Children of immigrants outperform peers in GCSE English and maths

CHILDREN of immigrants are faring better than their native English-speaking peers in GCSE maths and English, says government data.

Reports say 43.8 per cent of children who speak English as an additional language edged past native English speakers (43.2 per cent) in securing “strong passes”—grade 5 or higher—in the two core subjects.

The gap in performance was wider in free schools, where non-native English speakers outperformed their peers by about 6 per cent, says Department for Education data from 2018-19.

In the previous academic year, native English speakers had been ahead by 0.1 percentage points.

Immigrant children were already ahead in Attainment 8, which measures average performances across eight GCSEs. The same trend was seen in in the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), which evaluates marks in English, maths, a science, history or geography and a foreign language.

Only 15.2 per cent of black pupils and 15.9 per cent of white pupils achieved strong passes, compared with 19.8 per cent of mixed-race pupils, 23.9 per cent of Asians and 44.9 per cent of Chinese pupils.

Children who grew up speaking a foreign language were ahead of native English speakers in achieving grade 9-5 in the EBacc.

While 20.2 per cent of non-natives secured the grades, only 16.5 per cent of their native English-speaking peers managed to do so.

The results showed that “very bright people are coming to this country, who are ambitious, keen to learn the language and can see how the education system can help them”, Professor Alan Smithers of the University of Buckingham told the Daily Mail.

Thomas Bak, a cognitive neuroscientist specialising in multilingualism at Edinburgh University, told the Times that the better performance of non-native English speakers in English GCSE was an interesting revelation.

“This might seem surprising, as it goes against the widespread belief that there is a competition for space in the brain and learning other languages damages English and leaves no space for maths or other subjects,” he said.

“Modern research shows exactly the opposite. Learning other languages not only improves attention and the ability to take other people’s perspective: it also leads to a better understanding of one’s own language.”