A school in northern England has taken the innovative step of introducing English as a foreign language for all pupils to help non-native English speakers achieve better grades, local media report.
The extra weekly 50-minute lesson will "boost their
fundamental English skills and improve their basic spelling and
grammar", said Georgina Sale, headteacher at City of Leeds
secondary school in the county of Yorkshire.
"We hope this will allow pupils who speak English as a
first language as well as our multilingual learners the same
opportunity to accomplish A and A+ grades at GCSE," she added.
Language problems are thought to be a factor in recent poor
performance by the school, where less than 25% of its 314 pupils
have English as their native tongue.
The remainder come from 55 different countries and many
have only been in the UK for a few years.
Leeds has a non-UK born population of 86,144, representing
an 11.5% share of the city population according to Oxford
University's Migration Observatory figures based on the 2011
census.
The number of residents born outside the UK has increased
dramatically in recent years.
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