Only one pupil in three is white in UK’s second city
FEWER than one in three pupils in Birmingham schools is white, a community study has found.
The biggest ethnic group among students in the city is Asians, followed by whites and then blacks.
Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, also has the greatest number of schools, 22 in all, with no white pupils.
The second highest concentration is in Oldham, where eight schools have no white pupils.
At one school in Birmingham, students speak 31 languages. All the teachers at English Martyrs, in Sparkhill, specialise in English as a second language and the school employs translators.
The figures, gleaned from Government statistics, are in a report by West Midlands Police’s Assistant Chief Constable Sharon Rowe for Birmingham Community Safety Partnership.
It shows that after a huge influx of migrants, nearly a quarter of the city’s residents come from abroad. Asians are the biggest ethnic group in schools, with 13,248 pupils, or 44 per cent. Just 31 per cent, 9,337 youngsters, were classed as white, while black students totalled 3,859 ( 13 per cent).
In total there were 31,737 pupils from 87 separate ethnic groups in Birmingham’s schools in 2011, but the report did not contain racial data for all.
The children spoke a total of 108 languages at home, with English being the most com- mon, followed by the Asian tongues Urdu, Punjabi and Bengali, and then Somali.
Campaigners say the figures show the full impact of the former Labour government’s “open door” immigration policy.
Alp Mehmet, of MigrationWatch, said: “The impact of having four million net migrants enter the country under Labour is now coming home to roost.
“The schools in Birmingham are a perfect example of the consequences of that.
“If there are few children of the host community in a school, the prospects of integration are limited. In the longer term, this is bound to affect the cohesion of our society as a whole.”
A Birmingham City Council spokesman said: “Birmingham’s diversity makes it the great city that it is, and has done so for many years.
“The report contains exactly the kind of information the Birmingham Community Safety Partnership needs to plan its services.” AND here’s one I made earlier...
The Duchess of Cornwall shows off a Remembrance Day Poppy she put together herself yesterday.
Camilla’s dexterity was put to the test at The Poppy Factory in Richmond, London, which produces the tributes to Britain’s war dead every year.
Standing at a table covered with red paper petals, green leaves and stems, she said: “It’s quite fiddly work.” She struggled to find the hole to push the bloom into and joked: “I wish I had my specs on – have to hope for the best.”
Camilla, new patron of the Poppy Factory charity, also helped make a wreath featuring white paper carnations, which her husband Prince Charles will lay on Remembrance Sunday next month during a tour of India.