The Effect of Migration to the Standard of UK Education

Statistics from the Home Office show that in the first three months of 2007, over four thousand children from Eastern Europe were brought to the UK by their parents or caregivers. This equates to 65 new children per day in schools. This is just an example of the influx of immigrant children to the UK. These schools that are publicly funded will have no choice but to spend thousands of pounds and many hours in an attempt to bring the immigrant children up to the same standard as British children that are already attending these schools. This affects the level of education in the UK in the following ways:

· An overwhelming majority of these immigrants are non-native English speakers.
· It is difficult to estimate what the level of education was achieved in the immigrant's home country because of different focus in curricula and even the language of instruction is different. This being so, the school and teachers will have a hard time determining as to which level in the English educational system the immigrant is suited for.

Therefore, if you mix these students with those that are native English speakers, this will present considerable problems for both students and teachers, even the government and the school itself. One way to solve the problem would be to segregate the immigrants from the English students, but this will take a lot of time to be approved and if ever it will be, a lot of resources will also go to procuring new classrooms, hiring more teachers, adding more equipment, and designing new teaching methods to accommodate the rise in number of students.

Initially, the influx of migrants consisted of adults. However, many parents are encouraged to bring their children along and be educated in the UK to take advantage of the government's policy of free education in addition to generous child tax credits that families will get. This resulted to a significant number of young children arriving in the UK which was unprecedented. It can thus be said that the position regarding immigration has to be revisited so that this phenomenon does not affect the quality of education that our very own British children will get.