The data analyst group, School Dash, has suggested as a result of its recent research into the population and overall performance of EU immigrant students in UK schools that those who speak English as an additional language tend to outperform their counterparts in lessons.

In London, where schools with racial diversity is more commonplace, white immigrants were found to perform better academically compared to British national students, and the report author and founder of School Dash, Dr Timo Hannay suggests two reasons behind this. One is that London could be a better environment for ‘assimilating and educating’ immigrant children; in addition to more ‘aspirational immigrant families’ ending up in London ‘disproportionately’.

Hannay, of whom happens to be the son of a Polish immigrant, commented that the reason behind this could be due to immigrant families value education more compared to British nationals: “Educationists tend to see having English as an additional language as a positive indicator of educational outcomes because a lot of those immigrant communities take education incredibly seriously. So even though the child may not have learnt English as a first language, they still may be adept at it and on the whole they seem to do better at school.

Analysing data from 20,000 schools across the country, statistics have shown that there has been a 1.2 per cent increase between 2011 and 2015 in the number of ‘white non-British and Irish’ school students and the biggest inundation of immigrant children has been experienced in London, Peterborough and certain parts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire.

Read more on the report here