MP hits back over school integration

IMMIGRATION Minister Phil Woolas has hit out at MPs who used Oldham schools to claim integration is not working.

Across the country, there are 10 primary schools where no pupils speak English as a first language — four of of them in Oldham.

Werneth Infant, Greenhill Primary, Burnley Brow Community School, and St Hilda’s were included on the list seized on by MPs to claim Government’s attempts to tackle immigration are failing.

The same list shows 99 per cent of pupils at two Oldham schools — Westwood and Richmond Oldham — have another first language, while it is 98 per cent at Freehold.

Other schools listed where English is not the first language are Horton Mill (97), Werneth and Glodwick (96), Alexandra Park (94), Clarksfield (92), St Thomas’s, Werneth and Coppice (91), Roundthorn (89), and Stanley Road and Bare Trees (78).

Nationally, one in seven primary pupils does not class English as their first language.

Labour MP Frank Field and Tory MP Nicholas Soames, co-chairmen of the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, said: “These figures make a nonsense of the Government’s aim of integration and show the very real strain that uncontrolled large-scale immigration is already placing upon our society.

“How can these children be expected to integrate into our society if they are being taught where English is not the mother tongue?”

But Oldham East and Saddleworth MP and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas hit back saying: “We have been dealing with this and addressing this for more than a decade.

“Why do they think that Building Schools for the Future is going ahead, why do they think I have used Oldham’s lessons to change national policy?

“I don’t mind criticism but let them do it with facts, not prejudice.”