraged on a much larger scale. In our visits to primary schools we saw some good use of the Schools Council project materials referred to above. One component of these, 'The Dialect Unit', can give teachers insights into some Creole speakers' problems in writing Standard English, and it can also provide a springboard for further work initiated by teachers and children themselves. In some cases it is said that West Indian parents resent their children being singled out for special attention, and also resent the implication that 'they do not speak proper English'. But many West Indian parents are concerned about their children's progress and, from their own experience of learning to switch dialects in the West Indies, can understand the present difficulties of their children in this country. Consultation with them can often result in new approaches being developed to help their children, and schools should look for opportunities to draw on the support that parents and community can give. By getting to know some of the minority bookshops that now exist in London and elsewhere, and by using some of the excellent resource centres of local Community Relations Councils, teachers can obtain books and papers published in the Caribbean. They will find that these can provide stimulating new material for use in school, and at the same time give a useful insight into Caribbean life. We reaffirm that in order to teach West Indian children effectively teachers need to have an understanding of their dialect and culture.

20.9 There is general agreement that at first sight the language problems of non-English speaking children are easier to deal with than those of the dialect or Creole speakers. They have to learn English as a second or even a third language, but what they know, namely their original language, and what they need to learn, are clearly distinguished in the teacher's mind. There is by now a considerable body of methodology available and some very useful materials, at least for the initial stage of learning English as a second language. The different types of organisation set up in LEAs are fully documented in the Schools Council Working Paper (8) and the Townsend study (9). In some of the large authorities with immigrant populations there are flourishing teachers' centres and a strong system of support and in-service training for teachers of English as a second language. Considerable practical knowledge has been contributed to the field by teachers and college lecturers returning from teaching posts overseas. However, these teachers tend to move on again, and there is in any case a high staff turnover in the inner city schools where most of the work is done. These factors contribute to a shortage of teachers able to teach English as a second language and of people to train them, a problem noted by the Parliamentary Select Committee (10). There are, of course, no easy remedies to teacher shortages of this kind, though more should certainly be done to make it easier for teachers returning from overseas postings to be recruited into language teaching for immigrant children.

20.10 The organisation of this teaching within a school and within an authority should measure up to the demand. The situation can be summed up as one in which the teaching often starts too late and ends too soon. In some areas even the provision of places for the limited number of new entrants in a special class or language centre is inadequate. Children may consequently have to wait several months to begin to be taught English; in a few places not even this provision exists. This cannot be justified on the ground that the children will pick up English anyway and that special language teaching is unnecessary. We believe that it is necessary, and that it must be provided. It is outside the scope of this Report to examine the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of provision made for teaching English as a second language. Common sense would suggest that the best arrangement is usually one where the immigrant children are not cut off from the social and educational life of a normal school. The money spent on transporting children to other schools or centres, or peripatetic teachers from school to school, might sometimes be much better allocated to the appointment of full-time language experts to the schools where the children are on roll. Where there is a very small number of such children in several schools, then bringing them together for sessions of specialist teaching may be more practicable. Some of the special centres set up for this purpose provide highly professional language teaching. We are, however, aware that this teaching is often carried out in complete isolation from the child's school, and that his other teachers, including the head, may be unaware of what he is learning and of the methods used to teach him. Specialist language teachers need to work in close liaison with other teachers. In whatever circumstances they operate, they should be given time to consult with these teachers in the schools and to be in touch with the child's education as a whole.

20.11 Another worrying aspect of this initial provision is the fact that it absorbs almost all the trained teachers who know anything about the teaching of English as a second language. Very few are to be found giving sustained language help to immigrant language learners beyond the initial stage. In statements of policy LEAs often claim that the aim of initial language teaching is to bring the immigrant child to the level of English at which he can profit from the normal school curriculum in company with his English-speaking peer group. This generally means a year or less, or at most 18 months. In most cases, however, it is unrealistic to think that the immigrant can reach that level of proficiency in English in 18 months or less. His whole experience of English, the language and the culture, has more or less to be mediated through school. The Indian child virtually goes home to India every night. His participation in mixed social activities outside school is limited, and this is particularly true in the case of girls. Weekends and holidays are times when the child may hear next to no English spoken at all. Although after a year he may seem able to follow the normal school curriculum, especially where oral work is concerned, the limitations to his English may be disguised; they become immediately apparent when he reads and writes. He reads slowly, and often without a full understanding of vocabulary and syntax, let alone the nuances of expression. His writing betrays his lack of grasp of the subject and a very unsteady control of syntax and style. His mistakes, or deviations from Standard English, often bear a superficial resemblance to those of the slow-learning native speaker, whom he resembles in his limited range of expression. But many of the mistakes are essentially those of the second-language learner, such as a failure to use articles in a way that comes automatically to the native speaker, or inaccurate verb forms and confused morphology. Coupled with this, his handwriting is often that of someone who has never been taught systematically how to form and link the letters of the Roman alphabet in an acceptable cursive style. We regard it as a grave disservice to such children to deprive them of sustained language teaching after they have been learning English for only a comparatively short time. In our view they need far more intensive help with language in English lessons. This should be the task of a specialist language teacher, whose aim should be to help them achieve fluency in all the language skills. In oral work the emphasis might be on expression, on vocabulary extension, on finding the right style for the right occasion, and on achieving an acceptable pronunciation. In reading and writing teachers need to follow a developmental programme, using a graded language scheme or following a planned course. Non-native speakers are known to experience difficulty in reading extensively and at a reasonable speed. This indicates the need for a planned reading curriculum, in which texts are used with appropriately graded language and content. But there was little evidence in the schools and centres we visited of really advanced English language work of this nature, and of a good supply of well chosen books which were contributing to children's language development.

20.12 It is also clear that the children need linguistic help right across the curriculum, and that here the language specialist's task in the secondary school merges with that of the subject specialists. Broadly speaking, all subject teachers need to be much more aware of the linguistic demands their specialisations make on pupils. It is no easy task to help teachers to this awareness, and cooperation and experiment are called for within and between schools. We were impressed by the efforts of schools we visited in Bolton (11) and Bradford, where the specially appointed language specialists had devised a flexible cooperative system within the school. They functioned both as teachers and consultants, sitting in on subject classes, analysing the linguistic demands made on immigrant learners in different areas of the curriculum, and offering running help to the children as the class proceeded. This is a much more effective way of working than dealing with pupils in comparative seclusion, which is bad both linguistically and socially. It is feasible for language experts to work in this fashion not simply with second-language learners but also with Creole-speaking children. Arrangements of the kind we have described demand trust and cooperation between language specialist and subject staff, and the role of the head and of heads of departments is obviously vital in creating the right atmosphere. There should be more initiatives to establish a new role for the language teacher in a multiracial school, one of consultant and adviser across the curriculum rather than of teacher confined to a single room. As a matter of urgency teachers able to work in this way should be appointed extra to complement wherever secondary schools have on roll a significant number of children who are no longer classed as initial language learners but need linguistic help. We recognise that this recommendation would be costly to implement in some authorities, and we acknowledge the difficulty of recruiting teachers with the appropriate skill and experience. Nevertheless, we see no other realistic solution for the linguistic and social problems posed by the presence of large numbers of second-stage language learners in schools.

20.13 We have suggested that those authorities with areas of immigrant settlement should maintain a continuous assessment of the language needs of immigrant pupils in their schools. For the most part these are not accurately assessed unless there is a member of the advisory staff with a major responsibility for immigrant education in the authority. We would strongly urge the appointment of advisers with special responsibility for the language development of immigrant children, able to provide suitable and sustained in-service training and to support groups of teachers in their response to local problems. Needless to say, it is as important for these advisers to liaise with the authority's other advisers as it is for the language specialists in a school to cooperate with other teachers. They should certainly work in close association with their colleagues responsible for advisory work in English, a concept discussed in Chapter 16. The specialist adviser needs to have a clear view not only of what is required, but of the way in which existing strengths can best be used. For instance, some trained teachers of English as a second language could profitably be deflected from initial language work in a reception centre to dealing with the more complex needs of second stage language learners. Unless there is a person responsible within the authority such informed use of resources tends not to occur.

20.14 A special word needs to be added about children of overseas parentage in infant and nursery classes. In the first place we see the provision of nursery classes in inner city areas as having great importance for the early language development of immigrant children. This is true both for those from non-English speaking homes and for those from West Indian homes. It is known that many West Indian parents leave children with child minders in circumstances which encourage passive response from the children and which must often have harmful effects on their development, both linguistic and general. It is often reported that they find it difficult to adjust to the informal environment of the nursery or infant reception class, that they are bewildered rather than delighted by the variety of activities offered them, and that they find it hard to concentrate even for a short period on any single activity. There are special difficulties, too, for very young children from non-English speaking families, children born in Britain but brought up in homes where neither the language in use nor the culture is English. Teachers of these young children have shown reluctance to do any 'formal' language work with them, usually on the ground that in the good infant or nursery class they would learn to speak English anyway, without any intervention on the teacher's part. But these children, after a full two years in infant classes, often reach junior school seriously lacking in fluency in English. To meet the special needs of these children, teachers in nursery and infant classes should be willing to modify their traditional organisation. The child bewildered by a choice of activities might be given a more limited number of alternatives. For children with language difficulties it is essential that for a short period every day a teacher should sit with individuals or small groups and talk with them. The experiments conducted in the pre-school and infant centres and classes of Bradford and other towns have already shown that special language tuition can be provided early and saves time and trouble later. There is nothing to suggest that it need in any way be too formal, nor need it take much time from the other important learning opportunities that nursery and infant classes would normally want to provide. Valuable guidance for language work with non-English speaking infants is contained in a forthcoming Schools Council publication in the Scope (12) series. Another recent development is the extension of the work of the Schools Council project Communication Skills in Early Childhood to nursery classes in which there are children of families of overseas origin. Both these sources of information should help nursery and infant teachers to focus on priority areas of language and deliberately extend the young child's use of English.

20.15 Until now there has been a shortage of nursery provision in many of the areas where there are large numbers of overseas families. The promised expansion of nursery education will do something to remedy this, but there are two important points to be made. First, it is clear that the conventional training of nursery and infant teachers has normally lacked a component that will help them understand the specific language difficulties and cultural values of children from families of overseas origin. There is a need for both these aspects to be taken into account in teacher-training programmes and in-service education. Secondly, new approaches may be necessary if these children are to be reached in their early years. The links of such families with the existing schools are often tenuous. Mothers may be at work all day, or live in purdah, or speak no English; fathers may be permanently on night shift. Notices sent from school are sometimes not read, or are misinterpreted. The parents sometimes want to delegate to the school full responsibility for social training. In some instances they know nothing of the possibilities of nursery education and feel unable to take advantage of it where it exists. In the case of many of these families the conventional channels of communication between school and home do not function, and quite different strategies are needed.

20.16 There are good arguments for a more sustained and systematic service linking home and school, especially in the areas of intensive immigrant settlement. In some areas there is evidence of good results ensuing from various systems of home visiting, sometimes involving a teaching member of a school staff, himself a member of an immigrant community, sometimes the provision of social welfare assistants attached to infant schools. In the West Riding, after the success of the home visiting scheme in the EPA project, there has been a development whereby a home visitor teaches a little English to housebound Pakistani mothers and to their young children through the medium of simple educational toys. In a summer holiday project students worked on a one to one basis with immigrant school children, and one of the most profitable achievements was to build up a pre-reception class for rising fives, immigrant children unable to speak English but due to enter school the following autumn. There were three weeks of small-group and individual play involving a great deal of language interaction with willing student teachers and an experienced infant teacher in charge. The result was that the children developed the confidence to speak English and become familiar with the apparatus and activities of an infant class. An additional benefit was the informal contact between teacher and parent, a valuable foundation for the coming school year. Obviously, none of these approaches provides a complete answer and all of them need adequate financing. Professional advice should be available for the personnel involved, whether they be trained teachers or nursery helpers, social workers, home visitors, or student volunteers. Members of the advisory service should provide them with training in language development and in understanding the social and cultural values of families of overseas origin; and the role of members of the minority communities themselves is obviously vital in this work of mediating between the different communities. Children of overseas origin should see people of their own communities in the role of teacher and helper. LEAs should be alert to the needs of providing training, or retraining, to immigrants who will be able to perform this important function.

20.17 The importance of bilingualism, both in education and for society in general, has been increasingly recognised in Europe and in the USA. We believe that its implications for Britain should receive equally serious study. When bilingualism in Britain is discussed it is seldom if ever with reference to the inner city immigrant populations, yet over half the immigrant pupils in our schools have a mother tongue which is not English, and in some schools this means over 75 per cent of the total number on roll. The language of the home and of a great deal of the central experience of their life is one of the Indian languages, or Greek, Turkish, Italian or Spanish. These children are genuine bilinguals, but this fact is often ignored or unrecognised by the schools. Their bilingualism is of great importance to the children and their families, and also to society as a whole. In a linguistically conscious nation in the modern world we should see it as an asset, as something to be nurtured, and one of the agencies which should nurture it is the school. Certainly the school should adopt a positive attitude to its pupils' bilingualism and wherever possible should help maintain and deepen their knowledge of their mother tongues. The school that really welcomes its immigrant parents must also be prepared to welcome their languages, to display notices and other materials written in them, and even to adopt some of the rhymes and songs learnt by the young children at home. At least one authority is experimenting with an even greater investment in bilingualism by encouraging pre-reading experiences and early play in the language of the home in pre-school and infant classes. Confidence and ability in this language will help the children to the same qualities in their second language, English. Schools in neighbourhoods where many languages are spoken, as in North London, would find suggestions of this kind impracticable, but there is every reason for adopting them in areas where there is a fairly homogeneous language situation. In any event, bilingual pupils should be encouraged to maintain their mother tongue throughout their schooling. There is a great deal to be said for their entering for O and A Level examinations in their first language. The Townsend study (13) shows that though schools often encourage this, few if any actually give tuition in any Indian language. The immigrant communities themselves are reported as teaching their own languages, and the range encompasses Greek, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujurati, Hindi, Italian, Polish, Arabic and a cluster of others. Little is known about the effectiveness of such provision, and we recommend that further study should be made of this and other aspects of bilingualism in schools. It has an important contribution to make to what we suggest is the central recommendation of this chapter: a sensitivity and openness to language in all its forms.

References

1. The Department of Education and Science used the following definition in its Form 7(i) when collecting annual statistics of immigrant children until 1973: (i) children born outside the British Isles who have come to this country with, or to join, parents or guardians whose countries of origin were abroad; and (ii) children born in the United Kingdom to parents whose countries of origin were abroad and who came to the United Kingdom on or after 1 January ten years before the collection of the information.

2. Tests of proficiency in English NFER: Ginn: 1973.

3. Educational Needs of Children from Minority Groups Community Relations Commission: 1974.

4. Multiracial education: need and innovation Schools Council Working Paper 50: Evans/Methuen Educational: 1973.

5. Elkin J et al Books for the Multiracial Classroom A Select List of Children's Books, showing the backgrounds of India, Pakistan, and the West Indies: The Library Association Youth Libraries Group: 1971.

6. Hill J et al Books for Children: The Homelands of Immigrants in Britain Institute of Race Relations: 1971.

7. Teaching English to West Indian Children Schools Council Working Paper 29: Evans/Methuen Educational: 1970.

8. English for the Children of Immigrants Schools Council Working Paper 13: HMSO: 1967.

9. Townsend HER Immigrant Pupils in England NFER: 1971.

10. Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration: Session 1972/73: Education: Vol. 1: Report HMSO

11. A film depicting the cooperative system at Deane High School, Bolton, is available on loan from The Central Film Library, Government Film Building, Bromyard Avenue, Acton, London W3. The title is English as a second language: first and second phase teaching.

12. English for Immigrant Children in the Infant School Scope Handbook 3: Longman: not yet published.

13. Townsend HER op. cit.