Immigration: the reality

English classes were free to anyone but I'm fairly sure that they're not now.

Where I live there are lots of immigrants from many different countries. In my experience, the vast majority can speak English.

Just did a quick search for and ESOL beginners course. In MK where I used to live the local college are advertising just one course, but not for beginners, which is free. This is a city with a significant number of immigrants. Seems that there is not much public provision. Other areas seem to charge.
Other areas there are a smattering of paid courses. Seems very little provision generally.
In North Wales there are free ESOL courses in 4 locations but around here only "academic english" i.e. aimed at students
The trouble is you have to offer courses at many different levels because you can't put everyone in the same class.
Be interesting if GN members did a bit of a survey - look in your area for and ESOL beginners, level1, level 2 etc and see what provision there is. I'd be fascinated to see what people find.
There is a condition on some immigrant's visas "no recourse to public funds" which means that they would not be entitled to any subsidy and would have to pay commercial rates.
In Wales there are lots of heavily subsidised Welsh courses ana. (Far more Welsh courses than - but I meant the learning is difficult, particularly for those who have not grown up in Wales. I have a head start but still need to pluck up courage to launch off in Welsh. Last week gave it a go and the chap that runs the greengrocers came back with a torrent of Welsh about the eisteddfod, Elgar, and Wagner. completely lost at that point.

What about the progress immigrants from various countries are making educationally, when compared to white british working class children (boys especially).

Immigrant families have more of a hunger to 'get on' and given access to free education will usually do very well compared to the 'native' British working class children.This then leaves them [the latter group] even further behind in the jobs marketplace.

I think I'm beginning to see the real problem that the UK faces - it's all those white, English people that you should be throwing out! They seem to be the cause of all the problems whilst immigrants are working their socks off to keep the country going!

I'm afraid many white working class families don't seem to "get" the importance of education. The kids do not think it matters and it is a hard sell for the schools.
I think it is a cultural heritage from the time when boys went into manual jobs many of which were quite secure. Industrial employment did not encourage the idea that education mattered.
But if you go back 150 years there was certainly a lot of interest in education amongst manual labourers. They founded the WEA. They raised money to build miners institutes so that they could improve themselves. The grammar school system helped some of their sons to become teachers, preachers and doctors. The 20th C was a period of increased social mobility in which lots of working class families gave rise, in the next generation, to middle class families. The less able, less motivated and less lucky were left behind.
We still have a layer of society that have not yet twigged that their sons and daughters are unlikely to get a steady secure job on the shop floor. Huge numbers of unskilled jobs have disappeared.
To be honest the position now is that many working class kids still start school with poor language skills, struggle with reading, then mess about in secondary school and their parents don't teach them the skills at home that make them employable. Which is not to say schools could do a better job - but its very hard when parents don't understand what's needed or have problems like illiteracy themselves.
Even the bright sparks from such areas struggle to get on in life because of the background they come from - I came across an example this month of a bright young man who did not have the confidence to come to an interview.
I was talking to someone this week who for many years ran a busy cafe in a tourist hot spot. Her worst problem was finding decent staff from the local community. It was a never ending struggle. What's the betting if she had her time over again and had the option on a nice polite Polish person who would work all hours and be totally reliable, she would jump at it. Not because the Polish person would work for less money but that they would not be an ongoing problem as an employee and would help her business thrive.
If British businesses are to succeed and grow they need decent staff to help that happen. So it is not a case of blaming Hollydaze but it is a case of this is where we are and the fact that people in poorer working class areas are struggling is because of history - its not the immigrants fault and stopping people with good skills coming here is not the answer.

Interesting post JessM

I am wondering how many of these working class families who have not yet 'twigged' to the importance of education and who are unemployable through their own fault you know personally. Surely not a representative sample!

Just to add a bit of balance to the picture, I know of poor, working class families who are desperate for their children to become well educated but who live in areas where the schools are abysmal. They are ground down by a constant struggle to feed and clothe their children and there is nothing left over for those little extras which give a child a sense of a place in society which is not right at the bottom.

I am sure that many immigrant families are keen on educating their children well and 'getting on'. On the other hand, I live near a town where there is a problem with gang culture within the local Asian community and children bunking off school and if you read the article in the OP of this thread you will see that other ethnic groups are not always hard working and well educated.

The article also refers to the vested interests of some groups (employers, agencies) who benefit financially from employing cheap labour from some immigrant groups and who justify this by denigrating the local workforce.

I think everyone is entitled to their point of view but I hate it when people who struggle at the bottom of the heap of our society are slagged off by people who are at least in the middle.

Agree petallus the media in general routinely take a pop at the white working class. We have hardly moved on from the John Cleese, 2 Ronnies sketch.

Immigration rules have definitely been tightened.
A man born in the North East took his dying wife home to Holland. After burying her there, he decided to come back to the North East.
As he had been away for five years, he is not allowed any benefits for three months. He then has to sit a Britishness test before being allowed anything, despite the fact that he lived here and worked here for most of his life.
Be careful what you wish for, particularly if you're an expat.

I agree 'Britishness' test is a bit of a farce in this man's case, but if he'd been living abroad for five years why should he get benefits straight away? I thought you were going to say he'd only been gone a month or two at the most, to bury his wife.

There is no doubting the weight of evidence over many years of under-achievement in white working-class boys though. This is in comparison to other groups in the same schools, so a knee-jerk "I blame the teachers" response is not the answer.
Having worked in this area for a long time, I would say that lack of parental aspiration can be a factor, often coupled with long-term unemployment in several generations and lack of male role models.
There are no quick and easy solutions, but the data that schools have about the underachievement of different groups does help them to focus on the right kind of support.
Did anyone see the item on Breakfast about a school in Barnsley using Minecraft to encourage students who do not respond to conventional texts? Interesting I thought, though I wasn't sure that Breakfast presenter got it.

JessM you have made a relevant point and one that I have witnessed. To cut a long story short, a young girl I know, very clever, doing well at a not very academic school in a deprived area, good friend at same school in same position. First girl has very supportive parents, stays on for 6th form, off to Uni to read English and hopefully work in journalism. Girl 2 is forced by her family to leave school at 16 and take a job in Peacocks because it is good enough for your Mother and Sister, so it is good enough for you, who do you think you are? so, how do we get around the 'not for the likes of us' attitude? There was no difference in the income of the two families, family of first girl worked extra hours to help support her, family of girl 2 didnt see the point.

For all you have said JessM, on my travels around Britain over the years, I have seen many white youngsters working their socks off both in school, college, Universities and jobs that many wouldn't enjoy doing. I personally know of many children that have succeeded even though they have come from backgrounds that would, by some, have been considered disadvantageous and I doubt they are the only young people in Britain that it happened to. You are coming out with generalisations against white people and I am not comfortable with that. I have more respect for those who succeed against the odds than those who sail through unimpeded.

When it comes to slobbish behaviour and/or attitudes, skin colour or nationality does not play significant part - even though the slurs being made against British workers now is no different from the slurs made against Irish and Black people at one time; funnily enough, you don't hear those slurs against them anymore, I can't imagine why ....

Under achievement of white working class boys has arisen because they no longer have a role as either mine fodder or cannon fodder. The working class was given a brief window of opportunity for social mobility which our generation was fortunate to live through although of course only a minority could benefit. They no longer have even that chance. Their industries have gone, nothing was put in their place, and no politician of any persuasion gives a damn about them any more. Easier to blame the victims than look at the causes.

petallus

The article also refers to the vested interests of some groups (employers, agencies) who benefit financially from employing cheap labour from some immigrant groups and who justify this by denigrating the local workforce.

That has been the common consensus for quite a while now: the middle classes get their cheap cleaners, au pairs, childminders, gardeners, dog walkers, window cleaners, odd job men, etc and employers get cheap labour that don't moan and complain about working conditions because they consider themselves lucky to have a job - not realising that they are helping to lower the standards for everyone that have been fought for in this country.

As he had been away for five years - why did it take five years to bury his wife?

he is not allowed any benefits for three months. - he could get a job

Good post nightowl

The Labour Party abandoned the white working class when they, Blair and friends, decided we were all middle class. Their decision to allow others to come here at the time the rest of the EU were putting limits on those new members seeking work was the final nail in the coffin. Cheap labour, crowded schools, hospitals, housing shortages all already mentioned here. The poor may be paid fleeting attention just before the general election but only because of UKIP.

Of course there are plenty of white working-class children who do well in the education system, but the weight of evidence from performance data shows significant under-achievement of this group (especially boys) as a whole.
Of course you are right nightowl and I also mentioned generations of unemployment as a significant factor, but in the end it is what you do about it that matters.
Schools work very hard on this, but the older the children are the harder it gets. Surestart, nursery education; these are the things that really make a difference.

A few months ago, the immigration minister, Mark Harper, criticised the boss of Dominos Pizza who wanted the immigration rules relaxed so that they could import more workers from outside the EU.

Harper said that the company should increase its pay rates to attract more job applicants, not seek to hire cheap overseas labour .... I agree.

Why was the TUC so quiet while all this was happening under Labour?

Nothing to do with closing down the mines, the shipyards and the steelworks then, PPP?

I feel that the solution lies way beyond the remit of schools and would require a major political upheaval which is probably impossible now. The fact is that whatever schools try to do for white working class boys, they have no role models because their parents are often unemployed, no communities because they were all swept away with the closure of industry, no family income to support them, and no bloody hope. I fear that for many school is just a brief intermission and often an inconvenience in their lives while they work out how they can get all the things that the popular media tells them they should aspire to. How are they to believe that education can help them to achieve a better life when it is so far from everything they know? I don't know what the answers are but I feel despair coupled with anger when I hear other more privileged people not only blaming them, but talking about them as though they are a different species.

That last comment is not aimed at anyone on here btw

For all their posturing, governments just don't seem to have the political will to control immigration. But of course it suits the ruling elite/privileged in the country to have a low-wage economy - more profit for them.

I think we accept that there's not much we can do about free movement of labour within the EU but, as anyone who lives in London knows, there are huge numbers of Latin Americans, Moroccans, Africans, Turks, etc., in low-skilled jobs who've come here in the past 20/30 years or so.

How was it ever possible for London hotels to hire Phillipina or Columbian chambermaids, and care homes to direcly import carers from mainland China?

And we wonder why you can still hire someone to clean your house for less that £10 an hour, the going rate for over 10 years ... something we discussed on a recent thread.