Patel: Vote for EU will harm our schools

SCHOOLS will have to find places for 260,000 additional children from the EU by 2030 at a cost of £1 billion a year, a Eurosceptic cabinet minister has warned.

Priti Patel said that the pressure on school places will become “unsustainable”.

She warned that if Turkey, Albania and other accession countries join the EU the number of additional schoolchildren could rise to more than 500,000.

At present 699,000 children in British schools have a parent who is from the EU, while one in five children at primary level speak English as a foreign language.

The number of schoolaged children arriving in the UK from Europe reached a record 25,000 in a single year, the research showed.

Mrs Patel said: “Class sizes are already overstretched, with an 8 per cent increase over the last year in the number of pupils in classes over 30. These demands will only increase if the UK remains in the EU.”