UK kids speaking English as their main language now in the minority

London, Mar.23 (ANI): The number of children who count English as their mother tongue are now in the minority at more than 1,600 schools across England.

According to the Daily Mail, the new figures show that close to one million children who now attend schools in England do not have English as their first language at home - with the multicultural effects of migration now showing in the nation's classrooms.

And the amount of schools with a majority of pupils who do not class English at their home language is steadily increasing by one a week.

Classrooms across Britain are becoming more multicultural with one in six youngsters in primary schools not having English as a first language

There are 97 schools where children with English as their first language are in such a minority that they make up less than one in twenty pupils.

The statistics released by the Department of Education shows that in 1997, when Tony Blair first came to power, there were 866 schools in England where more than 50 per cent of the pupils had English as a second language.

Last year that figure had nearly doubled in just 14 years to 1,638 schools.

Now, there are 1,363 primary schools, 224 secondary schools and 51 special schools where more than half the pupils come from a non-English speaking background.

A recent study found that Punjabi was the most frequently spoken language among pupils who did not have English as a first language.

After that the most popular languages were Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Somali, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish and Tamil. (ANI)