Staff with foreign pupils relying on Google Translate

TEACHERS are having to use

Translate to plan lessons as they struggle to cater for migrant children, it is claimed.

A union conference heard yesterday how schools are finding it hard to cope with an influx of children arriving unable to speak English.

Teachers warned that schools are now having to deal with up to 300 languages being spoken by pupils across the nation.

They also said native- speaking children are not getting their ‘fair share’ of attention from teachers because of the additional needs of those from abroad.

In a speech to delegates from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Oxfordshire teacher Joy Wilson said many staff had little or no training in how to deal with pupils with English as an additional language (EAL). She added: ‘UK schools are educating a rising number of EAL pupils. This continues day by day.’

Around one in six primary school children does not have English as their first language, while in secondary schools the figure is one in seven. Official statistics released in 2014 showed the proportion of non-native speakers in primary schools rose from 18.1 per cent to 18.7 per cent in a year. In secondary schools, it increased from 13.6 to 14.3 per cent.

Some schools in multicultural areas have pupils with more than 20 different native languages. Earlier this year, it was revealed that only 10 per cent of pupils at Gascoigne Primary School in Barking, East London, were native English speakers.

Diane Wilson, who also teaches in Oxfordshire, told the conference in Liverpool she had Hungarian, Russian and Portuguese children in her class. She said: ‘I was up until midnight writing individual lesson plans for the three EAL students and two other differentiated ones for the rest of the class. All the materials handled were self-made and individual instructions using Google Translate were put into Hungarian and Portuguese.

‘The non-EAL students do not get a fair share of the teacher’s time.’

Malcolm St John- Smith, from Wakefield, added that pupils were arriving in schools with English that was ‘rudimentary to say the least’.