School Funding Crisis- British Kids Marginalised

On the back of a week where even the official Opposition tabled plans to continue the haemorrhage of taxpayer money ("foreign aid") to the richest citizens of the world's poorest countries, it seems our own education system is under more direct strain from the Third World.

According to a report published on the 15th by the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, “The need to increase funding for primary schools is a direct result of mass immigration feeding into our population."

The birthrate to foreign mothers in the UK has increased by sixty percent in the last eight years, compared to a six percent increase in the birthrate of the native and settled population.

This has left schools across the country desperately short of places in the face of growing demand- more than 10,000 places must be made in English infant (ages 4 to 7) schools before the start of the new academic year in September. In 25 local authorities, pupils born to foreign mothers are now the majority, and many of these students, up to a million presently in UK schools, do not speak English as a first language.

The cost of making the required space for all of September's Reception year intake is estimated at two hundred million pounds, not including the costs inherent in teaching the basics of English communication to the newcomers. All this as the Conservatives, the Government-in-waiting, announce a foreign aid plan that more-or-less continues the failed policies of the past thirty years- money for education in nuclear Pakistan and space-program India, callously coupled with silence over the shortfalls at home.

It seems the British taxpayer must once again shoulder the educational problems of the Third World, whether they exist far away or whether they are literally imported to his local school. The time for alternative proposals must be now.