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1 The general background

Throughout its history this country has experienced successive waves of immigrants: for example, Huguenots fleeing from religious persecution in France; Eastern European Jews at the beginning of the present century; refugees after the First World War; Spaniards during the Spanish Civil War; 80,000 displaced Europeans during and after the Second World War; 11,000 Hungarians in 1956; and the large numbers of Italians admitted under a special scheme. They came, settled down and intermingled - and the country found little difficulty in absorbing these new-comers. The main reason was that their numbers were relatively small.

The present immigration from Commonwealth countries began with the arrival in 1948 of about 500 Jamaicans, many of whom had served in this country in the Royal Air Force and were now induced to make their homes in this country by the availability of greater employment opportunities. Throughout the early 1950's the stream of West Indian immigrants grew steadily. They were joined by increasing numbers of immigrants from India, Pakistan and other Commonwealth countries. The increase in numbers reached its peak in 1961 and 1962 in anticipation of the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 which reduced the inflow by introducing a system of control; its measures were strengthened by the decision in 1965 to restrict the issue of work vouchers to immigrants to 8,500 annually, including 1,000 from Malta.

There was a corresponding increase in the number of children of immigrants in schools. Some schools before 1960 had a cosmopolitan range of nationalities among their pupils but had found relatively little difficulty in absorbing and educating children of the earlier post-war European immigrants. In the early 1960's, however, the concentration and rapid build-up in the numbers of children arriving from Commonwealth countries and entering the schools at different ages and at all times throughout the school year began to create serious educational difficulties.

Numbers

Some idea of the size of the rapid growth in the numbers of children born overseas and the children of immigrant parents entering schools can be gained by comparing their total number in maintained primary and secondary schools

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during the first four years in which relevant statistical information was collected by the Department of Education and Science (hereafter referred to as the Department).* The number rose from 131,043† or 1.8% of the total school population, in January 1966, to 183,776 or 2.5% in January 1967 to 220,212 or 2.9% in January 1968, to 249,664 or 3.2% in January 1969 to 263,710 or 3.3% in January 1970. Local education authorities in different areas of the country have produced figures to illustrate the rapid rise in the number of immigrant children admitted into their schools during the 1960's. In Bradford the number in school rose from 962 in April 1963 to 5,307 in January 1969, including an increase of 710 in the year 1965/66, and of 1,070 from January 1968 to January 1969. In 1965 the authority was registering immigrant children for admission to school at an average rate of 18 a week; this rose to 23 by 1966 and just over 30 by 1967. This had fallen to 13 by mid-1968 but had risen again to 30 by April 1969. Ealing, including Southall, was admitting 60 immigrant children in a month in 1965 but by 1968 this figure had risen to 250. A survey undertaken in Wolverhampton in 1962 showed that there were approximately 1,000 immigrants in the City's schools. In January 1967 there were 4,500 immigrant children in the schools; this figure had risen by January 1969 to 5,566 or nearly 12% of the total school population.

Within the space of a few years the source of intake of some schools changed radically - and the more noticeably because of colour. In September 1958 one Birmingham secondary school had one coloured boy only on roll but in 1961 Commonwealth immigrant pupils represented 30% of the total school roll. In one ILEA secondary school only 12 pupils out of 1,100 in 1964 were coloured; by 1969 one-fifth of all its pupils were coloured. In another London school in 1969 over 60% of the 1,000 pupils on roll were immigrants representing 26 nationalities and speaking 21 languages between them. Of the immigrant children in school in January 1969, West Indians comprised 42.5% and Indians and Pakistanis together 28.0%. The next largest group were Cypriots who represented 6.1 % of the total. Eventually the number of immigrant children born overseas seeking admission to schools will fall. In 1963, 30,125 work vouchers were issued; by 1969 the total number of vouchers authorised annually had been restricted to 8,500, but in that year

*Department statistics on immigrant pupils relate to:

i. children born outside the British Isles who have come to this country with, or to join, parents or guardians whose countries of origin were abroad; and

ii. children born in the United Kingdom to parents whose countries of origin were abroad and who came to the United Kingdom within the previous 10 years. Children from Northern Ireland or Eire and all children of mixed immigrant and non-immigrant parentage are excluded.

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only 4,978 were issued. Although the figure of dependants is now falling, there is still a back-log and for some years to come sizeable numbers of dependant children will continue to arrive. These, together with children born in this country who are classified as immigrants for purposes of the Department's statistics, will probably keep the total number of immigrant children or children of recent immigrants at or above its present level.

Concentration

The educational situation has been aggravated by the fact that the immigrants have tended to concentrate in certain areas, mostly large conurbations, where jobs and houses are to be found and family or friends already live. It is natural for a minority group to seek protection and comfort in numbers. The main concentrations of immigrant children are found in schools in Greater London and the West Midlands (in January 1967 about three-quarters of immigrant pupils in schools with 10 or more such pupils were concentrated in these two areas). There are also appreciable numbers of immigrant pupils in the South-East, the North-West, the East Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside. It is estimated that about 85% of all Commonwealth immigrants live in these areas.

This explains why immigrant children were to be found in 1969 in only 9,907 of the 28,528 schools in England and Wales and why in certain areas the immigrant school population is far in excess of the national average of 3.2%. Thus the Department's January 1969 Statistics show that in the primary and secondary schools of the Outer London Boroughs of Brent and Haringey 26.9% and 28.9% respectively of the total number of pupils on roll were immigrants. In the Inner London Boroughs of Islington and Hackney the proportions were 24.7% and 26.0% respectively. The proportions for Wolverhampton, Warley, Leicester and Huddersfield were 13.8%, 10.7%, 12.1 % and 10.9% respectively. The concentrations of immigrants tend in many cases to represent particular racial and geographical groups, and they can easily become enclaves within the wider community, both physically and in outlook.

Immigrants live in closely defined areas in many urban communities. There are districts in which only four of five schools have on roll between one-third and a half of all the immigrant children in these towns. Also, many coloured immigrants find themselves in the poorest housing in the most depressed areas and may have little choice but to send their children to what are often already the oldest and most dismal schools and those which are the most likely to face staffing problems. Previous residents often move out of these neighbourhoods and tend to be followed by the more prosperous immigrant families. The concentration of socially deprived indigenous and immigrant

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children which results is a matter of social as well as educational concern. Moreover, numbers of children born in this country to immigrant parents living under these conditions are now entering these schools with linguistic difficulties almost as great as those of young children arriving directly from overseas in that, contrary to expectations, their knowledge of English is either non-existent or extremely rudimentary.

Elements of difficulty

Size and uneven geographical distribution are not, however, the only significant elements in the present wave of immigration. In the past immigrants have usually been of European stock, sharing with the host community a broadly similar culture, common linguistic elements - and, most significantly in many people's minds, though of no educational importance, with skins of similar colour. The immigrants of the 1950's and 1960's, on the other hand, represent a wide variety of ethnic and linguistic groups differing in backgrounds, attitudes and educational needs; the great majority are distinguishable by colour and have to add to the difficulties all immigrants face that of having to contend with the very complex problem of colour prejudice.

It is misleading and damaging to all concerned to talk in generalisations about immigrant children. There is too frequently a tendency to regard 'immigrant child' as synonymous with 'problem'. The immigrant child whether coloured or not, does not necessarily present problems, and this kind of automatic reaction is to be deprecated. Too many, seeing the amount of educational backwardness which exists among immigrant children, wrongly suppose that this derives from some inherent or genetic racial inferiority. The findings of a Working Party of ILEA Inspectors who conducted a survey in 1967 in a number of the Authority's primary schools on 'The Education of Immigrant Pupils in Primary Schools' established that the performance of immigrant children who have had an almost full primary education in this country does not differ significantly from that of primary school pupils as a whole. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons - such as the bewilderment they often experience on changing from one educational environment to another - and the frequently unreliable initial assessment of their potential - a large proportion of immigrant pupils find their way into the lower streams and remedial classes of our schools - and the number who secure a place in selective schools, in areas still served by them, is disturbingly small.

Some argue that where there are immigrant educational difficulties these differ in no way from those encountered in educating native-born children living in socially and culturally deprived areas. It is in such areas that very, many immigrant children live - in the ugly, bare, built-up 'twilight areas' - badly

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housed, lacking social, cultural and recreational amenities, attending schools with frequent staff changes, in poor buildings. They share all the difficulties of environmental deprivation known to native-born children living in these same areas. They frequently appear to suffer the same emotional disturbance, the same inarticulateness and difficulty with language, the same insecure approach to school and school work, the same unsatisfactory attitudes in social relationships - all of which affect their life and general progress in school. Yet the impact of these hardships is not entirely the same as for native-born children. On the positive side, the immigrants have brought with them hope and determination to seek a better life, and their motivation may be on quite a different plane from that of the depressed 'English'. But, on the other hand, many immigrant children have to meet the shock of immersion in an entirely different culture - of exposure to a completely new environment, to a strange climate, to other habits, attitudes and behaviour and to a language which they can only speak and understand imperfectly - if they can understand or speak it at all. They may thus experience a more complex form of deprivation than the native-born child as they stand bewildered between two cultures. Not only, however, may their difficulties be greater - they are also different - need different responses, requiring sensitivity and care based on understanding. Their education must involve social, cultural and emotional adjustments of a special kind.

Adjustment

Knowledge and understanding of immigrant children's previous background and of their family circumstances in this country are essential if these problems are to be properly tackled. The majority of these children born overseas have moved from a peaceful, simple, slow-moving rural environment into the bustle and complexity of life in urban industrial cities. Not only have they to accustom themselves to different food and a more severe climate, but possibly to a different pattern of family relationships. For the older Pakistani boy, for example, this may mean moving for a time into an all-male household. For the West Indian child the change can be more radical. He is accustomed to living together with two or three generations in the same house, dependent not so much on his mother as upon a number of adults among whom his grandmother holds a special place. The environment is one in which marriage is not always considered important in providing a secure basis for raising children, whilst family discipline may be strict and physical punishment for misbehaviour all too familiar. He leaves behind this, often repressive, but affectionate and known home environment to join his mother from whom he may have been separated for several years, almost a stranger among new unknown brothers and sisters, possibly disliking and not fully accepted by the unknown father with whom his mother may be living, and perhaps, if very

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young, sent out to child-minders while his parents go out to work. Little wonder that the sense of insecurity these conditions create often brings in its train emotional disturbance and maladjustment and that in school such a child will often exhibit behaviour problems. He may be restless and boisterous, displaying hostility towards adults and other children, showing little ability to concentrate or to apply himself for long to the job in hand - or else retreat depressed and uncommunicative into a withdrawn world.

Most Indian and Pakistani children experience a similar complete change of physical environment but they continue to belong to close-knit family units with strongly developed religious and cultural ties and through these firm relationships they are able to preserve a sense of identity, of belonging - at least to their own community.

To all these difficulties, which result from leaving familiar surroundings, may be added those which derive from frequent changes of home caused by slum clearance or eviction from over-crowded houses - by broken homes resulting not infrequently in the case of West Indians from the break-up of common law marriages. There is little stability in the home life of numbers of immigrant children. Their homes may be over-crowded and noisy, and privacy may be completely lacking. Much of their free time is occupied by looking after their younger brothers and sisters. Opportunities for the younger children to play are severely restricted and this is not helped in many cases by the tendency of their parents to insist upon their remaining inconspicuous and silent.

This uprooting and sudden transfer - often within the short space of hours - and the insecurity caused by unfamiliar surroundings and strange habits and ways of life can induce cultural shock, the effects of which are to hold up the learning process in the child. The barriers of linguistic non-comprehension - of not understanding what is said and of speaking and not being understood - can aggravate the situation. The child is very much a stranger in a strange land and may encounter hostility from members of the white community. To this initial culture shock experienced by so many immigrant children must be added the strain caused by the deep-rooted social and emotional adjustments they are called upon to make. For the older immigrant children in particular there are not only the adjustments which all adolescents have to face as they move from childhood to early adulthood. Many adolescent immigrants go through a difficult phase of identity search, suffering the stress of having to live within two differing cultures, experiencing the strain of having to bridge the gap which exists between the traditions, beliefs and duties of their family and the quite different ways of thinking and behaving of the life they are experiencing in and out of school. Their families have come from countries in which - in varying degrees - attitudes on family ties and obligations, marriage,

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the position of girls in society, food and dress are completely different from those of the host community. The schools need to inform themselves fully about these differences and to be careful not to set up tensions between the immigrant pupils, who naturally may wish to conform by modifying their habits in such things as food, dress and behaviour, and their parents who may have a distrust for the new way of life and its possible effect on their children.

Immigrant parents in general have a great respect for education and teachers but need to have explained to them at all stages what the schools are trying to do. They find it difficult to understand the organisation of English education particularly above the statutory school-leaving age. They tend to transfer their parental authority to the school, expect the teachers to be authoritarian and to make their children learn, preferably by rote as they themselves were taught. Many tend to regard school as a kind of pre-apprenticeship vocational training establishment, recognising the value of woodwork, metalwork, mathematics, technical drawing and home economics, but failing to appreciate the need for such activities as physical education, social studies and school visits. They find it difficult to understand the methods employed in our schools, and their criticisms often cause their children to waver between accepting and rejecting what the schools have to offer. They grow extremely worried about the informality of our schools, regarding it as a threat against parental control. At the same time they tend to have aspirations for their children often in excess of the children's capabilities. Boys in particular are expected to succeed and can experience a sense of rejection by their parents if they fail to do so. Immigrant parents often equate career opportunities with the length of time spent in school and think that full-time education continued beyond statutory school-leaving age will automatically provide a passport to a good job.

The schools require then, to make clear to immigrant parents what they are trying to do for their pupils - no easy task because of the difficulties of communication. Asian mothers' tendency to live a withdrawn life and not to make outside contacts does not help. They feel little need for English and in many jobs the fathers also find that they can manage on a very rudimentary knowledge of the language. Their slight command of English erects a barrier against effective communication. Moreover, in many cases fathers, or, even both parents, work long hours, often on night shift, and find it difficult to attend school functions. Many are shy at the thought of mixing with white parents with whom they have little or no contact out of school; some are suspicious and fear rebuffs, others are embarrassed by their inadequate command of English. Every effort should be made by schools to arrive at an understanding of the home backgrounds and attitudes of immigrants and to

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establish and maintain contact with the parents of immigrant children in order to gain the parental support and understanding that are essential if their children are to make sound educational progress.

The reception, placing and education of immigrant children clearly involves sizeable administrative difficulties. As already indicated, it is extremely difficult to communicate with parents about their children's health, education and general welfare. The uncertainty of the length of stay of immigrant children in any one school while their parents move from one temporary lodging to another in their search for a permanent home can create additional difficulties. The lack of reliable documentary evidence, such as birth certificates and record cards, at the time when immigrant children are admitted to English schools is unhelpful. For many, previous education has been brief, interrupted or in other ways unsatisfactory. Most of the children come from rural areas where schools tend to be ill-designed and poorly equipped, where a late starting age and lack of places, poor attendance resulting from frequent child ailments and absenteeism at harvest time have not favoured steady educational progress.*

Late arrivals

Especially difficult is the challenge presented by older immigrant children arriving in this country at the age of 13 or 14 years. In 1968, of the 160 immigrant school-leavers in Huddersfield, 53 had been in an English school less than one year and 76 less than two years. Altogether 3,000 immigrant children aged 14 and 15 years arrived in 1968 in this country; another 1,000 arrived over school-leaving age up to 18 years of age. The one or two years of schooling that remain to them are insufficient for them to overcome their language difficulties and to adjust themselves to the new social environment in which they operate. Only very rarely can such late arrivals make up for these handicaps before they leave school, and they have to be very able and capable of great effort to do so. In the main they leave school with insufficient qualifications to enter further education or industrial training courses, find it difficult to secure satisfying employment, and represent a serious potential source of unrest arising from lack of personal fulfilment.

Assessment and placing

Difficulties of placement affects all immigrant children and the late arrivals perhaps most seriously. In view of the differences of standards and in curricular approaches operating in this country and some Commonwealth countries it

*The Department is seeking to arrange with the Ministry of Education in Jamaica for record cards in respect of children coming to England from that island to be made available to receiving schools. If this experiment proves helpful its extension to other areas will be considered.

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is difficult to ensure that individuals are placed in appropriate educational groups. It is important, however, that as their education in this country continues a just and accurate assessment of their potentialities should be provided. At present there is a risk of the ability of immigrant children being seriously under-valued and of some being regarded as educationally subnormal when in fact their backwardness may be due solely to language difficulties. There is a widely felt need for appropriate methods of assessment to give some idea of the immigrant pupil's abilities, aptitudes and achievements. This question is considered in more detail in Chapter 5.

Similar difficulties are caused by the lack of standardised tests to measure the degree of immigrant children's facility in English. Such tests could be used not only to assess the needs of newly admitted immigrant children for specialised teaching in English, but also to show at what point children cease to need special treatment and are sufficiently competent in their use of English language to be able to cope with normal classroom teaching. At present these decisions are largely subjective.

Language

The most urgent single challenge facing the schools concerned is that of teaching English to immigrant children. This must be achieved as quickly as possible because English will be the children's new medium of instruction for all purposes, and, until they reach a fair level of competence in both the spoken and written language and can listen with understanding, they will be unable to participate fully in ordinary lessons and to profit from what school has to offer. A knowledge of English is essential if the immigrant child is to develop self-confidence in his new social relationships, to grow culturally in his new environment, to become part of his new community. Inability to speak the language of the community in which one lives is the first step towards misunderstanding, for prejudice thrives on lack of communication. If there is any validity in Bernstein's view that the restricted code of many culturally deprived children may hinder their ability to develop certain kinds of thinking, it is certainly applicable to non-English speaking immigrant children who may be suffering, not only from a limitation of a restricted code in their own language, but from the complication of trying to learn a second language. Experiencing language difficulties, they may be suffering handicaps which are not conspicuous because they concern the very structure of thought. It may be that part of the culture shock mentioned earlier stems from this blockage in the steady development of concept formation. The bilingual situation can be very bewildering one for immigrant children and can produce within them a sense of psychological and emotional insecurity. It is essential that their command of

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English progressively improves so that it is adequate for the increasing demands made on it and so that their real ability does not continue to be masked by language deficiency while at and after leaving school.

Teaching English as a second language is difficult and demands knowledge and skills normally not held by teachers untrained in this field. Many teachers have accepted the challenge, have applied themselves to the task and have succeeded in doing excellent language work with immigrant children. The country is indebted to them but the problem remains of increasing through inservice training the number of teachers able to do this work. Many difficulties have to be faced. Experience shows that too few immigrant children have been through the normal phase of play and exploration which our own children have had, and teachers cannot rely on their recognising common objects let alone knowing their names. The children's progress too, often reflects the degree to which their particular immigrant community wishes to become integrated with the host community. If this wish is not strong it will be all the more difficult to encourage the children to go beyond the minimum of English necessary to communicate their basic needs. Other factors hinder their progress in the language. Many return after school to a non-English speaking home and community and receive none of the linguistic consolidation of which they are in need; this is most serious during the long holiday periods when the regression in their linguistic attainment can be very marked. Restricted opportunities for play in over-crowded homes and built-up neighbourhoods, and lack of privacy in the home to study and do home-work also tend to militate against progress in English. So, too, does the fact that these children enter school at all ages with very different linguistic skills and conceptual experience. Some are literate in their own language; this may help but they may now have to cope with an entirely new and unfamiliar alphabet and form of writing. Some may have a form of English so divergent from the standard form as to be almost unintelligible - a fact that they resent and find difficult to accept. Some who already have a form of English in which they can make themselves understood may not be strongly motivated to go forward and learn the intricacies of English language structure. A number of the completely non-English speaking often quickly acquire sufficient rudimentary English to satisfy their basic needs in and out of school and then lose motivation.

The children often cope well enough linguistically in the simple classroom situation of the primary school where they become accustomed to the language of one teacher. At the secondary school stage, however, the situation gets progressively beyond their control, as class teaching gives way to specialist teaching, as the need for more sophisticated language develops and

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as the pace of learning increases. This situation and the need for continuous progressive language teaching was summarised in Circular 7/65:

'There is a danger that some children, who quickly acquire fluency in the spoken language do not in fact understand as much as they may appear, and may find difficulty in absorbing new ideas expressed in English; it is therefore important that the progress of all pupils who have had to learn English as a second language should continue to be carefully watched after they have joined an ordinary class and any necessary extra help given to them. This is particularly important with pupils in secondary schools since the vocabulary required is larger and more complex, subjects are covered more rapidly and in a more specialised way and the difficulties of recovering lost ground is correspondingly greater.'

Community relations

The problem of prejudice in the multi-racial society in which we live is one which the report of the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration published in September 1969 points out as needing to be tackled resolutely by schools and colleges. The elimination or at least the diminution of prejudice has generally been an accepted aim of the English educating process and today it has become of vital importance. Teachers and others in education need to recognise that they are no less prone than anyone else to feelings of prejudice or even acts of discrimination and to realise that their attitudes, their interests and their example to a very great extent shape the personalities of those in whose hands lies the fate of coming generations. Where teachers occasionally show biased attitudes towards coloured peoples these probably result largely from a lack of knowledge of the pupils' cultural and social background and from the sense of bewilderment they experience at not knowing how to set about the job of teaching these pupils. There seems to be little evidence of prejudice among young children who mix together happily and unselfconsciously despite their evident awareness of difference of colour. Most primary schools manage to create the kind of social climate in which differences of race and colour are accepted as a matter of course. In general much the same situation obtains in secondary schools but parental prejudices and deep seated fears and antagonisms can begin to influence the attitudes of some of the older white pupils towards coloured pupils and vice versa and also between immigrant pupils of different ethnic background. Hostility between these groups of pupils can develop particularly at the outset of puberty and

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sex-awareness and they may begin to repeat expressions of prejudice they have heard uttered at home or out of school by their elders.

There are positive things schools can do in face of the need to prepare pupils for life in a multi-racial society. This certainly does not call for direct teaching in primary schools and probably not in secondary schools. The inclusion of 'Race Relations' as a separate subject in the timetable would be misconceived and probably self-defeating, except perhaps as a Sixth Form study. Education to counter racial and colour prejudice and promote healthy race relations need not be separated in any way from the normal content of the curriculum. A great deal can be done through the normal teaching of history, geography, literature, science, indeed most subjects, to develop the attitudes of mind essential for sound race relations and to create an atmosphere of reason and tolerance within which relevant topics can be profitably discussed. A number of subjects allow of specific teaching about the immigrants' home countries. It is equally important to ensure that newly arrived pupils are taught about life and customs in this country. Some definite teaching on different cultures, religions and backgrounds needs to be undertaken. Differences in colour need to be freely recognised and discussed, certainly by the more mature pupils. In this way misunderstandings and misconceptions can be cleared up. Older pupils too, can be helped to understand the fallacy of holding stereotyped ideas about their coloured companions and to appreciate how prejudiced attitudes are formed. Much can be done to counteract the formation of stereotypes by encouraging pupils in all subjects to test generalisations, to formulate their own judgements and to assess individuals in terms of what they personally know about them rather than in terms of preconceived ready-made value judgements on the category of people to which they belong. Opportunities need to be sought for inviting immigrant adults to visit the school and talk to pupils about their own culture and ways of life. Some schools have found the appointment of an immigrant teacher of considerable help in developing healthy race relations.

In tackling this question schools need to appreciate that it may not necessarily be in the immigrant pupils' interests to shield them entirely from knowledge of the prejudicial attitudes they may meet after leaving school. They need to be provided with a sense of security within the school without being left unprepared for and unprotected against the realities of the world outside school.

Just as in the school context understanding between immigrant and nonimmigrant is a two-way process, so can further and higher education (including adult education), help immigrants to understand our society and outlook and to equip them to guide us towards a clearer understanding and appreciation of their hopes and aspirations.

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Never in the history of our society has there been greater need for tolerance, refusal to engage in discriminatory and prejudiced action. These attitudes must prevail in a multi-racial society and their seeds have to be sown not least in the schools and colleges. The education service can make its best contribution to the country's future in this situation by helping each individual immigrant to become a citizen who can take his or her place in society, fully and properly equipped to accept responsibilities, exercise rights and perform duties. At the same time we need to respect and permit the expression of differences of attitude, custom, belief, language and culture - not only because for the newcomers their own backgrounds have value and significance - but because they may eventually enrich the main stream of our own cultural and social tradition. This is the way to mutual understanding and to 'equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance' as a former Home Secretary once defined it.

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2 The Department's policy and action

General policy

Neither the scale of future immigration nor the pattern of settlement in particular areas could be foreseen with any assurance until the early 1960's. In the further education field, there had already been heavy concentrations of overseas students at a number of colleges; this was only marginally a result of immigration, but it had brought the challenge of students with inadequate English to the notice of all concerned, and steps had already been taken to provide special courses to meet their difficulties. Similar concentrations of overseas pupils - in this case immigrants, here for permanent settlement - were not yet noticeable in more than a handful of schools, and the now familiar problems of culture shock, inadequate English and the needs of late arrivals were not yet apparent on a national scale. Special measures to meet these difficulties had not therefore been taken except in a few localities by the authorities concerned, with the help of HM Inspectors who were noting the situation and bringing it by degrees to the attention of colleagues in the Department. The main tools of future policy were at this stage beginning to be forged as a product of the classroom situations and the problems they generated.

There was no formal publication of advice until 1963. Meanwhile advice was given by HM Inspectors to local education authorities and schools which were faced with difficulties, and the growing experience of these authorities was brought by Inspectors to the attention of others which seemed likely to be faced with similar problems. The main areas in which advice was given were in:

i. assessing the individual difficulties of immigrant children;

ii. developing language teaching techniques and the use of special materials, whether in schools or language centres;

iii. identifying the special problems of particular racial and cultural groups;

iv. familiarising teachers with the problems and developing initial and in-service training opportunities for them;

v. helping local education authorities to make the best use of the opportunity of employing teachers from overseas countries;

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vi. keeping the Department as fully informed as possible of the changing situation by enquiry and by obtaining local statistics;

vii. developing good relations with immigrant parents and advising on means of informing them about the schools' approaches and methods of educational opportunities in general;

viii. advising on steps necessary to reassure parents of non-immigrant children already in the schools that their education would not be impaired by the presence of immigrant children.

i. to help create a climate in schools in which colour and race were not divisive and which would give all immigrant children opportunities for personal development in their new environment;

ii. to ensure that building programmes and teacher quotas reflected the needs of areas with large numbers of immigrant pupils;

iii. to offer advice and practical help to teachers faced with the challenge of teaching immigrant children;

iv. to safeguard against any lowering of standards, due to the presence of large numbers of non-English speaking children, which might adversely affect the progress of other children;

v. to encourage and promote relevant research.

HM Inspectorate

Early in the decade, a group of HM Inspectors had begun, collectively but informally, to give increasing attention to the educational problems, linguistic and general, implicit in the successful integration of immigrant children. Their co-operation began to be sought by a number of local education authorities in the running of conferences and short courses for teachers on the teaching of immigrant children; first at Bedford, then at Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, London and elsewhere; this form of co-operation continues to be sought and

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given. In the early 1960's, too, Inspectors in a number of areas were engaged in bringing to the attention of local education authorities the fact, not always fully appreciated, that the growth in the number of immigrant children in their schools was likely to give rise to educational problems.

The experience of the difficulties and techniques of teaching immigrants gained by HM Inspectors enabled them to produce in 1963, Ministry of Education Pamphlet No. 43 entitled English for Immigrants. This was a statement of the need for 'a carefully planned intensive course making full use of modern methods of language teaching' to teach English to both primary and secondary school pupils whose command of the language was inadequate. It gave advice on both social and educational problems experienced by schools with a sizeable number of immigrant pupils on roll, considered the teaching of English to adult immigrants and advocated the organisation of reception classes. The advice given in this pamphlet is still mostly valid, although it can no longer be considered as complete in the light of further experience.

Shortly after the issue of this pamphlet it was decided to set up a special sub-panel of HM Inspectors with experience of working in areas with large immigrant populations, to collect and co-ordinate information from colleagues and other sources, to organise the relevant part of the Department's in-service training programme according to the needs revealed, and to advise the Department generally. This group of Inspectors continues to meet regularly, and they frequently invite guest speakers to outline problems within their experience and to take part in discussion.

Dispersal

This section surveys an aspect of the education of immigrants commonly known as dispersal, on which advice was given in Circular 7/65; it reaches conclusions which suggest the need for a careful review of their policies by local education authorities.

A potentially serious situation arising from the presence of immigrant children in schools first arose in Southall in 1963, when protesting white parents claimed that there were too many children of the area's large Indian population in certain primary schools and that this was having an adverse effect on their own children's education. At a meeting of these parents, Sir Edward Boyle, the then Minister of Education, refused to accept any suggestion that the immigrant children should be educated separately or that children attending the schools in question should be transferred. It was subsequently agreed that in the case of future admission of immigrant children to these schools, arrangements would be made to try to maintain a limit of about 30% of immigrants in any one school.

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In June 1965 the Department issued Circular 7/65 on the Education of Immigrants, the purpose of which was 'to consider the nature of the educational problems that arise and give such advice and assistance as is possible'. The Circular was addressed primarily to local education authorities, and indicated in general terms the difficulties likely to arise in schools admitting a large number of immigrant pupils, and the educational and administrative measures which might be taken to ease the situation. It underlined the social and the possible medical needs of immigrant children and stressed the importance of early and continuing special attention to their English language needs. It also emphasised the value of background teaching of other children about Commonwealth countries. It confirmed the Secretary of State's willingness to consider requests by local education authorities for increases in their teaching staff in order to help schools serving districts with substantial immigrant populations, and recommended the employment of welfare assistants and additional clerical assistance in such schools. It called upon establishments of further education to help immigrant adults, and particularly the mothers, to acquire some knowledge of English language and background, invited the co-operation of employers and urged the Youth Service to do everything possible to involve young immigrants in youth club activities. It drew attention to publications likely to be helpful, and also to existing training courses for teachers. Local education authorities, colleges and institutes of education were urged to extend their provision for courses, conferences and research on the education of immigrants. An Appendix listed sources of information about Commonwealth countries.

The section of the Circular which received disproportionately the most attention however was that headed 'Spreading the Children'. This, in confirmation of the measures adopted in Southall, argued the desirability of ensuring that no school should have more than about one-third of immigrant pupils, and suggested that this should be achieved wherever possible by the rearrangement of schools' catchment areas or by the dispersal of immigrant pupils over a number of schools. The passage read as follows:

'Experience suggests however that apart from unusual difficulties (such as a high proportion of non-English speakers), up to a fifth of immigrant children in any group fit in with reasonable ease, but that, if the proportion goes over about one-third either in the school as a whole or in any one class, serious strains arise. It is therefore desirable that the catchment areas of schools should wherever possible be arranged to avoid undue concentrations of immigrant children. When this proves impracticable simply because the school serves an area which is occupied largely by immigrants, every effort should be made to disperse the immigrant children round the greater number of schools and to meet such problems

[page 18]

of transport as may arise. It is important for the success of such measures that the reasons should be carefully explained beforehand to the parents of both the immigrant and the other children, and their co-operation obtained. It will be helpful if the parents of non-immigrant children can see that practical measures have been taken to deal with the problem in the schools, and that the progress of their own children is not being restricted by the undue preoccupation of the teaching staff with the linguistic and other difficulties of immigrant children.

Occasions may arise when dispersal measures of this nature are not practicable, or seem in a particular case to involve disadvantages which outweigh the benefits. They should, nevertheless, be given serious consideration since it is to everyone's disadvantage if the problems within the school are allowed to become so great that they cause a decline in the general standard of education provided.'

The period since 1965 has seen a number of developments which have a bearing on dispersal. First, there has been an increase in the number of immigrant pupils in the schools (see Chapter 1) from 131,043 in January 1966 to 263,710 in January 1970, with particularly rapid growth in certain towns or parts of towns. Where a local education authority has well over 20% of immigrant pupils on the total school roll, and where a number of its schools have much higher percentages, it would be impracticable to think in terms of dispersing children so that there were not more than one-third immigrant pupils in any school.

There has also been a change in the nature of the educational needs of many immigrant pupils, which were originally seen in terms of special assistance to overcome linguistic inadequacies and to promote social integration. Returns from schools indicate that progress is being made with the language problem;

[page 19]

in January 1970 about 16% of immigrant pupils were regarded by their teachers as having serious inadequacies of English, compared with about 25% in 1967. This progress should accelerate as the number of new immigrants declines, and children are from immigrant families who have lived here for a longer period.

The Race Relations Act 1968 established on a statutory basis the Community Relations Commission. The Commission now provides a framework, nationally and locally, within which it is possible for communities to work together for common ends. This does not lessen the importance of schools and other educational establishments as an environment in which good race relations can develop; but it means that schools are no longer seen, as they were by many in 1965, as the only channel through which ideas of integration could evolve.

There have also been significant developments in educational provision which affect any consideration of dispersal. A further passage in Circular 7/65 said 'It is important that as soon as there are indications that immigrants are coming into the area, even though the number of school children among them may not at first be very great, the authorities should decide their policy and make plans for dealing with the rapid and substantial influx of children which may follow. Only if this is done at an early stage, before the problems become acute, will there be a reasonable chance of avoiding by one means or another undue pressure on particular schools'.

Pressure on schools has been relieved, and with considerable success, by special arrangements for the reception of immigrant children and for teaching them English up to certain standards before they are admitted to the schools they will attend full-time. Such arrangements, which are more fully described in the following chapter, include the establishment of reception and language centres (whose numbers have increased considerably in the past 5 years), and withdrawal classes. The arrangements include, or are supplemented by the appointment of specialist advisers, additional teachers and aides, the provision of additional equipment and materials, and the development of inservice training for teachers. Thus it has been possible for authorities to alleviate for their schools a situation in which large numbers of immigrant children might otherwise create a serious teaching problem. In some areas, these kinds of provisions are made alongside dispersal, in others where there is no dispersal.

It is difficult to measure the contribution of dispersal or non-dispersal to the success or otherwise of an authority's policy for the education of immigrant children. Much, as has been suggested, depends on other measures taken by

[page 20]

the authority. Authorities whose policies are considered successful in a variety of ways include some which practise substantial dispersal, others which disperse marginally and some which have rejected any such policy.

The only ground for dispersal suggested by Circular 7/65 was educational need. To approach this matter on racial grounds would not only be contrary to educational tradition but would under the Race Relations Act 1968 be against the law. This does not mean that educational grounds for dispersal need necessarily be restricted to the limited though vital question of command of the English language. The lack of acquaintance with the cultural background, of familiarity with everyday concepts and usages may also be strong handicaps to educational progress, and might justify an authority in offering immigrant children places in schools where they may have more contact with indigenous children. An authority may take the view (although, as indicated below, it is a view which can be evaluated only over a long period) that there is a strong case for giving young immigrants, and the children of recent immigrants, the opportunity of learning as much as they can of their new environment from non-immigrant contemporaries. This should not (and in present experience does not) mean isolating them from other children with a background similar to their own, thus causing them to lose touch with a cultural heritage valued by their families. It appears that in practice many immigrants prefer their children not to attend schools which are predominantly immigrant in character. The care taken by 'dispersing' authorities to gain the co-operation of the immigrant communities may help to explain why there have been very few appeals to the Secretary of State against school placings resulting from dispersal.

Probably the most important educational criticism of dispersal has been that, particularly in the case of very young children, the advantage of being taught in a school where more attention can be given to language and other needs is outweighed by the disadvantage of lengthy journeys, coupled with the difficulty of close parental contacts with the school. There is a great deal of substance in this, and the 'bussing' of infant and young junior children should not be undertaken unless there is a compelling need to do so.

A further criticism, not primarily educational, has been levelled in the context of the Race Relations Act 1968 on the ground that Circular 7/65 referred only to the dispersal of immigrants, and did not suggest that indigenous pupils should be moved. In practice, the adjustment of catchment areas of schools as part of or as an alternative to dispersal has meant the admission of indigenous as well as immigrant children to schools other than those they would normally have attended. Yet it is true that, as so far applied by different local education

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authorities, dispersal schemes involving movement by coach do not appear to have involved indigenous children. This is not necessarily wrong. In principle all children should have the opportunity of attending the school of their parent's choice. But if the needs of immigrant children in particular local circumstances, and with their parents' approval, justify their attendance at schools outside their immediate neighbourhood, it does not follow that indigenous children need also be dispersed as a kind of 'quid pro quo' to demonstrate racial equality. This would be to create an artificial situation.

Some of the more serious practical problems arising from dispersal may result from the demands on resources which it creates. For example, if there is a heavy immigrant concentration in the centre of a town, the method of giving immigrant children the best opportunities under a dispersal scheme is frequently to allocate a proportion of them to schools nearer the periphery. If. as is sometimes the case, there is no longer a substantial white population left in the centre of the town, this may leave empty places in the central schools. Conversely, the schools on the periphery may need extra accommodation to meet the influx of immigrant pupils from the centre. Dispersal can be expensive, not only in terms of transport but also as an element in a local authority school building programme.

The vital long-term question, to which there may be no answer in this generation, is whether dispersal or non-dispersal, in an area of substantial immigrant settlement, will have the better influence upon future community relations. Policies which deliberately reject dispersal may meet all the educational needs of the individual child but nevertheless mean that he grows up very largely in an environment of fellow immigrant pupils. Dispersal sets out consciously to avoid this situation, but has serious disadvantages, some of which have been touched upon in this section. Looking to the future, as the number of new immigrants declines, and as the children of immigrants by degrees have less linguistic and cultural difficulties, the educational arguments for allocating groups of children to schools outside their neighbourhood will tend to diminish and disappear.

The comments in these paragraphs modify significantly the Department's views on dispersal in Circular 7/65. It remains for each local education authority to decide what its policy for the education of immigrant children should be, and it is hoped that authorities will keep their arrangements (including any dispersal arrangements) under review in the light of local developments and the changing educational needs of pupils. An essential consideration is that no policy affecting groups or categories of children should be allowed to override the reasonable wishes of individual parents in the matter of choice of school.

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Curriculum development

The main agency in this field has been the Schools Council for the Curriculum and Examinations, on the main committees of which the Department (in common with all the partners in the education service) is represented and in many of the projects of which HM Inspectorate participates. It was evident very soon after the establishment of the Council in 1964 that help to teachers and others in understanding the difficulties of immigrant children and in producing educational materials to overcome them was urgently necessary, and in 1966, following an investigation and report by Miss June Derrick, the Council approved a proposal submitted by the Institute of Education of the University of Leeds for a three-year development project on the teaching of English to children of non-English speaking immigrants based on the Institute and starting in September 1966 with Miss Derrick as organiser.

The two main aims of the project were to prepare teaching materials for use in the classroom by teachers and pupils and to provide in-service training to explain the purpose of the new materials to teachers and to give them the opportunity to criticise them in their trial stages and to contribute to their future development. The project set about producing an introductory two-term course for children of Asian and South European parentage aged from 8-13 years with little or no knowledge of English. HM Inspectors in the field were closely associated with the procedures for trying out the materials in selected schools and with the periodical meetings of teachers organised by the project. The Department had two representatives on the Consultative Committee set up to advise the project team.

An introductory course, entitled Scope, Stage I was published in January 1969. It consists of teachers' book, readers, picture book and pupils' work-books together with a kit containing posters, flash-cards, cut-outs, magnets and a magnet board for classroom use. In summer 1969 Stage II continuation materials for children who have completed Stage I, or whose knowledge of English needs extending and who are likely to be taught in a normal class rather than in a special or withdrawal class, were tested in selected schools. The project team also set about producing materials for a senior course to help teachers teach English quickly to 14-16 year old immigrant pupils who may have only one year at school after arrival in this country. It is hoped that this course will be ready by early 1972. Thought is also being given by the immigrant project to the production of guidance materials for use with young children aged 4-7 years.

The Schools Council initiated a second project at Birmingham University in 1967 concerned with the linguistic problems of West Indian children. This project has completed an initial phase of evaluation and analysis of teaching

[page 23]

and learning problems associated with such children and is engaged in experimenting with techniques and materials - based on findings of the initial phase. The project aims at producing by 1972 a programme designed to teach 7-9 year old West Indian children school English grammatical features at variance with West Indian Creole and which are not mastered and used easily by these children in their written work.

Both the Leeds and the Birmingham projects have a significant contribution to make towards the provision of resources for the teaching of English to immigrant children.

Teacher supply

The Department has recognised that in schools with large numbers of immigrant pupils on roll there is need for small classes and thus for additional teachers, and it has done what it can to ensure that such schools get more teachers. Under an arrangement introduced in 1956, the Department has determined an annual quota of teachers for each local authority. In Circular 1/65, local education authorities with schools having a substantial number of immigrants on roll were invited to apply for increases in their teacher quota. In the school year 1969/70 53 authorities applied for such increases, and 3,074 teachers additional to quota were allowed to these authorities for the year.

This provision dovetails very usefully with that offered under Section 11 of the Local Government Act of 1966 whereby local education authorities with 2% or more of Commonwealth immigrant pupils in the total school population are entitled to grant from the Home office (at a rate of 75% since April 1969 and previously at 50%) towards expenditure incurred on the employment of extra staff especially to meet the needs of immigrants. In the financial year 1968/69 eligible expenditure of about £4.15m was incurred by 72 local authorities. Revised estimates of expenditure for 1969/70 total £5.09m and preliminary estimates of expenditure for 1970/71 total £5.75m. Educational expenditure on salaries and allowances of certain teachers, ancillary staff, specially appointed clerical staff, interviewers and interpreters, liaison and welfare officers account for about 70% of these totals.

Information and statistics

In 1965 a Committee was set up in the Department to review developments generally in relation to the education of immigrants and to consider what further action by the Department might be called for. It met regularly, reporting to the appropriate Minister. For some years individual HM Inspectors had submitted occasional reports on the general situation in areas principally

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affected by the influx of immigrants. It was decided in December 1965 to call for regular detailed reports from District Inspectors in 42 specified local education authorities with large immigrant populations. District Inspectors in other areas were invited to contribute as and when they had anything significant to report. By summer 1967 reports were being received from 54 districts containing about 95% of the estimated immigrant population in schools. Since January 1969 an increased number of District Inspectors have submitted detailed answers regularly through a comprehensive questionnaire covering all aspects of the education of immigrants. These returns have ensured the regular flow into the Department of up-to-date information about developments and difficulties in areas with a substantial immigrant population.

Statistics

Although the main outlines of policy had developed by 1965, it had not been considered essential to collect statistics about immigrant pupils. The authorities mainly concerned had collected their own, and this was sufficient for local needs. But when policies such as those for increasing teacher quotas developed, it became apparent that it would be helpful to have statistics available from all areas on a common basis. Such data would enable the Department to identify areas and schools where the facts suggested that there was substantial problems, and to be informed of the measures being taken in relation to the numbers of children concerned. An accurate knowledge of the facts could not help but focus the attention of all concerned both nationally and locally. The Department initiated in January 1966 a new return (on Form 7 i. (Schools)) as a supplement to the customary annual return by local education authorities of all pupils in schools. Initially statistical information about immigrants attending maintained primary and secondary schools was collected from only those schools with 10 or more immigrant pupils on roll. In January 1969, it was decided to collect data from all primary and secondary schools with immigrant pupils on roll. Since January 1970, statistics have also been collected about immigrant pupils in special schools.

There were minor criticisms of this development, on the anticipated ground that to collect statistics about immigrants (and especially children born in the United Kingdom who are not themselves immigrants) would be an act of discrimination even if the object was to help the immigrants. In the event, such comment as has been received on the collection of statistical information about immigrant pupils has come from those who would like more rather than less information to be supplied (for example, the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration). There have, however, been criticisms of the inconsistency and inadequacy of the statistics collected by the Department. These bear mostly on the Department's definition of an immigrant pupil, and

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the 'ten-year rule'. The effect of this 'rule' is that a child born in this country, whatever his educational difficulties, ceases to be recorded as an immigrant after his parents have been in this country for 10 years. The reason for including children born in this country is that children whose parents are recent immigrants spend their formative years in an environment created by their parents; consequently many of them come to school at 5 years of age unable to speak English, sharing many of the educational difficulties of children who have come direct from overseas and needing many of the special educational measures appropriate for such children. It was decided to distinguish between children whose parents had been in this country less than 10 years and those whose parents had been here longer. The ten-year rule was based on the assumption that when immigrant parents have been in this country for 10 years there will have been a degree of integration which should mitigate both the children's language problems and their problems of adjustment to a new society. Experience has shown that this is not always a valid assumption. It is doubtful whether all immigrant families make these adjustments in 10 years. There is also a clear inconsistency between the position of a child born overseas (coming perhaps to this country as a baby) who is recorded as an immigrant throughout his school life - and one born just after his parents' arrival here, who ceases to be regarded as an immigrant by the age of 10. The ten-year rule and the resultant cut-off, moreover, distort the statistical tables in that there is inevitably a bulge in the lower age groups which makes it appear that there are fewer coloured children in schools at the higher age-range than at the lower age-range - and suggests that there will be a continually increasing number of immigrants on school rolls when this will not necessarily always be true. Furthermore, the extent of cut-off before the age of ten is unknown and this prevents any consistency between statistical tables from one year to another. The Department is aware of the defects of the ten-year rule and is considering what alternative would be preferable. Meanwhile, although imperfect the educational returns are the fullest source of immigrant statistics at present available. The House of Commons Select Committee referred to immigrant statistics in its first report (see Appendix B) and made certain recommendations, which have been subsequently accepted by the Government and are being discussed with local authorities.

Ministerial visits

Considerable personal attention has been paid by education Ministers to educational development in immigrant areas, and this has included visits to schools with heavy immigrant rolls wherever possible, coupled with meetings and public speeches. During the years 1966-68 a series of five conferences on the education of immigrants with representatives of local education authorities were organised by the Department.

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Teacher training

In all these visits and discussions emphasis was laid upon the need to equip teachers in training and practising teachers with the background knowledge and skills they require to teach immigrant children. In 1967 the Department sponsored jointly with the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants and the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education two high-level conferences, one at Edge Hill College of Education and the other at Leicester, to consider in what ways initial training could help equip teachers to undertake the education of immigrant children. A third conference held at Edge Hill College of Education in January 1969 indicated that teacher training establishments had progressed very considerably in preparing teachers for educating immigrants and for functioning themselves in a multi-racial society. This was confirmed by an enquiry carried out by the Department from September 1968 to March 1969 on what Colleges and Departments of Education were doing in this field. The results of this enquiry and the extent of the Department's contribution, both direct and indirect, to the organisation of initial and in-service training of teachers (including immigrant teachers) in the education of immigrant children are described in Chapter 6.

Other resources

In the allocation by the Department of capital resources for major and minor building projects special consideration has consistently been given to areas with a high proportion of immigrant pupils. In November 1966 the Plowden Report, Children and Their Primary Schools, recommended that special attention should be paid to the needs of educational priority areas. Among the criteria suggested for determining such areas was the presence of children unable to speak English. In July 1967 it was announced that an additional £16m would be made available in the years 1968 to 1970, for school buildings in England and Wales for educational priority areas. Both major and minor projects were programmed to replace old schools, improve existing buildings and increase staff amenities in order to give the children a better educational environment. The programme included 156 projects proposed by 51 local education authorities in England and 6 in Wales; the majority were for primary schools. Although they were not specifically aimed at immigrant areas, many immigrant children living in areas of social deprivation will benefit from them.

In addition to the resources made available specifically for projects in educational priority areas, it was announced in November 1969 that a further £15m would be made available in 1971/72 for the beginning of a continuous and systematic programme of improvements and replacements of old schools in urban areas of acute social need. 89 local education authorities in England and 9 in Wales will benefit from the first phase of this programme and 182

[page 27]

building projects have been authorised to start in 1971/72. Of these, 170 are primary school projects with a heavy concentration in the educational priority areas of Greater London, Birmingham and Manchester, and on Merseyside and Tyneside.

In 1968 the Burnham Committee agreed to a special salary addition (of £75 a year) for teachers serving in schools recognised as being of exceptional difficulty. The criteria for assessing such schools were related in the main to the home circumstances of the children but included the presence in the school of children with serious linguistic difficulties; such children were, of course, often likely to be from immigrant families. The Burnham Committee set a ceiling on the total cost of this arrangement, and this limited the number of schools which could be recognised for this purpose. The scheme will be reconsidered in future Burnham negotiations.

Urban programme

In July 1968 the Home Secretary announced the then Government's intention to institute a programme of special aid for urban areas of special social needs. In the first period of this programme (four years from 1968 to 1972), some £20-25m would be spent, and could attract specific grant at a 75% rate. Bids for the first phase of the programme, covering the remaining months of the financial year 1968/69 and 1969/70 and for an expenditure of £3-3½m, were invited in October 1968 from 34 local authorities selected on the basis of two criteria:

i. they had more than 2% of households with more than 1½ persons per room (on 1966 sample census data).

ii. they had more than 6% of immigrants on the school roll.

In February 1969 applications were invited for further expenditure in the period ending March 1970. For this second phase of the urban programme, eligibility for grant was extended to all counties and county boroughs in England and Wales. Authorities were advised that a wide range of educational and other projects would be considered for approval. Educational projects costing about £2m were approved; they included 18 new nursery schools and

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225 new nursery classes, adding 5,376 full-time nursery places to the 5250 programmed under the first phase. Other capital projects approved included seven new teachers' centres, three reception centres and six language centres for immigrant pupils. The second phase also provided aid for pre-school play groups and holiday play-centres.

The third phase of the programme was announced in June 1970. This is to provide for £4m expenditure on building work up to March 1973 and for £0.4m on new revenue expenditure in 1970/71. It was expected that proposals for new revenue expenditure at broadly the same level would later be invited for the financial years 1971/72 and 1972/73. It was announced at the same time that the programme would be extended from April 1972 to March 1976, and that a further £35-40m worth of local authority expenditure would be authorised in this period.

Youth Service

In December 1965 a Committee of the Youth Service Development Council was appointed to identify the needs and problems of young immigrants in England and Wales and to see what the Youth Service could do to help. This Committee produced a report in 1967 entitled: Immigrants and the Youth Service, often referred to as the Hunt Report with a foreword by the Secretary of State. It was further endorsed by the issue of Circular 8/67 in July 1967 which agreed that there was need for new and more positive thinking about the position of young immigrants, accepted the obligation to provide and exchange information, and undertook to allocate funds for relevant research. It called upon local education authorities and voluntary youth organisations to make an appraisal of youth provision and to make a statement on developments and action taken in their areas designed to further the integration of youth immigrants. The response to the Circular was encouraging. Local education authorities welcomed the Report, while not necessarily agreeing with all its findings and recommendations, and reported that a good deal of useful action was already being taken or planned as a result of their assessment of the situation following a study of the Report.

Research

The Department recognises the need for research in the problems of English language teaching and teacher training as they are affected by the presence of immigrant children and the children of immigrants In schools. In 1966 it helped to finance the setting up of the Centre for Information on Language Teaching to collect, co-ordinate and make available information about all aspects of modern languages and their teaching, and to maintain a record of authoritative information about relevant research.

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The Department, aware of the widely felt need for reliable and fair methods of assessment for immigrant pupils, undertook in the autumn term of 1969, with the co-operation of a number of local education authorities, a preliminary survey of relevant current practices in ten representative areas with considerable experience of immigrant pupils. The survey*, published separately, discusses current practices and local needs in some detail, and indicates some possible lines for future development.

The Department has more recently approved a proposal for research into education of immigrants submitted by the National Foundation for Educational Research. The project will investigate the varying degrees to which different types of organisation effectively meet the needs of multi-racial schools, and will also study variations in pupil attitudes and teacher opinions, and their effect upon learning and teaching. This is in line with the recommendations for future research made by the Select Committee.

The Department has grant-aided either directly or indirectly a number of other research projects which include consideration of the problems of teaching race relations in schools. A number of the projects of the Schools Council for the Curriculum and Examinations are significant in this context: the Humanities Curriculum Project (which includes Race among the topics it has selected for close study), the Religious Education Projects, the Moral Education Curriculum Project and the General Studies Project. All these aim at devising materials and teaching methods which will help pupils to form individual value judgements based on the close study of evidence.

The Department has made several grants to Youth Service projects aimed at assisting the integration of young immigrants in Manchester. The three-year project of action research into the needs of deprived children in a selection of educational priority areas, sponsored jointly by the Department and the Social Science Research Council, also includes areas in which there are substantial numbers of immigrant children. Representatives from the Department have had the opportunity of discussions with the Home Secretary's Advisory Committee on Race Relations Research.

Other activities

One final way in which the Department keeps itself informed about, and helps to encourage and initiate activities in, the education of immigrants is by being represented on the committees of numerous organisations working in this field. Among such organisations are the Commonwealth Institute, the Royal

*Potential & Progress in a Second Culture. Education Survey No.10. HMSO.

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Commonwealth Society, the Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, the Schools Council and its relevant projects, the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and the Community Relations Commission, a statutory body appointed by the Home Secretary under the Race Relations Act 1968.

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3 The response of schools and local education authorities

Faced with an influx of immigrant children a local education authority needs to consider plans to anticipate the difficulties and provide for any eventuality. Adequate preparation in the early stages will bring benefits to immigrant and English pupils alike. For example, in Bradford there is an established team of knowledgeable officers with special responsibility to provide, organise and plan the education of immigrant children. The team consists of an assistant education officer responsible, among other duties, to the Director of Education and the Education Committee for the education of immigrant children; a local inspector responsible for day-to-day administration, for in-service training, courses, etc.; an adviser for immigrant education responsible for staffing, equipment, books and methodology; and three immigrant welfare officers (two men and one woman) who maintain close contact with all schools and with immigrant families and who conduct interviews, clear up difficulties, deal with all problems arising in school or home and maintain close liaison with immigrant groups, associations and committees. There are many local authorities who have adopted similar administrative organisations with minor variations according to size and circumstances.

The two policy decisions to be taken initially by an authority relate to i. arrangements to be made for the reception of immigrant children and their subsequent allocation to schools, and, ii. special provision to be made for their education.

To ensure as full a documentation and as detailed a knowledge of each immigrant child as possible, several authorities have now established special registration procedures in which every effort is made to obtain as much information as possible before a child starts school and to avoid the haphazard turning up at the nearest school on any day of the term.

One method is to set up a central advisory point for immigrant parents. If a child is first presented at a school the head teacher explains to the parents that they should go first to this point to discuss and be advised about the child's education. Some authorities provide a leaflet. written in the immigrants' own language, explaining fully what educational provision is available. The parents and the child are then interviewed, often by an immigrant welfare officer who

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may speak their own language or have ready access to an interpreter. The welfare officer obtains the necessary information, documents the child as fully as possible, answers questions and explains the next steps. Frequently a medical examination is arranged at the school clinic. This is because immigrant children have rarely been vaccinated, inoculated and immunised and may be readily susceptible to infections. The dangers to which immigrant children are exposed are aggravated when they have to live in a climate very different from their own, in crowded conditions in houses and cities and, in the early months, possibly with inappropriate food and clothing. Defects of sight or hearing and physical abnormalities can be discovered and arrangements made for treatment if necessary before the child enters school. The children born in England are not usually given a medical examination at this stage.

Some local authorities also take this opportunity of assessing the standard of English spoken by immigrant children. They are asked simple questions by an experienced officer about objects, toys or pictures, or engaged in conversation on any subject which is likely to produce a response. The educational background is explored. If they say they can read or write English, they are asked to read from graded primers which are used to teach English as a second language or to write about themselves or their family. The interviewer ideally is a person with some knowledge of the immigrants' home background and able to establish good and easy relations by his or her sympathetic personality. Some local authorities assess the English of all immigrant children arriving; some only those of secondary age.

A variation of this method of registration and documentation has been developed by some authorities. All newly arrived immigrant children are admitted directly into a 'reception centre'. Here they remain for two to six weeks while they are documented, medically examined and assessed very much along the lines already described. They are also, however, given simple lessons in oral English to enable them to deal with everyday situations, lessons on hygiene and road safety, and a general introduction to English customs and ways of life. Groups are formed and placed in charge of an experienced teacher who takes every opportunity of teaching English linked with firsthand experiences arising from visits, shopping, expeditions into the parks or the city streets. When documentation and medical inspections are completed the group, still in the special care of the same teacher, are transferred to their first school. In this way the 'centre' acts as a buffer, and reduces the element of shock for the immigrant child, and when he moves into a school for the first time, he is accompanied by a teacher he has come to know and trust. While in the 'centre' he also meets adult immigrants who are on the staff and, in moments of crisis, his troubles can be dealt with in his own native language. In this way an attempt is made to ensure continuity of care and instruction.

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Other benefits arise from central registration and reception. It is, for example, possible to supply the head of the school to which the immigrant child eventually goes with information gathered about the child before he arrives in school. This enables him to make careful arrangements, to prepare staff, rooms and equipment in good time. It also enables an authority to have a complete check on the number of immigrant children arriving, and helps it to make financial estimates, forecast accommodation requirements and order furniture and equipment. It avoids the problem of schools having a trickle of new arrivals with linguistic difficulties appearing unannounced and unprepared for, thus causing difficulties in the organisation of teaching groups.

Dispersal

The arguments for and against dispersal have already been considered in the previous chapter and it is for authorities to make their own decision in this matter. But whether or not a dispersal policy is adopted, it is necessary to consider what special arrangements and allocations of resources may be needed in the schools which immigrant pupils attend.

Teaching arrangements

There is a range of options. Some authorities place all immigrant pupils without differentiation in classes appropriate to their age. Others place immigrants of primary school age normally and make special provision for those of secondary age. The normally placed children then follow the accepted school time-table, joining in all activities and lessons with the English children. In such conditions, in the flexible and active programmes of junior and especially infant schools, with the varied range of materials and activities. children for whom English is a second language acquire some spoken English and start to read and write. However, many teachers now maintain that, if this is all that is done, the children may learn only an unstructured form of English, a collection of vocabulary items - a language inadequacy which is a severe handicap in the later stages of education. Some teachers consider that it is an advantage to have pupils of different countries and languages within the same class. They believe that it helps to establish a multi-racial school and, as English is the only common means of communication, that it assists the teaching of English as a second language. But the belief that young immigrant children will pick up their language from their English friends and class-mates is not now generally accepted by teachers experienced in this work. Some more positive and systematic approach is thought to be necessary; some planned extra help.

Local authorities have provided extra help in a variety of ways. Some arrange for welfare assistants or some form of ancillary help to be allocated to all

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schools with a high percentage of immigrant children, give as generous a staffing ratio as possible and have part-time teachers coming in to the school for varying periods. This can enable class teachers to find regular periods when they can give extra planned help both to immigrant and English pupils. But this may still be insufficient if there is a high proportion of immigrants of many different nationalities within one class, or different groups with widely varying levels of attainment of English.

Withdrawal groups

A further development, therefore, is to provide extra help for children who need it by means of withdrawal groups - sometimes only occasional, sometimes for a regular period a day, or for as much as a half-day every day. This wide variation of time is largely determined by availability of staff and of accommodation, and of course by the work of the children. The withdrawal group may be taken by the class teacher while the rest of the class is taken by the head or the part-time teacher. This enables the class teacher to base her teaching on the experiences she knows the children have had in class, to use the vocabulary and structures she knows they have met in real situations and to follow up and consolidate the work done when they are all back in the classroom. It is much more difficult for a part-time teacher to do this, and satisfactory liaison between the visiting teacher and the class teacher is often sadly missing. Unless the teacher has had some training or experience in teaching English as a second language, the withdrawal class may result in an undue emphasis being placed on reading and writing.

The withdrawal group may in some schools be taken by a specially appointed teacher, preferably one with some training in teaching English as a second language, who takes different groups of immigrant children regularly from different classes, very much on the same basis as some remedial teaching is organised. Close consultation and detailed exchange of information between the class teacher and the special teacher are very important.

Withdrawal groups may also be taken by peripatetic teachers who visit two, three or more schools each day and take small groups of three to five pupils once, twice or more times a week. One Midland authority provides one of the most developed examples of the use of peripatetic teachers. A team of over sixty teachers is under the guidance of a very experienced leader whose responsibility it is to organise the service and to train the teachers in the teaching of English as a second language. One half-day a week is set aside for a training seminar when teachers discuss methods of presentation, exchange experiences, share problems or make apparatus. The rest of the week they are visiting schools allocated to them. There are possible dis-

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advantages in the use of peripatetic teachers - time spent in travel; lack of close contact with individual schools, class teachers and pupils. The pupils are not always seen frequently enough to ensure steady progress; special equipment and apparatus may have to be carried from school to school; and the accommodation provided may be unsatisfactory. Yet there is the advantage of experience and skill acquired by teachers concentrating on this work.

The success of withdrawal groups would seem to depend very much on whether:

1. the teacher of the withdrawal group is trained in the teaching of English as a second language;

2. there is continuity and frequency (ideally once a day) of teaching;

3. the accommodation is satisfactory; a separate room, free from disturbance, where books, display charts and equipment can be housed and dramatic and other activities can take place is a necessity;

4. there is a good supply of appropriate and well-chosen books and equipment;

5. there is a close and constant liaison with the class or subject teacher;

6. the groups are homogeneous; i.e. the mixture of pupils of different ages, standards, nationalities, each with their own needs and problems, is avoided as far as is possible.

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considered satisfactory, they are fully absorbed into the normal class. There is, in other words, a gradual entry into the life and work of a normal class, carefully geared to the growing command of English acquired by the immigrant child. Those pupils attending a special class part-time are kept in close contact with the normal class for part of every day and have the advantage of talking and working with English children from the outset.

As with the withdrawal group, there are several problems to resolve. The close co-operation between the special class teacher and the normal class teacher is more important than ever, especially with part-time special classes or classes drawing pupils from several schools. In the latter case, there is also the difficulty of travel, the unavoidable waste of time and the unsettling effect of movement and divided loyalties. There is the problem of deciding at what level of attainment the children are to transfer to normal classes; and the pressure caused by later arrivals at times results in pupils being returned to normal classes before they are ready for the move.

Language centres

Some local authorities may have more immigrants arriving than they can provide for adequately in withdrawal groups or special classes, or may have decided for other reasons that the most effective provision is by means of a special centre, where non-English speaking immigrants will be given a concentrated course in English as a second language. There are, in general terms and not including the reception centres already described, three main types of special centre, though there are many minor variations.

1. A full-time centre in its own building with its own staff.

2. A full-time centre which is part of a normal school but has separate accommodation and staff. It functions very much like a special class but on an enlarged scale.

3. A part-time centre, again in its own building and with its own staff, but drawing immigrant children from several schools and keeping them for anything from one half-day to five half-days a week. On the half-days when the pupils are not in the centre they are in their own schools and can join in activities and work with their English contemporaries.

Some local authorities use the centre for primary children only and deal with their secondary pupils in a special class attached to a school; others use it for

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both primary and secondary pupils. Some maintain that special centres are only appropriate for secondary pupils, when there is little time left in which late arrivals can learn English. Large local authorities often have separate centres for primary and secondary pupils.

As instance of the many attempts made to find the best solution there is one local authority which maintains one reception centre for children aged 5 to 7 from overseas; four centres for pupils aged 7 to 11 ; three centres for pupils aged 11 to 15; three special classes for pupils in junior schools and three special classes for pupils aged 11 to 13; and nine second phase classes in secondary schools i.e. transitional classes through which those immigrants, who are 13 years of age or older and have been discharged from the special centres and classes, pass gradually into the mainstream of the schools. The centres and classes are strategically placed around the city. They are at present housed in old school buildings, though it is hoped to provide one purpose-built centre in the near future. There is a mixture of graduates and non-graduates on the staffs and many have had experience teaching English as a second language in England and abroad. Staffing ratios are generous; 1:10 or 12 pupils. These centres provide special and concentrated teaching of English as a second language in small groups, varying in size from 4 or 5 to 15, in order to give pupils sufficient English to enable them to join normal schools as quickly as possible. A bright pupil may transfer after a term; the average length of stay is three or four terms.

Remedial teaching

Perhaps the most controversial form of organisation is the one whereby immigrant children are considered as pupils in need of remedial help and are regarded as being within the province of a local authority's or school's remedial service. However, a service devised to help English pupils backward in the basic subjects is not really relevant to the needs of the immigrant child with linguistic problems. The difficulties of an immigrant child are not those of a slower-learning English child and if both groups are in a remedial class, neither may receive appropriate help. If the immigrant numbers increase, the English pupils may tend to receive less and less attention. Methods of teaching should be different; books and apparatus should differ in purpose, content, vocabulary and illustration.

West Indians

West Indian children, however, frequently present special problems. They arrive in school speaking a variety of English, indeed many varieties of English, according to the island and the cultural background from which they have come. Though they or their parents may stoutly maintain that they need

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no lessons in English and that they understand and speak it well, nevertheless, they are at times most difficult to understand and they, in turn, find it difficult to understand the teacher. In consequence many linguistic, educational and other problems emerge, which sometimes differ from but sometimes overlap those presented by Asian children. What often happens is that the West Indian child is either catered for wrongly under arrangements designed for Asian children or is classed as backward and placed in a remedial class with backward English children when often he is in need of special but different help. A few may be catered for most appropriately in a remedial group with English pupils but many will have to be taught English almost as a second language. There is a need, in the latter case, for special withdrawal groups or classes for West Indian children or for peripatetic teachers specially trained to deal with the social and linguistic problems of these pupils. Reference has already been made to the research and development work in progress in this field.

Appointment of specialist advisers

The foregoing summary has given an outline of measures taken by authorities to help schools to meet a new or developing situation. Some - mainly the larger ones - have administered these changes by redeploying their officers or appointing advisers with special responsibility for the education of immigrants. Smaller authorities have also shown initiative and ingenuity in providing specialist advice for their teachers. For example, Oxford, with a relatively low total of immigrant pupils, appointed an advisory teacher with the status of a full-time adviser. Huddersfield transferred one of its own heads, who had several years experience with immigrants in his own school, to a post as organiser with special responsibilities for immigrants and remedial education. Though this is a joint title the local authority does not regard these dual duties as synonymous - the aims and needs of each are different as has been emphasised in this pamphlet. For a time Slough arranged for one of its headmasters, with experience of immigrants, to spend two days each week in co-ordinating the development of the work with immigrant pupils in all schools in the Borough. This type of secondment was possible because, as sometimes happens, he was in charge of a school where there had been a decline in numbers because of housing re-development. After his retirement from teaching the appointment was continued on a half-time basis.

Larger local authorities have been able to assign one or more of their existing staff to these duties. In some cases, such as Manchester, they had already done pioneer work in the development of language teaching in the schools. In one case the language specialist is assisted by a full-time organiser for the education of immigrants who is in charge of a special centre for the teaching

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of English and a staff of teachers based on it. In the ILEA one of the inspectors has similar responsibility and has worked intensively for the in-service training of teachers of immigrants and the organisation of courses dealing with the wider problems of roots and manifestations of racial prejudice. In Leeds the education of immigrants is kept under constant review by the Deputy Education Officer and a senior and very experienced local inspector. As early as 1960, Birmingham, which now has responsibility for the largest number of non-European immigrants of any local authority outside London (though not the highest percentage), set up a department for the Teaching of English as a Second Language with two peripatetic teachers, one of whom was put in charge of the department a year later. He now acts in an advisory capacity with responsibility for the special services for the teaching of immigrants in Birmingham. This city, too, was one of the local authorities which began early to keep its own statistical records of immigrants in the schools.

For local authorities faced with a new or changed situation stemming from the arrival of immigrant pupils in their schools, the experience of authorities already concerned suggests that there are three important lines of approach and that these are relevant whatever organisational framework (e.g. dispersal, special centres, special classes) is adopted. They are:

1. Additional support for the schools:

a. additional teaching and ancillary staff;
b. special equipment;
c. additional accommodation;

2. Increased effectiveness of the teaching staff through knowledge of methods of teaching English as a second language, of the social and cultural background of the newcomers, and of the use of materials suitable to this teaching situation;

3. The development of a good climate for learning through liaison between school and home, the encouragement of the parents to take an interest in English methods of education and to learn the language themselves, and close co-operation between those branches of the local authority's service (e.g. health and welfare as well as education) which are likely to influence the child's performance.

Additional teaching staff

Unless the staffing of a school is increased it is very difficult for the specialist language teaching to be done in groups that are small enough to make it

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effective. The Department, recognising this need, has regularly approved allocations of additional teachers under the quota arrangements for authorities with immigrant pupils, and it is clear that authorities have done their utmost to appoint these additional teachers. Two factors may have prevented some of them from taking up the full allocation - a general shortage of teachers in their area, and a lack of accommodation in schools which can only be overcome by extra grants for minor works or from the Urban Programme. Even so, one authority's staffing ratio at the present time is about 1:17 in secondary schools, and, for any primary school with 40% or more immigrants, 1:20. Another allows each immigrant pupil to count 1½ points in assessing a school's staffing ratio.

Ancillary staff

The Plowden Report emphasised the value of auxiliary helpers in primary schools to free teachers to concentrate on effective teaching. The use of audio-visual aids and other materials and for special equipment, in secondary as well as in primary schools, to accelerate mastery of a foreign language, also justifies ancillary help. These needs are accentuated in schools with high proportions of immigrants with learning difficulties, and a number of authorities have acted accordingly. In Birmingham, for example, there are about 300 non-teaching helpers in primary schools and some schools have as many as five or six; additional mid-day assistants are provided for all schools with more than 20 immigrant children on roll. In Slough every special class for immigrants has a welfare assistant as well as a teacher. In infant schools particularly, where welfare assistants have been appointed they have been most useful in improving the children's conversation as well as in assisting with their general social training. Several local authorities have appointed immigrant ancillary helpers, who have helped to familiarise the children with their new environment, and to facilitate contacts between the school and parents.

Accommodation and equipment

Reference has been made in Chapter 2 to the allocation of extra resources (major and minor works) to enable authorities to provide places for a heavy inflow of immigrants. There have nevertheless been inevitable difficulties before buildings are ready, and in meeting the accommodation needs of special teaching groups at schools built without such facilities in view. Heads have shown great resource and initiative in organising library spaces or rooms, or even cloak-rooms and entrance foyers for this work. Assistant staff have often been most generous in relinquishing the staff-room for part of the day or the week. Leicester has erected 20 demountable classrooms at schools to provide for the accelerated influx of immigrants to the town. Other local

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authorities have brought back into use former buildings which, though unsuitable for a whole school, can provide useful bases for smaller groups of 60 or 70 pupils, giving special rooms for audio-visual aids, a hall for physical education and a play area outside.

More frequently special centres have been accommodated in some of the classrooms of an existing school and these centres have been well supported by many local authorities in the provision of equipment. Bromley, for example, provides a language master, a loop projector, a slide projector, an overhead projector, tape-recorders with multiple take-off points, and a film projector and daylight screen. One of the most useful and inexpensive devices which many local authorities have used is the tape-recorder modified to take six sets of ear-phones and a course of language drills devised for use on them. In this way responses can be made on a clean track and the master track can be permanent. This is one of the techniques which teachers have used to develop group work when they have to deal with a class or group of very mixed ability. Using this modified tape-recorder for example, six children can work intensively for up to 15 minutes at a time. Several local authorities and teachers have developed their own audio-visual programme for slide projectors and tape-recorders. For example, the teacher in charge of the Leicester centre has made a series of 17 language situations with up to 20 slides for each situation. These include a sequence on first aid, in which the local ambulance station co-operated, and another on road safety. Five sets of each programme are made and are available for loan to schools. Much of this material is used as an extension to the Schools Council Project material Scope and can relate in particular to the town or area in which the children live, or even to the neighbourhood of the school itself.

Some local authorities have been able to provide language laboratories in their centres. For example in a centre at Coventry there is one with 20 booths with a staff of five full-time teachers and three part-time, including a craft teacher. The centre has four classes every morning and afternoon for about 160 immigrants in all. Two further classes cater for pupils of fifth-year age who arrived late in this country, and for unemployed teenagers. A third of the students of these two classes have been accepted into traineeships in industry or work courses leading towards apprenticeship. The head of the centre believes that intensive work in interview techniques and vocational guidance have contributed to this success.

In-service training

The need for additional teachers and for the preparation of existing staff for their new work requires programmes of special courses. The special centres

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established for the education of immigrant children can in many cases provide a training place for future teachers of English as a second language. In Bradford, for example, all teachers without training or experience in this type of work are appointed in the first place to a centre, where they serve as 'apprentices'. In the early weeks there is ample opportunity for them to observe experienced teachers at work. The teacher in charge of the centre gives individual help and instruction and gradually the 'apprentice' takes initially small groups of immigrants for specific pieces of work, then larger groups and finally full classes. Ultimately, when the newcomer is considered sufficiently competent, he is placed permanently in one of the centres or in charge of a special class. In this way an attempt is made to train teachers for a growing demand. Each centre is also an information and reference centre for all other teachers in the city who have problems in connection with teaching immigrants. Teachers can not only obtain advice on techniques and methods but can consult and examine a full range of books and all the latest audio-visual apparatus. Each centre has available several tape-recorders, record players, an epidiascope, language masters, a loop projector, film and film-strip projectors, an overhead projector and a variety of visual and illustrative materials.

With the early inception of the centre mentioned earlier, Birmingham has been able to carry out in-service training 'on the job' through its own specialist team of teachers. In 1968 for example, they visited 79 schools, operating from the language base, situated near the centre of the city, which is also used as a meeting place for discussions and trials of new methods and equipment. It is well-equipped for this function, having an eight-booth language laboratory, a large room for exhibitions and assessments of audio-visual language materials and books, as well as a workshop and small secretariat. The local authority holds courses at this centre for teachers who are not specialists in teaching English but who have non-English speaking pupils in their classes. This is an aspect of the work which will require increasing attention so that pupils, after having acquired a basic knowledge of the language, can keep up with the normal work of the classroom and follow the more specialised curriculum of the secondary school.

Some local authorities have been able to organise longer courses on their own initiative and from their own resources. For example, Bradford has held one week residential courses for teachers, youth leaders and administrative officers. One of these included discussions on racial awareness in young children, the psychology of prejudice and problems of adaptation, as well as the methodology of teaching English to immigrant pupils. The ILEA holds courses for teachers of immigrant pupils at its residential centre in Surrey. One such course is for newly appointed teachers who spend a week there in July

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before taking up their posts in the Autumn. The local authority also holds three day courses, which include consideration of the English language needs of pupils from the West Indies. Huddersfield carries out one major in-service course a term, designed as far as possible for homogeneous groups of teachers.

There are many other examples of similar activity in the main centres of immigration and there have been several instances of authorities, for example in areas of Lancashire, combining to provide in-service training.

As well as organising courses a number of authorities have been most generous in releasing teachers to attend discussions and conferences in connection with u~e in their schools of pilot materials from the Schools Council project at the University of Leeds.

There are now serious doubts whether the informal approach used in the infant classroom provides an adequate English language experience for young immigrant children and many, though unwilling to advocate the withdrawal of such children.from their normal class for special tuition, are beginning to believe that a more systematic presentation of language is required at this early stage. There are very few infant teachers who have received specialist training in the teaching of English as a second language. To help meet this difficulty, the ILEA seconded a teacher for one year to work with the Schools Council project studying and reporting on the linguistic needs of young immigrant children. The ILEA has since appointed her as a peripatetic adviser for infant schools, arranging for her to work alongside teachers of immigrant infant children in the classroom in a small number of infant schools.

Diagnostic and attainment testing

The difficulty of using the current range of diagnostic and attainment tests with immigrant pupils is considered in Chapter 5. A number of interesting attempts have been made to provide some form of assessment which will help the teacher and give some guidance on the relative ability, linguistic competence and attainment of immigrant pupils in a particular group or class. It is useful if teachers at a specialist language centre are able to pass on to teachers at the normal school to which immigrants are proceeding, an objective record of their attainments in the previous period. A number of centres have developed schemes of assessment which include the standard reached in the basic reader used, a centre-devised test of language structures, a written composition, writing about pictures, oral testing and reading and comprehension. No statistical validity is claimed for these kinds of assessments but they give the teachers in ordinary schools a useful idea of the

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standard reached by their new pupils, and an idea of relative competence in English.

Burgin and Edson in their book on Spring Grove,* describe the use (as early as 1961) in Huddersfield, in conjunction with the educational psychologist, of an assessment of immigrants' ability using Ravens Progressive Matrices and the Goodenough Draw-a-Man-test. Their main conclusion is that test results improve relative to the child's length of stay in this country. More important, perhaps, reference is made to the careful notes which each teacher made of the immigrant pupils and which included a personal evaluation of the child's standard in oral and written work and in reading, in mathematics, physical education. These were carefully documented and forwarded promptly to the receiving schools.

Members of the psychological service in Birmingham have also made a continuous study of pupils, including some immigrants, mainly West Indians, in a withdrawal class in a primary school. Various methods of teaching were tried and the close observation during the period of experimental work for this class led to the conclusion that a period of up to a year or more is necessary before a final decision can be made as to whether a child who has arrived from the West Indies and appears to be of low ability has in fact not adjusted to his new environment.

Long-term assessment, in which an attempt is made to gain an idea of the rate at which a child learns and of the growth of any skills which he shows, is being practised in certain areas. Birmingham made a pioneer move in appointing to a secondary school a counsellor who was at first sent on secondment to the West Indies; on his return he became responsible for the long-term assessment of pupils, for considering in consultation with specialist subject departments the content of the courses, and for devising a better form of progress report-book.

A number of other instances of local initiative in the field of assessment are recorded in the more recent survey undertaken in the Autumn of 1969.†

The language skills necessary for a child vary for different purposes, and the assessment of these may need to be fairly specific. It will need to be related to the linguistic skills expected of English-speaking children at various ages. One of the most urgent needs is for some estimation of the standard which immigrants of secondary age need to attain before their transfer from special classes to normal work, where they are faced with the wide vocabulary and complex language used in the teaching of specialist subjects.

*See appropriate entry in Bibliography in Appendix A.

†See p, 29, Chapter 2.

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Liaison and Welfare Services

One of the most impressive features of the education of immigrant children has been the co-operation between the school welfare services and the teachers. Numerous authorities have appointed immigrant welfare officers who have done invaluable work by acting as interpreters for immigrant children and their parents, and by providing a link between home and school. Equally effective is the help given by immigrant ancillary helpers in the classroom particularly when, as in many cases, their own command of English is fluent. They not only smooth over difficulties caused by any failure of communication between teacher and child but also reinforce the language practice that has been carried out by the class teacher.

Language teaching can be greatly assisted by the exploitation of attractive audio-visual 'software' (including tapes) prepared by the teacher and of 'hardware' supplied by the authority. Many authorities have realised the need for providing auxiliary help to assist with the preparation of such material, or to release the teacher to do so.

For more than sixty years teachers employed by the ILEA have had the benefit and support of the School Care Service, with its 2,100 voluntary workers trained and organised by a corps of 100 full-time professional officers. Though this service is, of course, intended to meet the needs of all families, immigrants benefit considerably from it. An immigrant welfare officer or auxiliary helper often provides a first link between school and parent, but teachers themselves, despite language difficulties, have done much to develop good relations between home and school. In one infant school, for example, the head mistress frequently visits the immigrants' homes where she is accepted and liked. She is invited to parties, birthday celebrations and festivals, and the parents respond by a very good attendance when they are invited to the school. School notices are sent out in Gujerati and Urdu. In a junior school, all the immigrant parents were visited individually by one of the teachers, himself an immigrant, to follow up an invitation to a meeting at the school, and only four did not attend. Many of those who were present brought their younger children of pre-school age with them. The head of the infant school was also present to meet the parents of children who were likely to enter her school. The head's talk was interpreted by the immigrant teacher. The meeting also included a dance display by Asian and West Indian children of some of their own traditional dances, and an opportunity for the parents to meet all the junior school teachers.

Several authorities issue advice, invitations and road safety leaflets for the parents in three or more languages, and a few make announcements in different languages in the local newspaper or in the immigrants' own paper.

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An account of measures taken by authorities to provide classes for parents of immigrant children and immigrant adults in general in English language and on other matters is given in Chapter 7.

Holiday projects and play centres

There is not in this country any widespread, highly organised arrangement for children's holiday recreation of the kind enjoyed by many French children in 'Colonies de Vacances', though several authorities allow organised use of school playgrounds and playing fields, run play-leadership schemes, and hold regular sessions for swimming instruction for children in the summer holidays. Efforts have been made in various parts of the country to bring immigrant and host children together in the holidays, to extend the immigrants' knowledge of English life and increase the opportunity for learning the language and meeting a wider circle of young people and adults. Some authorities, for example, organise play holiday centres where children can continue to meet one or more of the teachers from their primary school and enjoy games, art and craft.

In recent years York University, in co-operation with the Huddersfield local education authority, has provided holiday opportunities for immigrant pupils of secondary school age in need of help with English. This scheme, as it operated in 1969, aimed at teaching English intensively for a period of four weeks to 114 immigrant children aged 11-15 years. The teaching was done by 120 student volunteers from York University, St. John's College of Education in York and other colleges of education, and from the sixth form of a comprehensive school. These volunteers underwent an initial three-day crash course at Easter and met periodically during the summer term preparing materials and group teaching strategies. Close contact was established with the schools which were to send pupils to the summer school; the purpose of the school was explained in letters to parents and visits to teachers. The schools prepared a report sheet for each pupil and in return received a full report on each pupil at the end of the project.

Formal English teaching was interspersed with games, songs, films, projects, visits to museums, the police station, the fire station, the public library and local places of interest. A pupil-teacher ratio of 1:1 and at times 1:2 allowed the children to receive a high degree of individual attention and enabled the tutors to establish close relations with them. The course was based in Huddersfield and at the end of the first two weeks a group of children in need of extra help were transferred for the second two weeks to York to stay in the homes of English families and continue their language work at the University of York.

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The linguistic and other benefits the immigrant children derived from living and learning in close companionship for four weeks with young volunteers were considerable - and the volunteers themselves no doubt gained from this particular kind of community service. The Community Relations Commission made a substantial grant towards the cost of this interesting project and the possibility is being studied of its extension to other parts of the country.

In other areas, summer holiday classes in English are run by authorities for children who attend voluntarily. In one case, the authority assists a voluntary organisation (Toc H) to conduct a play centre at one of the Immigrant Centres during the summer holiday.

Another authority successfully organised a five-day residential course. It was due considerably to the perseverance and persuasiveness of an immigrant teacher that over 30 children were allowed by their parents to attend. Activity in art and music and movement was planned for the children and much enjoyed by them, but probably the greatest gain was a social one - living together with other children, spending a longer day with the teachers they knew well and meeting other sympathetic adults for the first time.

Holiday arrangements are often a co-operative effort between several organisations. Haringey has for the fourth successive year organised a summer holiday project for deprived children from local primary schools which was initiated by a Citizens Committee and now receives assistance from other organisations and much help for the detailed arrangements from the educational consultant for immigrant children in the Borough. Well over 100 children (immigrant and non-immigrant) age 7-11 enrolled at four Centres in 1969 for holiday activities with an experienced teacher, helped by five students, in charge of each Centre. The teachers each serve for the full four weeks of the project's duration but the students change more frequently, each serving on average for two weeks. The teacher in charge keeps a log of activities and a register for meals purposes is kept daily. The children are fed at a central point. During the month's activities there are three day outings which are centrally organised to ensure the necessary transport being available; but numerous half-day visits (e.g. to Hampstead Heath) are arranged by the teachers in charge, normally using public transport. For the rest, activities are varied with the emphasis upon group work using such materials as paint, paper, paste, wire, puppets, or movement, drama, music or outdoor games. By the second week a family type relationship seems to become established, though the teachers would be the first to admit that the first few days are not easy. The enrichment of the children's experience by the visits and conversation with adults under a favourable staffing ratio is considerable and the foundation of sympathetic relationships is laid for the future.

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Collaboration between the Home Office, the Community Relations Commission and a number of local authorities succeeded in extending in summer 1970 the pattern of summer holiday language schools for non-English speaking pupils successfully pioneered by the Huddersfield/York scheme to four or five other towns and cities. Urban Programme assistance was made available to local authorities wishing to participate in a limited number of schemes. The Commission undertook to help co-ordinate the schemes and to assist in the training of key workers involved. The Community Service Volunteers undertook with the help of Urban Programme funds to organise with local authority co-operation another four or five summer schools on the pattern of the project they conducted in Ealing in 1969. The National Union of Students agreed to help with the recruitment of student volunteer tutors for the schemes.

The main aim of this chapter has been to describe what has been done to help immigrant pupils; but it is important not to minimise the contribution which the immigrant children, given the right encouragement, can make to the schools. The athletic prowess and games skill, particularly of the West Indian boys and girls, are very apparent at schools' athletics meetings or matches, or in the less competitive atmosphere of the play-ground or PE lesson. Their mobility and rhythm in a dance, dance/drama or gymnastics lesson can be captivating to watch. Folk dance and music are often used by teachers as one of the ways of involving immigrant children in the life and curriculum of the school - each group offering dances or songs from its own country. In this way many heads aim to make different racial groups aware and proud of their own culture whilst at the time appreciating their common ties. Similarly, the approach to the morning assembly may set the tone for the remainder of the day. Stories from the great Hindu epics may be combined with the more traditional biblical narratives. Schools set out to develop this attitude in different ways. In one junior school the underlying philosophy is simply to provides experiences which will encourage immigrant children to communicate in their new language - but taking great care to preserve their identity and to encourage them to contribute in whatever way they can to the wealth and interest of the school generally. Experiences are derived from frequent visits in the neighbourhood and beyond. The children are encouraged to talk about these experiences both in their own language and in English. Their conversation in English is tape recorded and played back time and again. The tape recorder is also used to record them singing in their own language and to encourage them to express themselves in sound and rhythm. This in turn is listened to by the whole school. The children are also encouraged to tell stories in their own tongue on tape as a means of fascinating and interesting the rest of the children in their classes. No embargo is placed upon their own

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language, where the use of it can make them feel free to communicate and enable them to enjoy the experiences provided for them. Thus all the interesting objects around their classroom which are named are also named in Punjabi. In order to get the Punjabi captions correct the parents of the children are invited to do the captions. Indian festivals are celebrated and the children are encouraged to bring to school all the materials associated with any particular festival during the year. This again involves the parents and also brings a new dimension of experience to the rest of the school.

In a thematic approach one school used the Hindu Divali festival to enlarge on the theme of light in various aspects - religious and non-religious. One girls' secondary school celebrated India Day in the following fashion. All the Indian children attended in national dress. For morning assembly Indian and English children read extracts from Tagore, Shakespeare and the Bible. An Indian visitor was also present at the assembly to talk about India. Then each class worked upon a topic of its choice on India. During the morning break some 30 Indian parents were present. They mixed with the girls and ate food cooked by them. After break the school was divided into two - half going to the hall to listen to an outside lecturer speak on India - and the other half attending a concert of Indian dancing, singing and instrumental music put on by the girls themselves. In the afternoon the two halves of the school changed over. During the following week the topic they had begun on India Day was completed and the results were displayed throughout the school with a focal frieze done by the art department placed in the main hall.

These are examples, taken at random, of the thought and discussion that some teachers are giving to this subject, in the belief that by playing, acting, dancing, making music and working and playing together children of many cultures can keep their own identities and also find the confidence to make their distinctive contributions to the multi-racial society in which they now live.

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4 The response of voluntary and other organisations

Voluntary organisations make a significant and indispensable contribution to educational provision in this country; indeed, statutory and voluntary efforts in educational affairs often merge almost imperceptibly the one with the other. There are many examples of sustained voluntary endeavour in the education of immigrants which illustrate the scope for flexible responses to challenging problems. These responses sometimes reinforce, sometimes complement and sometimes add a new element to the effort of central and local statutory bodies, and represent a source of strength and vitality.

Local organisations

One of the earliest voluntary organisations to offer practical help to immigrants was the Sparkbrook Association of Birmingham, founded in 1960. Its wide range of activities have included the provision of play-groups for the under 5's, the organisation and running of a youth club, the setting up of an Old People's Visiting Service and the development of a housing scheme. One of its most interesting activities is that aimed at the integration of immigrant families into the community in which they live. The Sparkbrook Association Volunteers began operating in the Spring of 1967 when half a dozen volunteers undertook to visit three houses in pairs to meet and to get to know groups of non-English speaking Asian residents, mostly mothers and older boys, and to set about teaching them English. Since then this scheme has developed very considerably; additional volunteers from the Association of Birmingham Housewives, Birmingham University and the Voluntary Service Overseas Organisation have joined the scheme, and by Spring, 1969 it had become necessary to divide the volunteers into five geographical groups. These volunteer teachers are usually accompanied on their first visit by volunteers from the Pakistani Women's Association who help explain the purpose of the scheme. Doctors, nurses, welfare officers and clinic officials send to the Association names and addresses of mothers who need to learn English. Other groups of Asian women are taught by the volunteers in the primary school buildings or in the Association Family Centre. The volunteer teachers meet regularly to discuss teaching methods, books, and difficulties encountered and to plan the family parties and outings for Asian mothers and their children which form an integral part of the scheme.

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Somewhat similar is the Cambridge House Language Scheme which started in 1967 to give home tuition in English language to adult immigrants in London. It uses volunteer teachers mostly English housewives, recruited through advertisements. In this scheme lessons are held wherever convenient, often in the learners' homes. Many nationalities are involved but Pakistanis, Indians and Cypriots predominate; the West Indians are generally catered for by the Cambridge House Literary Scheme. The volunteer teachers are encouraged to attend annual one-day training sessions and keep in contact with Cambridge House by submitting monthly progress reports and by attending small area tutor meetings. They are allowed to make use of Cambridge House library facilities. Several similar schemes have been started in different parts of London. Often the social side is found to be more important than the English teaching side. Expeditions to Hyde Park, organised family outings to such places as Greenwich, annual Christmas parties attended by pupils, tutors and their respective families - all contribute towards making the newcomers feel that they are wanted and have a part to play in the life of the community.

Voluntary teaching of English to immigrants is provided from many sources. In 1963 two young 18-year old girls school leavers in Smethwick were attached to schools with a high ratio of immigrant children to help particularly with their language difficulties. In 1964, with the help of community service volunteers similar volunteers were attached to schools in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Slough, Southall and Islington and a year or two later to schools in Coventry, Derby, Leeds and several London boroughs. Since then other areas have come to appreciate the very special part that young enthusiastic sixth formers can play, under trained supervision in helping young immigrant children to improve their English language. In the summer of 1969 the then President of the Cambridge Union organised a project on behalf of Community Service Volunteers in which immigrant teenagers in Southall were encouraged to involve themselves in the life of their community by helping younger immigrant children with their English.

Individual schools have also sponsored schemes of social service. Thus an independent school in Slough arranged for ten boys to visit a local primary school on two afternoons a week to take groups of three immigrant children each for practice in conversation.

There a considerable number of colleges of education from which students volunteer to work with immigrant children and very often with immigrant mothers in their own homes. Many colleges send students to gain experience in working with immigrants in play-centres, homes and schools, youth clubs and pre- and post-natal clinics.

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The universities have also made their contribution. One example is the 'language bank' set up by the International Club at Manchester University some years ago, providing a 24-hour service of interpreters and language teachers for hospitals, police and other local services. Its student members have also helped in an immigrant reception centre and in evening classes for parents. An account was given in the preceding chapter of the York University - Huddersfield Local Education Authority Summer School of English for Immigrant Children - an interesting pilot scheme with possibilities for future development.

Numerous voluntary committees organise a wide variety of activities to help immigrants in many parts of the country. Thus the Ashton-under-Lyne Human Rights Committee has helped to run a school on Saturday mornings to teach English to immigrant children and to help them mix more freely with children of the whole community; the Huddersfield International Liaison Committee is responsible, among other things, for a multi-racial pre-school play-group and runs a Home-Tutor Scheme for Asian women in which volunteers visit Asian women in their homes for an hour or two a week to develop social contacts; the Ealing International Friendship Council is most active and has 88 affiliated organisations.

Oxford offers a good illustration of what voluntary organisations in a city or town can do to help the immigrant community. Here the Joint Action Committee Against Racial Intolerance (JACARI) exists principally to interest students in race relations. Among its activities it organises home teaching for immigrant and children of primary and secondary school age - and also for the under 5's. The work is organised by an undergraduate and the teaching is done by about 50 undergraduate girls. A secondary aim is that by visiting homes and teaching there the tutors may succeed in involving the mothers and persuading them to learn some English too. In summer 1969 a JACARI group ran a multi-racial play-group and did general community work in a slum area in Birmingham with a large immigrant population. The Voluntary Overseas Association (VOSA) is also making a valuable contribution. Some 20 students in the University who have done voluntary service overseas go to the College of Further Education to help immigrant students enrolled in vocational courses who are still in need of help with their English. A Teachers' Centre for Teachers of Immigrants is open every Tuesday evening to anyone interested in the teaching of immigrants.

In many areas the Churches, Rotary, Toc H, the Townswomen's Guild and many other organisations, including Asian and West Indian Associations; are helping immigrants, young and old, to find a full place in their new environment.

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National organisations

There are a number of major organisations, one statutory, others voluntary (including professional bodies) who are concerned at a national as well as local level with the education of immigrants and/or community relations. It is not possible in the space of a single chapter to describe the contribution of all these organisations but a brief account of the aims and achievements of a few of them will illustrate the nature of their work. For further information, the annual reports and other publications of these bodies are recommended reading.

The non-statutory National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, set up in 1965, was replaced by the Community Relations Commission, a statutory body appointed by the Home Secretary under the Race Relations Act 1968.

Its functions are defined in Section 25(3) and (4) of the Act as follows:

(3) It shall be the duty of the Commission -

(a) to encourage the establishment of, and assist others to take steps to secure the establishment of, harmonious community relations and co-ordinate on a national basis the measures adopted for that purpose by others; and

(b) to advise the Secretary of State* on any matter referred to the Commission by him and to make recommendations to him on any matter which the Commission consider should be brought to his attention.

(4) For the purpose of discharging their functions under sub-section (3)(a) above the Commission may -

(a) establish services for giving advice on community relations to local authorities and other local organisations concerned therewith and for collecting information with respect to community relations;

(b) provide courses of training in connection with community relations; and

(c) arrange or promote the holding of conferences on matters connected with community relations.

*i.e. the Home Secretary.

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society; the organisation of high-level conferences promoted directly by the national Committee in association with the Department, the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Department of Education and the Race Relations Committee of the Society of Friends; the publication and circulation of such informative booklets as Practical Suggestions for Teachers of Immigrant Children, Research and the Teaching of Immigrant Children and The Education of West Indian Immigrant Children; and advice and assistance on speakers, study materials and training syllabuses.

It succeeded in establishing a network of local community relations councils which promoted a wide variety of valuable activities closely concerned with the education of immigrants. The Commission has set about expanding and consolidating this work on a statutory basis, using its advisory and information sections as well as the local community relations councils to channel information and policy suggestions into the local and other bodies concerned with those educational matters which have a bearing on community relations.

The Commission works closely with the Department in educational matters. At the local level it aims at producing a free flow of information and exchange of ideas among education authority members and administrators. Its Advisory Committee on Education has continued to review matters relating to teacher training and curriculum development the linguistic needs of immigrants, post-school education and liaison with local education authorities. During the Winter of 1969/70 it held consultations with local education authorities and, beginning in autumn 1969, initiated a series of meetings aimed at improving liaison with colleges of education at a number of University Institutes of Education. Among the other activities in which the Commission has recently been engaged have been the expansion of information and clearing-house services, particularly to meet the needs of teacher trainers, the planning of new publications, the collection of information on the linguistic problems of West Indian children and the formulation of plans for co-operation with liberal studies lecturers in technical colleges and for establishing links with broadcasting organisations.

The Institute of Race Relations was founded in 1958 and has three major aims:

i. to promote the study of relations between racial groups,
ii. to make available information concerning race relations,
iii. to offer advice on proposals for improving relations between the peoples of mankind.

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tion service and the holding of conferences, lectures and discussion meetings. All of its publications are concerned with the education of the community as a whole but some are concerned specifically with the education of immigrants: Nicholas Hawkes, Immigrant Children in British Schools (Pall Mall Press, 1966): Trevor Burgin and Patricia Edson, Spring Grove: The Education of Immigrant Children (Oxford University Press, 1967): Robin Oakley (Ed), New Backgrounds: The Immigrant Child at Home and at School (Oxford University Press, 1968): E.J.B. Rose and Associates, Colour and Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 1969). This last mentioned publication, financed by the Nuffield Foundation, represents the fruits of five years of research and is a comprehensive survey of the existing state of race relations in Britain. It contains a chapter on 'Policies and Practices II: Education' and makes certain relevant recommendations: Articles on the education of immigrants are to be found regularly in the Institute's Quarterly journal, Race, and monthly magazine, Race Today (formerly the IRR Newsletter). A number of relevant studies are published under the Institute's 'Special Series' and discussion meetings on topics bearing directly on the education of immigrants are held from time to time.

The facilities of the Institute's library are always available to those seeking information relating to the education of immigrants.

The Council of Christians and Jews brings together the Christian and Jewish communities in Britain in a common effort to fight the evils of prejudice, intolerance and discrimination between people of different religions, races and colours and to work for the betterment of human relations based on mutual respect, understanding and goodwill. Its work is educational in the broadest sense and is based on the fundamental belief of both religions that all people are equally the children of God. In particular the Council co-operates with schools, colleges of education and other institutes in order to foster a tolerant and humane outlook among children and young people towards members of all religious and minority groups, whether immigrant or not. It considers that the integration of immigrant children in a tolerant school atmosphere is of parallel importance to their special educational needs, such as the learning of English. It organises consultations with teachers and colleges and institutes of education staff on practical problems arising in school as a result of the existence of minority groups, and discusses with them methods that can be used to promote good understanding of such groups, their culture and beliefs, through classroom and extra-curricular activities. At the school level talks and conferences are arranged on relevant subjects and conferences of educationalists, psychologists and sociologists are convened regularly on matters relating to race relations and education in a multi-racial society. A number of

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publications suitable for the background to pupil and/or teacher discussions and for higher level study and dialogue have been issued by the Council. It also publishes a quarterly magazine, Common Ground, in which current views on the problems and education of immigrants are included, and periodically undertakes the examination of text-books to identify possible sources of misconception or prejudice. It has prepared a list of relevant audio-visual aids available from or recommended by the Council, and places its specialised library on Christian/Jewish and other group relations at the disposal of all interested in such topics. The Council is always willing and ready to cooperate and exchange information and experiences with other bodies and individuals involved and active in the struggle against prejudice, intolerance and discrimination.

In its Working Paper, No. 13 on English for the Children of Immigrants the Schools Council (which is an independent body supported by grants from the Department and local education authorities) (see Chapter 2) pointed to the dual role that the teaching of English to immigrant children in the school should play: first 'to make the child literate in the language of the community which the school exists to serve', and second 'to provide ... the means whereby the child becomes part of the community'. This last must be a two-way process if effective assimilation is to be achieved, for the community and particularly its teachers must also understand the immigrant. The teacher in England who does not know something about the behaviour and language patterns of the country of origin of his immigrant pupils will find his efforts to help them hampered and even frustrated. It is in this respect that the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London can and does make a useful contribution. The linguistic knowledge and first-hand experience of the staff of the School gives them a unique advantage in the field of in-service training of teachers of immigrant children, particularly of children from the Indian sub-continent. They can help teachers to understand the significant differences in matters of religious beliefs and practices, kinship systems, social ethics and patterns of domestic life. The School has itself organised a series of in-service training courses and members of its staff have assisted at similar courses run by the Department. Of the three initial courses organised, two were held at Nottingham in conjunction with the Institute of Education, and the other in Preston in co-operation with the Local Education Authority. The Commonwealth Institute was joint organiser at the first of the Nottingham courses. Workshop activities are usually an integral part of the courses and extensive use is made of a varied range of audio-visual aids. Another feature is that local teachers are invited to serve as course staff in the belief that this helps to identify particular local situations.

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In cities with large concentrations of immigrant children teachers began to meet together from about 1962 onwards to discuss mutual problems, share ideas, prepare experimental teaching materials such as tapes and cine-loops, and to try and develop some systematic teaching technique designed to meet the considerable demands of teaching English as a second language. These teachers were pioneers. Not only did they recognise their own need to develop new methods and skills but also created a learning opportunity for the newly qualified and the student teacher. Their initial enthusiasm spread to other parts of the country and one by one local associations were formed in Bedford, Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Derby, Huddersfield, Leicester, London, Slough and Wolverhampton. In 1967, The National Federation of Associations of Teachers of English to Pupils from Overseas was formed. Although ATEPO is particularly interested in the problems of teaching English as a second language, its activities extend over all the curriculum since in this field 'every teacher is a teacher of English'. In May 1969, the name of the Federation was changed to the National Federation of Associations for the Education of Pupils from Overseas. Membership is thus open to all individuals and professional or volunteer organisations concerned with the education of immigrant children.

The function of the Federation is to co-ordinate the activities of the local Associations; to disseminate information; to promote interest in the education of pupils from overseas; to offer advice and services to and co-operate with other professional and educational organisations, local education authorities and Government bodies wherever possible; to provide opportunities for teachers to learn of and to develop new methods appropriate to multi-racial classes and to safeguard the interests of immigrant pupils.

Local Associations have been active in organising courses, conference, workshops, visits and exhibitions sometimes in co-operation with local education authorities or colleges of education. ATEPO has also been very closely connected with the Schools Council Projects for Immigrant Children and has co-operated with them in the trials of experimental material. In conjunction with the Oxford University Press the Federation publishes a Journal: English for Immigrants which appears three times a year in the autumn, spring and winter terms. The Journal acts as a means of communication between the Associations and the Federation and gives news of activities in many fields such as teacher training courses and volunteer work. Contributions range from those of immediate practical use in the classroom to those dealing with the latest research and developments in the study of the language.

The Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, founded in 1967, is open to membership by all who have had some experience of the

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teaching of English as a foreign or second language in any part of the world. It is affiliated to the Fédération Internationale des Professeurs des Langues Vivantes (FIPLV) and forms the international English section within it. The majority of its members live and teach abroad, in some 80 different countries, though a substantial proportion resides in the United Kingdom. ATEFL is interested in problems in the teaching of English to immigrant children and adults in this country. Its main activities are an Annual Conference, held at present in Britain, and the publication of a Newsletter, issued five times a year. At both the first and second conferences time was given to the discussion of problems connected with the teaching of English to immigrant children. Evening meetings are held occasionally, sometimes jointly with other teachers' associations, and the teaching of immigrants is among the topics discussed. ATEFL seeks to co-operate rather than to compete with other organisations of teachers. As its publicity leaflet declares: 'It sees the language-learning process as a many-sided educational problem'.

The Centre for Information on Language Teaching is concerned with foreign language teaching in Britain, including the teaching of English as a foreign language. It can thus provide full information about language teaching material relevant to immigrant children. CILT works in co-operation with the English Teaching Information Centre of the British Council with which it shares library resources. The joint library contains copies of many text-books, courses and recorded material for teaching English, and is available for reference to visitors. CILT produces English for the Children of Immigrants: Guide to Sources of Information and Published Materials for the use of teachers and others concerned, while the periodical Language-Teaching Abstracts also covers reports and articles concerning language teaching to immigrants. A considerable number of teachers of immigrants in the London area use the library for study and reference. Liaison is maintained with such organisations as the Community Relations Commission, ATEPO, ATEFL, local centres concerned with immigrants, and the Committee on Research and Development in Modern Languages, which through its Sub-Committee on English for Speakers of Other Languages initiates and sponsors research related to immigrants' English. Members of the staff of CILT have spoken at a number of courses for teachers of immigrants arranged by the Department and other organisations.

The Race Relations Committee of the Society of Friends originated as a committee on slavery set up by Meeting for Sufferings in 1783. A committee on Slavery and the Protection of Native Races was set up in 1928. The name of this committee was changed to Race Relations Committee in 1950 but there has been no break in its continued work. Its concern has always arisen

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from Friends' basic witness on human relationships and the right of all men and women to personal respect and freedom. The Committee became directly involved in the education of immigrants in April 1966, when it organised a five-day conference for teachers of immigrant children on 'The Immigrant Child and the Teacher'. In 1967 the Committee organised a similar course jointly with the former National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants for students from colleges of education entitled 'Education in Multi-Racial Britain'. Another course of this type was held in 1968 under the title of 'The Challenge of the Multi-Racial School' and in July 1967, in co-operation with the London Council of Social Service, the Committee ran a four-day non-residential course for newly appointed teachers employed by the Greater London Local Education Authorities. This course dealt with background, the psychology of prejudice and practical classroom problems and gave many of those attending their first insight into some of the new challenges they would be meeting in classroom situations.

In addition to the work in this field, the Committee has also been active in the broader field of community education and has run a number of one-day courses for social workers, youth leaders and others, and in December 1968, in conjunction with the former National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, ran the first ever national conference for magistrates in the field of race relations entitled 'Are These Teenagers Different?'

The Chairman and Secretary have lectured on topics connected with the education of immigrants and race relations to colleges of education, universities, colleges of further education and Sixth Form conferences. In 1969 the Secretary acted as Director of a pilot six weeks' course sponsored by the London Training Group entitled 'Immigrants and the Youth Service'. The Committee has gone far towards fulfilling its aim of bringing about a better understanding of the problems and benefits of a multi-racial community both among members of the Society and the wider public.

The Runnymede Trust is an independent educational trust concerned with the provision and dissemination of accurate and up-to-date information on race relations. It publishes material on race relations relevant to the work of specialist groups, including teachers, based on research conducted by such bodies as the Institute of Race Relations and university departments. It maintains a continuous review of research on race relations and from time to time commissions its own enquiries. It organises conferences, seminars and consultations on specialised topics with the recognised authorities in these fields.

Though the Commonwealth Institute makes no direct contribution to the

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education of immigrants, its various services to schools are very relevant to the needs of a multi-racial society. Education for an integrated society aims at developing mutual understanding between immigrant citizens and the host community, and this is implicit in much of the work undertaken by the Education Department of the Institute.

About 100,000 school children visit the Institute's Exhibition Galleries annually, and the children of immigrants are well represented in many school parties. The exhibitions provide a vivid and realistic picture of Commonwealth countries. For English-born children they can provide an insight into the cultural, economic and historical background of the new communities, and for children of immigrants opportunities for studying the backgrounds from which their families came.

Apart from the exhibitions of countries in the main galleries, the Institute provides other experiences for visiting school-parties: children often have the opportunity to handle products of other Commonwealth countries and even to try on clothes which are traditionally worn there; the cinema shows documentary films about the Commonwealth and the Art Gallery provides about twelve exhibitions a year, representative of the best painting and sculpture at present being produced in the Commonwealth. The Institute has built up for loan to teachers a comprehensive and varied collection of visual aids on India, Pakistan, the Caribbean and other parts of the Commonwealth from which immigrants have come to this country.

The Commonwealth Institute arranges conferences which last at least a day, for sixth formers, school-leavers, and students at colleges of education. A wide variety of Commonwealth subjects are discussed at these conferences, but during the last four years there has been a significant increase in the number of conferences on immigration, race and prejudice, India and Pakistan, the Caribbean, and other related topics which schools and colleges have chosen to hold.

Perhaps one of the most valuable activities in which the Institute is involved is the organisation of visits by students and teachers to Commonwealth countries from which most of our immigrants come. Field Study courses for teachers and lecturers have been held in East Africa and in Southern India and Ceylon. Cruises for sixth form pupils and their teachers to West Africa and to the Caribbean have also been organised.

The work of the Royal Commonwealth Society in the field of education of immigrants is confined mainly to the organisation of courses and conferences on related themes. In July 1968, it held a successful course in co-operation

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with the Commonwealth Institute on the theme 'Britain as a Multi-Racial Society in a Multi-Racial Commonwealth'. Those attending included teachers, lecturers, local education officers, and members of Community Relations Councils, Probationary Establishments, Welfare Institutes, the Foreign and Commonwealth Offices and the Home Office. In previous years it has held a number of courses for teachers, with the help of grants from the Nuffield Foundation, on such themes as 'Caribbean' and 'Image of Africa'. The theme of the Society's annual conference for sixth-formers in December 1969, was 'Towards Racial Harmony'. The conference tried to present the subject of race in Commonwealth context, to emphasise the positive benefits which immigrant communities bring with them and to discuss the practical problems that require attention by host governments.

The Working Group on Education for the Eradication of Colour Prejudice is an informal association of Members of Parliament, educationists and others whose main aim is to try to ensure through education the reduction of colour prejudice of the school population as a whole and not of immigrants as a separate group. The Working Group gave evidence at the Select Committee Sub-Committee on Teacher Training.

There are a number of organisations engaged in the wider field of education for international understanding, such as the Council for Education in World Citizenship and the Parliamentary Group for World Government, that have striven for many years to combat racial prejudice and to improve race relations.

It is not possible in this brief account to do full justice to the contribution of broadcasting. The British Broadcasting Corporation has been active in this field for some considerable time, producing notable programmes for and about immigrants in schools, further education and the adult and youth service. Here it is proposed to describe only one or two of its recent activities.

In connection with the teaching of English to children of non-English speaking immigrants the BBC School Radio experimented with 'pilot' tapes designed to supplement the Schools Council Project directed by Miss June Derrick. As a result the Schools Broadcasting Council agreed to the broadcast in the spring term of 1970 of ten 10-minute programmes designed to supplement the Schools Council material used in primary schools with 8-11 year old children. These programmes are also of use to primary school teachers not using the Project materials - and possibly to secondary school teachers also. Linguistically the programmes give special attention to structures and vocabulary which the Project have found to offer particular difficulty. Stories are based on everyday situations and there are teachers' notes and pupils' pamphlets. Schools are able to tape record the programmes and use them as and when

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they wish, subject to the BBC's published conditions governing the use of such recordings.

The BBC Immigrant Programmes Unit was set up in Birmingham in 1965 and provides programmes directed mainly at the Indian and Pakistani immigrants who experience difficulties because of the wide cultural and linguistic differences between the British and their way of life. The Unit's output in summer 1968 was one radio and two television programmes per week of 30 minutes each. These programmes included stories of successful community relation activities, advice on personal problems, information on life in Britain, musical items and an element of English teaching designed especially to help housebound mothers and children. The broadcasts are in Hindi/Urdu, a lingua franca which probably enables the programmes to reach 85-90% of the community they serve. The Sunday morning television programme 'Nal Zindagi - Naya Jeevan' - 'New Life' - is a general interest magazine, whilst the Wednesday programme 'Apna Hi Ghar Samajhiye' - 'Make Yourself at Home' - is more specifically directed at immigrant women.

Three series in Further/Adult Education aimed at education in community relations are worthy of note. 'Colour in Britain' comprise six 30-minute radio programmes first broadcast in early 1965. Their aim was to explain the factual background to the colour question, to indicate what prejudices and discrimination existed and to explore their origins, and to show what has been done and what more could be done to ease racial tensions in this country. The television series 'Minorities in Britain' was broadcast in 1966. The series dealt with the Jews, Poles, West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis and Cypriots in turn. In February/March of 1969 'In Our Midst' - a series of five 30-minute television programmes - was broadcast. It was made especially for teachers and particularly for those who were meeting immigrant children for the first time in class, or those going to work in immigrant areas. The series tried to show something of the background from which the immigrant children come, to explain some of the factors which prevent some of them making the fullest use of their education, and to suggest ways in which these problems might be overcome.

The fact that the Independent Television Authority has not provided a service like the BBC's radio and television magazine for Indians and Pakistanis is almost certainly because it has only one channel to use and because hours of televising are so severely restricted. The Authority has generally had to content itself with a more oblique contribution. Thus immigrants with some knowledge of English were part of the target audience for the two ABC Television series in basic English 'Pen to Paper' and 'You Don't Say'. Educational series such as 'Money-Go-Round', 'The Law is Yours' and 'Power in Britain' raised topics of

[the following photographs were printed on unnumbered pages between pages 62 and 63]

Figure 1 Children of our multi-racial society.

Figure 2 A nursery class.

Figure 3 First day at school.

Figure 4 Early steps with SCOPE.

Figure 5 Intensive language group work.

Figure 6 At the lathe.

Figure 7 A study in concentration.

Figure 8 Special English language lesson for immigrant children.

Figure 9 Student volunteer helps at summer holiday play school.

Figure 10 A Nigerian teacher with a secondary school mathematics group.

Figure 11 Older newly arrived immigrants learning with a vocational emphasis.

Figure 12 Youth club - an initial shot.

Figure 13 Advice from the careers officer.

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special concern to immigrants. Of particular interest is the series 'Our Neighbours', consisting of six programmes designed primarily for children aged 10-13. Transmitted in Schools Programmes in summer 1970, the series aims to encourage appreciation and tolerance of people of different creeds and races now living in Britain, through an understanding of their background and way of life. There are also many programmes and series both in Independent Television's general and educational output which are about immigrants.

There can be no doubt about the extent and value of the contribution made to the education of immigrants by the varied activities of bodies other than recognised central and local education authorities - activities which this chapter has necessarily inadequately described. These bodies operate responsibly and competently and set a fine example of service; they do not compete with each other, but exchange information freely and offer a marked degree of help one to another. Officers of these organisations have always shown a ready willingness to help at the Department's short courses for teachers of immigrants by giving talks or demonstrations or leading discussions - for which the Department is extremely indebted. Numerous examples of the joint exercises involving two or more organisations have been mentioned in this chapter. There is indeed evidence of increasing co-operation and hence co-ordination in their work. In many cases the local education authority often exercises a measure of co-ordination, which has been achieved also in other areas following the establishment of community relations councils.

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5 Immigrants and special education

Very little has yet been written about the problems involved in the special education of immigrants. No statistical returns have hitherto been required from local education authorities on the number of immigrants in special schools and consequently precise figures of their number is not known.* However, some estimate can now be made based on the personal experience of inspectors and on information given in various reports published by a number of local authorities. Special education is not, of course, confined to special schools, and though the following paragraphs refer mainly to them, the statistics include some information about the provision made for special education in ordinary primary and secondary schools.

Except for one category of handicap the number of immigrant pupils in most types of special schools seems roughly proportionate to the number of native born children. True, in a few special schools for the deaf and physically handicapped the number of immigrants seems disproportionately high, but this is unusual. The major exception is in the case of schools for educationally subnormal children, where the proportion of immigrant pupils is in some cases unusually large. An investigation carried out in 1966 by one authority showed that the percentage of immigrant children in their day special schools was almost double that in their primary and secondary schools. One year later the percentage of immigrants had risen again. For a number of reasons referred to later, the proportion of immigrants in secondary e.s.n. day special schools was even higher.

A very similar situation was recorded by another authority. Compared with the 28% immigrants (mainly West Indian) in the total school population, a day e.s.n. special school had 49% immigrants. An educational survey of children aged 9 years in seven primary schools showed that different ethnic groups varied in their average quotient on a group test of intelligence; educational quotients were roughly comparable to the assessed quotients. Only the West Indians showed a significant deviation in their average performance at the time of testing.

*The Department phases asked for statistical returns on the number of immigrant children in special schools as from January 1970.

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A survey in 1966 of the most backward pupils in the first and second years in seven secondary schools in another area revealed 175 children, 73% of whom were immigrants. Group testing intelligence suggested that one-third of them, 93% of whom were immigrants, might need special school placement. Closer examinations on an individual interview showed that in the end only one-seventh of the original group had limited ability as measured by the WISC (Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children).

If figures such as these are paralleled elsewhere then the proportion of immigrant children in e.s.n. schools in some densely populated immigrant areas is considerably in excess of that of the native white children. The reason is not difficult to seek; judged purely by their attainments they are certainly educationally sub-normal; in the opinion of the heads of day e.s.n. schools in one area there was no significant difference on entry between the attainments of the immigrant group and of the native born children of limited intellectual capacity.

Most of the causes underlying the low educational performance of so many immigrant children are well known. A survey carried out by one authority showed that 11% of immigrants in day special schools had had no previous experience whatever of English education; of these 3% had had no previous education of any kind. No fewer than 20% of the immigrant pupils in six secondary e.s.n. special schools had had no previous experience of English education so that the problems involved in fitting them into ordinary secondary schools were well nigh insuperable. Many children in e.s.n. special schools had major deficiencies of language of such a degree that it was often 'difficult to distinguish between lack of English and a general retardation of language development'. Just under 4% of the immigrant children in the survey already referred to had virtually no English whatever; these were mainly Cypriots, Indians and Pakistanis rather than West Indians. Nor do the homes of many immigrant children do much to reduce the adverse effects of inadequacies of language. Many immigrant children go home to hear either their native tongue spoken or a form of pidgin English. Against a background of this kind the best intentions of the schools can easily be almost nullified.

Heads of special schools frequently comment on the behaviour problems of some immigrant children. Boisterous and aggressive behaviour, restless activity and inability to concentrate are themselves likely to lead to educational retardation and to added difficulties in arriving at an assessment of children's abilities. One authority has noted that references to the child guidance service rise considerably where there is a concentration of immigrants.

The problems presented derive from social as well as emotional factors. Some

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arise out of language difficulties and differing expectations and attitudes between school and home. It would indeed be surprising if this were not so. Many immigrant children have to adjust to an entirely new social and educational environment, often after a long separation from their parents. A recent survey of immigrant pupils in the comprehensive schools in one local authority showed that 3.3% of them came over to join their parents after 1-5 years, 15% after 6-10 years and 3% after 11-13 years. A good many, therefore, came over to rejoin parents who they must have almost or entirely forgotten and in some cases to entirely new family groupings. In such circumstances it would be remarkable if emotional disorders were not commonplace. Another factor that can give rise to retardation if not emotional stress is the mobility of many immigrant families; in one area approximately twice the number of immigrants as opposed to native children in e.s.n. special schools left to live elsewhere.

Cultural deprivation and its effect on learning and on growth of abilities are well known. So many immigrant children are often deprived in their homes of so much that is necessary to develop the language they need and so often do not find the required intellectual stimulus there, that it is little cause for surprise that not only the intellectual performance but also the intellectual status of so many of these children is depressed.

Though the great majority of the immigrant pupils in the e.s.n. special schools of one authority registered intelligence quotients (on the Stanford-Binet test) of 80 or below, many of them gave the impression to their heads that these results were not representative of their true ability. Doubts about the validity of such assessments of the intellectual abilities of immigrant children have been growing and for a number of reasons. Research carried out by one authority indicated that if immigrant children have had a full school career in Great Britain, their educational standards are not much different from those of indigenous children. Many instances now exist, moreover, of startling changes in the level of tested intelligence achieved within a very short space of time. One 5-year-old girl entered school in 1965, with no speech and an assessed IQ of 42 was speaking well a year later and registered an intelligence quotient of 81. Another boy of similar age registered a rise in intelligence quotient of 34 points in just under a year. The conclusion reached in one survey is that the IQ obtained as a result of an intelligence test is solely an estimate of the child's present level of functioning and on the skills required in that particular test. It cannot be presumed to represent the child's ultimate potential and is particularly suspect when the child's cultural background is different from the population on whom the test was standardised'. From this conclusion few would now dissent.

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Professor Philip E. Vernon* presents additional evidence and poses a fundamental question. From the tabulations given in a recent (1967) survey of the 114 results of immigrant pupils who had attended London primary schools, Vernon calculated that the mean IQ on English tests of immigrant children with less than two years in this country works out at 76, whereas for those with six years or more it is 91. 'Now', he concludes, 'there is no reason to think that the earlier arrivals were of better quality than the more recent ones, hence the 15 point differences probably represent a general improvement among the longer residents'. But of course these are average figures, and the schools have very little basis for telling which pupils are going to improve rapidly or slowly, which are potentially able, or what measures can best be taken to help the individual case.

Before considering this question further (with its obvious implications for placing an immigrant child, on which Professor Vernon has some highly critical comments), it should perhaps be emphasised that the effects of prolonged deprivation can be particularly stubborn. Of the children who left one authority's day e.s.n. special schools in 1967 only 5% left to return to ordinary schools; the number of immigrant children among these (7%) was only slightly greater than the number of native born; the number of immigrant children allowed to leave school at 15 was also only slightly greater than the number of indigenous. The effects of cultural deprivation, particularly if prolonged, can be real and lasting, and its effects constitute a true handicapping condition in that the ability to learn is seriously impaired. Though, as Professor Stephen Wiseman† has recently observed it would be foolish to ignore the genetic element in intellectual endowment: 'Intelligence is largely determined genetically. All children are not of equal educational potentiality'; recent experimental evidence and greater understanding of the nature of intelligence have made it clear that 'intelligence is a developmental concept, and the level of stimulation in the environment has a considerable effect on its development'. If this is so, and there is general support for the thesis today, then any attempt to measure purely innate potential is vain. We have, as Professor Vernon‡ observes 'no means of observing, diagnosing or measuring it. All the psychologist can do is to observe the effectiveness of the child's behaviour or thinking as developed up to that time through the interaction of the genes and stimulation provided by the environment. ... The mental schemata are constructed successively through exploration, experiment, experience, reinforcement; and if the environment does not provide the

*Philip E. Vernon: What is Potential Ability? Fifth C. S. Myers Lecture 1968, University of London Institute of Education.

†S. Wiseman: 'Educational Deprivation and Disadvantage' in Educational Research in Britain, Ed. H. J. Butchers, 1969.

‡Philip E. Vernon: Op. cit.

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necessary experience, the opportunities, the ideas and words, there can be no mental development, no intelligence'.

Intelligence tests constitute a sampling of the skills which we recognise as intelligent a sample which always tends to be biased and limited yet 'within the cultural group for which they were devised (our italics) intelligence tests are of considerable predictive value not because they are measures of basic innate potentiality, but because they sample useful mental skills'.

Vernon stated that on the whole the evidence suggests that genetic differences in brain potentiality between different groups of mankind are rather small. The detailed tests that he carried out with English boys in SE England, West Indian boys in Jamaica, and Eskimo boys in the Canadian Arctic convinced him that the differences in results in attainment and intelligence tests related directly to various aspects of their educational environment or cultural experience, and not to brain potential.

The obstacles in the way of obtaining an assessment of the abilities of immigrant children are therefore considerable. Even the way children of other ethnic groups cope with (performance tests) will depend very greatly on their previous experience with toys, blocks, pictures, drawings, etc. in their own environment. Indeed, they may have had less relevant experience than they have had with words. 'There is', Professor Vernon concludes, 'no such thing as a culture-fair test. When teachers ask about the potential ability of an immigrant child we should answer that there is no scientific way of finding out and that their best bet is to watch how the child progresses as he begins to pick up standard English and to settle into school'.

The best educational arrangement for disadvantaged immigrant children is to expose them to a good rich educational environment and to subject them to a systematic observation of their responses. This leaves the question of placement wide open. There might seem to be some justification for placing immigrant children whose attainments are low or non-existent in e.s.n. special schools as 'handicapped pupils'; the Handicapped Pupils and Special School Regulations of 1959 define educationally subnormal children as 'pupils who by reason of limited ability or other conditions resulting in educational sub-normality require some specialised form of education'. It should, however, be remembered that these Regulations are to be read in conjunction with the Education Act 1944, from which they derive their authority. The Act defines handicapped pupils as suffering from a disability of body or mind and it is questionable whether the majority of immigrants in special schools merit such a description, though clearly some will. Yet it has been clearly demonstrated that there are some immigrant children who are too dis-

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advantaged educationally to prosper in the ordinary classes of primary and secondary schools. They need special arrangements and such arrangements are now being made by a number of local authorities where their particular needs can be met, where they can be given a range of good educational experience, specialised help with their language problems in smaller groups by teachers with special understanding of their needs, and where they do not displace native born children whose needs are at least equally insistent. To argue that this is a form of segregation seems to ignore the fact that they need a specialised form of education at least until such time as they are able to take advantage of what the normal school can offer. The danger to be avoided is that placement in such a specialised unit - be it detached or linked to an ordinary school - should become permanent. Regular re-assessment of their abilities and of their response to education must be undertaken with transfer to an alternative form of education when indicated. Assessment will take various forms. 'In the case of those who have already got a fair amount of usable English the ordinary Terman-Merrill or WISC verbal tests are likely to give very good predictions a year or two ahead; and if they can be repeated or even group tests given to rather older pupils of, say, 10 years upwards, the trend of performance should show whether they have already reached their limit or might improve still further.'* When these pupils have a reasonable command of English, individual intelligence tests such as Terman-Merrill or WISC tests will give useful predictions particularly if repeated after an interval of time. Non-verbal tests, as previously suggested, have been found to be rather less reliable. Continuing observation of a child's response to school tasks may prove to be the most reliable of all. Professor Vernon concludes that 'the best answer ... is that the psychologist should attempt to give quite a wide range of varied tests, verbal and non-verbal, including any that he can get across to the particular pupil and should simultaneously obtain a detailed case study of the pupil's background, education and linguistic history, present situation and behaviour. If the test scores are interpreted in the light of the handicaps that had been ascertained, it should be possible to make a clinical diagnosis of likely progress .... In other words there is no simple mechanical solution to the problem ...'

No tests are in fact decisive - nor can educational decisions be made on them with complete confidence, but they can and do give useful clues to areas of disadvantage and help to make inferences possible on the basis of indications given.

There are important elements that will help the education of the immigrant in a special school and indeed in other schools too: good home/school relations,

*Philip E. Vernon: Op. cit.

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efforts to involve parents constructively in the education of their children, a rather more generous pupil/teacher ratio, warm personal relationships, adequate ancillary help, rich educational experience and the language to clothe them in, good auditory and visual experience - all are essential, together with special expertise in meeting learning difficulties that can be provided by skilled teachers. Not least is the therapeutic experience of achieving success and esteem within the school community.

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6 The contribution of initial training and of the in-service training of teachers

Introduction

The education and training of a teacher is not a once and for all experience, but a continuing process in which initial (or pre-service) training, undertaken as a general rule between the ages of 18 and 22, is but the first and shorter part. The second, in-service training, is an on-going process compounded of experience in the field and of further study extending throughout a teacher's professional life.

This distinction is particularly important in relation to training for the teaching of immigrant children, who, though they form only a small proportion of the total school population, are concentrated strongly in particular areas of the country. This means that the proportion of newly qualified teachers likely to meet substantial numbers of immigrant children in their first teaching posts is small, possibly as low as 15%, and that many training establishments (colleges and university departments of education) are remote from areas of immigrant concentration and cannot easily arrange for their students to have contact with immigrant children during teaching practice or otherwise.

Many complex demands are made on the training course and it would be impracticable to attempt to ensure that all newly qualified teachers had received a training which would equip them to take charge of classes including a substantial immigrant population immediately on entering schools. If, however, this is so, there is a correspondingly greater obligation on employing authorities and others to ensure that newly qualified teachers are not given posts involving contact with immigrant children unless either they have received appropriate initial training or are given a special induction into the teaching problems associated with immigrant children. In-service training has therefore a particular importance in this context. Moreover, the special needs of immigrant children can be expected to change with a developing situation, and the preparation of the teaching profession to cope with them will need to rely heavily on in-service training for this reason also.

These factors were recognised in the discussions leading up to the recommendations of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants set down later in this chapter and are reflected in the pattern of training which has subsequently developed, particularly in colleges of education.

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Initial training

The year 1966 makes a convenient starting point for considering the work of the colleges on behalf of immigrant children. This arbitrary choice should not be taken to suggest that the problem did not exist before that date, nor to imply that colleges did not devote attention to it until then. A few far-seeing colleges had made the education of immigrant children a feature of their courses long before that date, but they represented a small minority. By 1966, however, numerous widely differing but equally compelling factors were converging to bring about a change in outlook and intent.

In that year two independent surveys of college work in this particular field were undertaken, one by the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, and the other by HM Inspectors on behalf of the Department. Both covered roughly the same period of time and both indicated that relatively few colleges were yet running or intending to introduce optional courses of a substantial nature in the field of immigrant education. The NCCI estimate was 15%. Information available from both sources at that time suggested that perhaps 3 out of every 10 colleges included in its curriculum some discussion of immigrant education or of life in a multi-racial society, usually by means of a brief course, often of no more than a day's duration, and open to a large number of students. Most, though certainly not all, of the colleges showing deep concern and considerable activity were situated in high density areas or in areas where the influx of immigrants was increasing. Equally, however, the surveys revealed a growing awareness of the urgency of the problem and of the special responsibility which rests upon those who train young teachers, especially if they are likely to meet immigrant children either on teaching practice or in their first post.

In 1966 the prime need was, therefore, to provide a forum for discussion, so that colleges might consider their position and learn from each other. In this the NCCI took energetic action and, with the co-operation of the Department, HM Inspectors and the ATCDE, organised a fruitful exploratory Seminar at Edge Hill College in January 1967. About half of those who attended were college lecturers. Others were teachers, administrators and inspectors. Discussion ranged over the whole field of initial and in-service training. A statement issued by the NCCI after this Seminar made, among others, the following three assertions about initial training:

i. No Teacher-Training Institution can now contract out from this problem (the multi-cultural society and the education of immigrant children) and retain an easy conscience. Its students may well take up their posts in Birmingham or London.

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ii. ALL students should be given the opportunity to study this problem during their training.

iii. SOME students should be encouraged through concentrated study and practice perhaps by means of optional courses, to develop an advanced degree of relevant knowledge and skills.

These activities did much to encourage the colleges to extend and intensify their own efforts. Other factors exercised a similar influence. First, the colleges themselves, having surmounted the simultaneous problems of changing from a two to a three year course, of a shift in the balance of training to concentrate on primary work and of massive expansion, were at last in a position to turn their thoughts to a more systematic examination of the content of courses. Second, the pattern of immigration showing, as it did, heavy concentration in certain areas, focused attention on the difficulties experienced by immigrant children present in some schools in very large numbers. Schools in the high density areas had special and pressing needs. Lecturers and students met immigrant children with increasing frequency on school practice. The realisation that some of these students might, at the age of 21, find themselves in charge of racially mixed classes calculated to tax the ability of experienced teachers, gave added urgency to the problem in the eyes of lecturers. Help to students in acquiring the considerable skills and the understanding needed to teach immigrant children presupposes knowledge and skill on the part of college tutors themselves. Here a third factor came into play. Colleges have

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recently been able to recruit to their staffs, in greater number than before, tutors with overseas experience, and to send tutors abroad under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Overseas Development.* It is now not uncommon to find, especially in larger colleges, a significant number of tutors with overseas experience. Moreover, as time goes by, more teachers or Head Teachers with experience of teaching immigrant children in school are joining the staffs of colleges as tutors. Fourth, the increasing importance attached to the study of linguistics is a favourable factor. It fixes attention on problems of communication and is gradually providing more experts to tackle it. In addition some colleges have either appointed a lecturer with qualifications in teaching English as a second language (although they are hard to come by) or have seconded a lecturer for up to a year to gain a qualification. Apart from this, college lecturers have attended, and seem to be increasingly attending, short courses organised in the field of immigrant education either by the Department or by other agencies. Finally, the presence in some colleges of Commonwealth Bursars, sponsored by the Ministry of Overseas Development,* exercises an influence on both the student body and the staff of the colleges concerned. These then are some of the factors which have brought about increased involvement of colleges in the field of immigrant education. The position now, when compared with 1966, reveals remarkable development, even although there are still unresolved problems, aspects of the work which undoubtedly merit greater attention and places where much more could be done.

Shortly before its transformation into the Community Relations Commission the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants carried out a second survey of work in the college field, by issuing to all colleges in England and Wales a detailed questionnaire which was returned by 113 colleges. At the same time, between September 1968 and April 1969, and again independently for Departmental purposes, HM Inspectors also set on foot an enquiry into the present position in order to establish what progress had been made. By courtesy of the Community Relations Commission the response to the NCCI questionnaire was made available to HM Inspectorate through work and discussion with Mr. P.K.C. Millins, Principal of Edge Hill College and Chairman of the Teacher Training and Curriculum Group of the Community Relations Commission. For this friendly co-operation the Department is grateful. It enabled facts to be checked and it helped to fill in many details. This chapter contains material gathered from both sources. Nevertheless, the opinions expressed and the interpretations offered in this chapter do not commit the Community Relations Commission, nor do they necessarily reflect their views.

The work of the colleges in preparing students to teach immigrant children contains two main elements, one concerned chiefly with attitudes, the other

*Now the Overseas Development Administration.

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with knowledge and skills. A student should honestly examine the premise that a multi-cultural society in twentieth century Britain is both right and natural. If his attitude to a racially mixed class is wrong, no amount of knowledge, no mastery of techniques will make him effective as a teacher of immigrant children. Conversely, right attitudes alone are not enough when a teacher faces a group of non-English speaking children. The knowledge and the skills associated with the education of immigrant children are his essential stock-in-trade. Consequently, many colleges rightly attempt to combine both elements in their teaching, although the emphasis may vary according, for example, to the expertise of the staff or to the opportunities for practical experience which the neighbourhood of the college affords. But, in addition, the second element alone, the knowledge and skills necessary in teaching immigrant children, is itself extremely complex. It demands a more than superficial acquaintance with the various cultures in which immigrant children have their roots and an understanding of the state of mind of a child who has been either uprooted from a familiar environment or else born into an environment with which his parents may not yet have come to terms. Beside all that there is the hardly less important question of teaching techniques and information about sources from which help may be obtained. Moreover, the question of communication is of fundamental significance. It involves not only knowledge about teaching English as a second language to non-English speaking children, but also a grasp of the special difficulties which beset the English speaking immigrant whose vernacular differs from our own. Without this understanding the teacher may unwittingly arouse a sense of injustice in a child, by censuring as 'wrong' an expression which is correct in the child's own form of English.

Manifestly no college can hope to achieve all this with students beginning a three year general course of study at the age of 18. All a college can try to do, in this as in many other aspects of its work, is to send out educated young men and women of 21 or 22 with an introduction to some of the problems involved in teaching immigrants, with basic confidence in their personal relations with them gained through teaching in a controlled situation, with a right attitude to children and, above all, with a clear realisation that they have only begun to learn about teaching and a strong desire to go on learning. At this point inservice training should take over.

How, then, are the colleges now tackling this task? How, and why, does their involvement vary? Almost all appear to accept that they have a serious responsibility towards their students and the schools in matters concerned with immigrant education, more particularly with race relations. Both the NCCI and the Department surveys suggest that 30% of the colleges in the country, most

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but not all of them in areas where immigrants are strongly represented and where appropriate practical experience is therefore available to students, are now deeply involved in this work. This compares very favourable with the 15% which, according to the NCCI 1966 report, 'had organised or were intending to organise during the 1966-67 session specific sustained courses'. Most of the 'deeply involved' colleges now run much more than one sustained course and do work ranging well beyond the confines of the college. Besides the colleges which are 'deeply involved', a further 60% of colleges, as compared with 30% in the NCCI survey three years ago, are doing some work of a general nature with some or all of their students, either in race relations or the education of immigrant children, or both. This work may be a specific course, or it may be integrated into the normal work of a department, for example English or Education. It may attract only a very slender amount of time, or the college may be well on the way to deep involvement. The significant facts are that some 90% of colleges feel it incumbent upon them to make a contribution in this field and that in a growing number there is now work of considerable scope.

It is not the purpose of this chapter to commend the practice of some colleges, still less to imply criticism of others. As has already been pointed out, the extent to which colleges can or should involve themselves in this field depends much on geographical circumstances. Moreover it would be unwise to conclude that a student who has followed a course specifically called 'The Education of Immigrant Children' for three weeks, six weeks or even a term in the second or third year of study is necessarily better equipped to teach in Birmingham or Leeds than a contemporary from another college who has not been offered such a course but who has repeatedly had his attention drawn to questions of race relations and the education of immigrant children as a recurring theme in the courses he has followed for three years in Education, through work in Sociology, Psychology, Child Development, special educational problems, basic English and the like. Such work may be 'incidental' in that it occurs from time to time in wider contexts, but it can be systematic and well organised if the tutors concerned work as a team. The aim of what follows is therefore not to compare course with course, or to suggest that one approach is better than another but rather to indicate the various patterns that emerge from a study of the material available, so that colleges may perhaps discover from each other new ways of solving intricate problems.

In some colleges work on race relations and the education of immigrant children reaches all the students in a given year group because the subject arises in the context of the Education course, and possibly other subjects as well. In this case the emphasis laid upon the topic may be considerable, as

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when tutors deliberately combine to undertake the work. Equally, however, it may be more than a peripheral topic, dealt with cursorily as occasion serves. In other colleges all students are involved because a special course in this area is offered to them at a particular point in their three years of study. On the whole it seems that specific courses for all students in a year group tend to be short and do not aspire to offer the chance of study in depth. Frequently the Education Department is the agent, and the course consists of lectures followed by discussion. It may be a 'crash course' lasting, full-time, for anything from two days to a week or it may be a series of lectures at intervals over a term. Colleges regard such courses as no more than an introduction to the field and some reinforce them by optional courses, described later in this chapter, offering the opportunity of work in greater depth.

In some colleges, however, it appears that all students have more than a brief introductory course. In one the education of immigrants figures in various curriculum courses in the first and second years. In another a morning a week for a term is given to this topic by all second year students. Elsewhere, the education of immigrants forms part of a course on 'contemporary studies', lasting three terms, and topics such as 'Modern World Studies' or 'Comparative Education' fulfil a similar function. A college in an area where students do not meet any immigrant children at all on school practice includes, in the second and third years of the course, talks by teachers working in a high density area among a series of lectures on 'special problems'. In yet another college all second year students take an introductory course on teaching English as a second language, comprising tutorials, seminars and practical work. In another, the teaching of English to immigrants is run as a course for all in the third year. It is probably broadly true to say that substantial work offered to a whole year is most commonly found in high density areas, where students are bound to meet immigrant children in schools, and that some day colleges in those areas, catering for older students who will teach locally, lay particular emphasis upon it. This is as it should be.

In addition to work of the kind just described it is common practice for colleges to hold occasional short conferences on matters of particular current interest. Race relations and the education of immigrants are topics of high priority in this connexion. Such conferences are usually open to a year or to the whole college. Some colleges invite teachers to attend and one is known to throw such conferences open to the public. The initiative for such conferences often comes from the Students' Union, and it is interesting to find that some Students' Unions have pressed for substantial courses as well. Sometimes the original impulse comes jointly from staff and students, and the conference is organised as a collaborative staff/student effort. In those colleges which as

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yet do no formal work in the field of immigrant education, either because of their geographical position or for some other cause, this type of conference may be the students' only introduction to the education of immigrants. Nevertheless, a conference of this kind, staffed by experts and replacing for one or two days the normal routine of college work, can make an impact that should not be under-rated. Only very occasionally does a college say that attendance at such a conference was poor. Most report considerable support.

Courses and conferences aimed at a large audience are, by their very nature, general in character. Study in depth, which is usually voluntary, involves tutorial work and necessitates smaller groups. These vary in size from college to college, a figure between 15 and 25 being probably the most common. On a rough estimate some 70 to 75 colleges are now either running or planning to run optional courses offering study in depth on various aspects of the education of immigrants. These courses are usually fairly long, lasting a term or a year. One or two continue for two years and are full subsidiary courses. One college introduced, in September 1970, a three year Main Course in community relations with special reference to the education of immigrant children and the children of minority groups. These optional courses are often available to second year students but are found predominantly in the third year of the college course when the students have the accumulated experience of two years' study and practical work on which to draw. As a whole colleges seem to consider this to be the right stage at which to introduce the study of specific topics in depth. A few, however, in areas of exceptionally high density, perforce begin earlier, because their students will meet immigrant children as soon as they enter a school. Some colleges 'phase' work on immigrant children, introducing the topic early and reverting to it later when the students are older and more experienced.

Optional courses cover a wide field, dealing with one or more of the following closely inter-related topics: race relations; the teaching of English as a second language; the sociological and pedagogical aspects of the education of immigrant children; the differing cultural backgrounds from which immigrant children come. There is, however, a significant body of opinion in English colleges which holds that work in depth on the teaching of English as a second language is better left to in-service training. This is, of course, not true of colleges in Wales, where bi-lingualism is a live issue and a real demand. It is therefore natural for Welsh colleges to concentrate on bi-lingualism and the teaching of English as a second language. This fact was recognised by the University of Wales School of Education when it instituted a Certificate in Bilingual Method, open to all Welsh-speaking students. Usually about one-fifth of all the students who qualify as teachers each year from the eight general

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colleges in Wales gain this Certificate, more than half coming from two colleges. Thus the Welsh colleges, which send many young teachers to England, can play a significant part in helping teachers to grasp the problems of communication which beset immigrant children.

In addition to optional courses which deal specifically with the education of immigrants, other optional courses overlap this field. While not setting out to produce students who have specialised, these courses will nevertheless help students who find themselves in charge of a racially mixed class. Such options as Education of Youth, Backwardness, Remedial Education, Compensatory Education, Depressed Areas, Problems of World Poverty, Contemporary Society - to quote only some examples - can claim to be related in some of their parts to the subject with which this pamphlet deals. One college in a low density area reckons that the Education of Immigrants option which it offers, and two other overlapping options, together reach one-third of the students in their last year at college. This leaves out of account work integral to educational studies throughout the three years.

In fact it is not difficult to interest students in the special problems of educating immigrant children. The initiative shown by students in running conferences and reports from some colleges that immigrant options are always fully and sometimes over-subscribed support this view. Student involvement is further illustrated by the number who choose some aspects of race relations or of immigrant education as their 'special study' which many Institutes require as part of the final examination. It is natural that students in high density areas should often select this field. It is more surprising, but by no means unusual, to find some aspect of the education of immigrants selected by a group or by individual students at a college in an area where there are no immigrants. Sometimes the student's home is in a high density area and the college has encouraged him to gain relevant experience through vacation practice, study and enquiry, thus advancing his experience independently beyond what the college itself can offer.

The development in some colleges of an inter-departmental and team approach is of considerable significance. Whereas a few years ago work on immigrant education was usually the responsibility of a single tutor, probably engaged mainly upon other work, it is becoming increasingly common to find tutors from different departments such as Education (and its component disciplines), Divinity, English, History, Geography, French, Music, Art, Drama, involved in this work. This is good, in that it fosters inter-departmental co-operation; good also because it demonstrates to students that the welfare of immigrant children at school is not the special interest or, it might be, hobby-horse of one

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lecturer, but that it is a matter of common concern. Above all, co-operation is good because it helps students to see the college course as a coherent whole. In the already overcrowded curriculum, extra activities and additional courses find a place only at the expense of other topics of equal importance. If, therefore, race relations and the education of immigrants can be seen, not in isolation as separate and urgent topics for which room must be found, but as having their acknowledged and rightful place in the thought and work of several departments acting in collaboration, the college course may acquire added cohesion, and the education of immigrant children might cease to feature as a 'problem' and be seen as a natural part of a larger whole. This, surely, is as it should be, since all departments in a college have an interest in what happens to immigrant children at school and all can certainly contribute to their growth.

A basic principle of concurrent training in colleges of education is that work in lecture room, tutorial room, laboratory, workshop and library should be closely linked at every stage to practical experience with children. To this principle English educational thought has long been committed in the training of teachers for younger and also for less able older children. In the field of immigrant education this principle would seem to have special relevance. Here, as elsewhere, student attitudes must be taken into account. The fact that race relations and questions of prejudice are involved makes the need for practical experience imperative. Prejudice, so often based on ignorance and fear of the unknown, may be countered by direct knowledge and practical experience. One or two colleges have set out to assess the attitudes of students. One is devising sensitivity tests, another circulates a questionnaire to students in their first and again in their third year to evaluate developing attitudes. Another, though not undertaking a systematic analysis, notes that while students want to make a positive contribution both in school and in the community, they nevertheless 'tend to be quite afraid of coloured children and are very nervous if they have sizeable groups of them in their classes, especially large groups of boys'. A deeper analysis of what might turn out to be ambivalent attitudes could be of great use. Meanwhile, many colleges are in some doubt as to how they can best help their students to gain effective experience. Should confidence be built up gradually or should the student be plunged into this work and even be himself subjected to cultural shock by means of simulation exercises? Few, if any, colleges seem to be in a position to resolve this dilemma to their own satisfaction. In high density areas the student has to take the situation as he finds it when his first practice begins. In this he is on balance, perhaps fortunate, because he gains confidence in a variety of controlled situations, through observation, group work and activities with individual children, both in the classroom and in informal situations

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outside school. On the whole, colleges in high density areas have little difficulty in establishing contacts. One Birmingham college is in contact with the Sparkbrook Association and with the local Community Relations officer in Birmingham. Students at another have the benefit of working at the city's Centre for English as a second language. Lecturers from another are on the local committee of the Schools Council Project. Other colleges, both in the Birmingham Institute area and elsewhere, run successful four term courses for immigrant teachers and appear to be, in themselves, harmonious multi-racial societies. One London college was closely associated with the Leeds Project in Haringey. Informal links with immigrants formed in most colleges in areas of heavy concentration include work in Youth Clubs and Playgrounds, informal evening classes in English with adult immigrants, teaching English to Indian and Pakistani mothers in their homes and, in the case of one college, the organisation of a summer camp on the college campus for native children and immigrants. Other colleges run Saturday morning clubs to which immigrant children come. All agree that, in organising contacts of this kind for and by their students, it is essential to avoid any impression of 'do-goodery'. The greatest advantage accrues to the student teachers themselves.

Even in an area of heavy concentration, however, practice is not automatically possible. If an Authority does not pursue a dispersal policy immigrant children may be concentrated in relatively few schools. One college mentions this specifically as an obstacle to securing appropriate practice for all its students. By no means all colleges, however, are in, or close to, areas of heavy concentration. This is particularly true of Wales where immigration and the problems of social integration have not so far presented any problem. Therefore the recent development of sociology courses helps to provide the Welsh student with the introduction he needs in this field. But a number of English colleges are similarly situated. Some are in country areas or seaside towns where there are few or no immigrant children in the schools. One or two colleges are remotely situated. For all of these, school practice can already present serious problems. They may have to use predominantly small rural schools for practice, or schools in pleasant country towns. They are therefore already concerned for the welfare of students who, having practised in agreeable surroundings and in 'easy' schools, find themselves in educational priority areas on taking up their first appointments. Cases are on record where a student, faced with precisely this situation has, despite good success in the classroom while at college, either subsequently failed probation or withdrawn from teaching altogether within a year. Both on practical grounds, therefore, and because the principle of concurrent training lies at the heart of their work, colleges in low density areas are worried by their inability to give their students practical experience of work with immigrant children, if they include this area of study in the college course.

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For this reason some have been understandably reluctant to embark upon optional courses at all. Others, conscious that their students may teach in Leeds or London, have established courses and devised ingenious means of securing a modicum of appropriate experience for their students. The success of their efforts varies greatly. Vacation practice may be undertaken by students whose homes are in high density areas. Th is helps, but it is not a complete answer for vacation practice is, in the nature of things, short and often unsupervised. Some colleges take students on visits, lasting usually up to a week, to high density areas where they see work in progress in language centres and schools. Such visits are extremely valuable but they give insight rather than afford practice. One northern college has indeed sent its students on an extended practical experiment in the Birmingham area, with good success. There may be other cases of similar experimental work, but they are the exception. A few colleges have succeeded in arranging, or are trying to arrange, an exchange practice with a college in a high density area, or to secure places in such areas, but for every college which achieves such an exchange there is likely to be at least one other which has tried to forge a link of this kind and failed. Vicarious experience, through films, talks from practising teachers and similar devices, seems to be all that has been open to some students following optional courses in low density areas. At least one college asks ex-students in their probationary year who are teaching immigrants to return to college for discussion with students still in training.

The difficulty about appropriate practical experience extends also to that contact with immigrant children on an informal level outside school which can be such a useful means of building up confidence. These problems are central to the whole issue of the part which initial training courses can play or ought to play in the field of immigrant education. Individual colleges cannot all be expected to resolve them successfully, and action at Institute level, or by co-operation between Institutes, is needed in some cases.

The contribution of Institutes to in-service training is described below. In the context of initial training Nottingham Institute has organised at least one conference for Colleges of Education and the Newcastle Institute has an active inter-college committee. The Newcastle/Durham combined conference for senior students also dealt recently with the education of immigrant children. These are examples of what is being and could be done. The invaluable work done by members of the Schools Council Project at Leeds University Institute of Education has already been mentioned. Their work, intended primarily to serve the schools, has been of great value to colleges as well, since members of the Leeds team are generous of their time as speakers on college courses and at conferences, and recently organised in july 1969, in conjunction with

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the Community Relations Commission, a well attended week's course for college lecturers on various aspects of immigrant education.

University departments of education train 11% of intending teachers. These are graduates whose professional training lasts one year only. Most of them intend to teach in secondary schools. In the majority of the post-graduate initial training courses no specific provision is made to prepare students for work with immigrant children. Among reasons given for this are the shortness of the course and the lack of immigrant children in some areas. Although most departments are unable to make much specific provision references to the problem of immigrant children arise both in tutorial discussions and in relation to teaching practice where the problem is being met by students in the schools. In some departments, specific provision is being made either as part of a general course of study, like sociology of education, or education in society; or as an optional short lecture course, or topic group course. In one instance of the latter, 30 to 40 students chose this topic, taken by the teacher of the Commonwealth Bursars' course. The work covered both general background, and the way this may affect performance in school, and the teaching of English to immigrant children. In some cases also provision is being made for a group of students to be posted to schools with immigrant children, so as to get firsthand experience of the problems. University departments of education are concerned with the same problem in advanced courses, in-service training and research. Some departments admit interested students on initial training courses to their in-service courses.

In-service training

The opening paragraphs of this chapter make plain the Department's views on the relationship of initial and in-service training in the context of the education of immigrants. In a subject so wide and with such important implications for the future, it is clear that initial training, wherever it is given, can usually provide only an introduction. Experience should deepen the teachers' understanding but in-service training has a vital part to play in fitting him more fully for his task. And in-service studies should begin as soon as pre-service training ends. When asked, students invariably say that they would welcome immediate in-service work in this field. The moment when a young teacher first stands before a racially mixed class as the teacher in charge is the moment when in-service courses can have a dramatic effect. At present only four or five colleges of education are taking an active part in in-service training in this field and a few others are planning courses. The major effort in the provision of induction courses rightly rests, however, with local education authorities, and any account of in-service training facilities for teachers involved in the education of immigrants would be incomplete if it failed to refer to the variety

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of relevant courses, conferences, seminars and meetings which they have organised in recent years. Some of these have already been described in Chapter 3.

It is difficult even quantitatively to determine the extent of involvement of teachers in in-service training. An enquiry undertaken by the Statistics Division of the Department has shown that during the academic year 1966/67 over 7,800 courses were provided specifically for teachers, and that the aggregate initial attendance was 290,000. A parallel enquiry undertaken at Manchester University showed that about 42% of school teachers had attended courses in the same year. It should be noted that a substantial proportion of these courses, perhaps one-third, consisted of single lectures or conferences comprising discrete training events. Local education authorities provided almost 70% of all courses, most of them, however, being of fairly short duration. Turning from the general to the particular, it becomes even more difficult to assess the quantitative and qualitative contribution, to inservice training of courses provided by local education authorities and others for teachers of immigrant children. During the period September 1964 to August 1967 about 1% of teachers in English County Boroughs had attended courses in the teaching of immigrants. A study made in mid-1968 of reports from HM Inspectors working in the areas (then 40-45 in number) known to have a substantial immigrant school population indicated that about one-half only of the local education authorities concerned had organised courses for their teachers of immigrant children. It should be borne in mind, however, that many courses concerned with more general aspects of education, and especially with the relations between the school. the family and the community, frequently include some treatment of the teaching or the social problems of immigrant children. In the enquiry undertaken at Manchester University in 1967, teachers were asked to name courses that they would choose to attend in future 'if all circumstances were convenient' and almost 4% included the teaching of immigrants among the topics they indicated.

There still remain a significant number of teachers engaged in the teaching of immigrant pupils who have not attended a course of any kind on the education of immigrants, and there is a continuing and pressing need for an increase in the number of appropriate in-service courses organised by local education authorities. Those authorities who have appointed advisers or organisers for the education of immigrants, with responsibilities for the in-service training of teachers, have, for the most part, been able to arrange a consistent programme of training. Nor must be overlooked the valuable contribution to in-service training implicit in the growing involvement of teachers of immigrant children in curriculum development work and in the production of teaching materials

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at Teachers' Centres set up by an increasing number of local education authorities in various parts of the country. Their efforts in this field have resulted in some cases from encouragement offered by local branches of ATEPO or by relevant Schools Council projects, or have been stimulated by their own growing interest in, and concern for, the educational welfare of their immigrant pupils.

Several of the University Institutes of Education have contributed to in-service work on the education of immigrant children. Leeds has organised a number of substantial part-time courses on which such topics as the Teaching of Immigrant Children, The Teaching of Oral English to Immigrant Children, and put on a conference on the employment of coloured immigrant school-leavers. London has run similar part-time courses. The Oxford Department of Education has appointed an adviser in this field. For some time it has run seminars lasting for two or three terms. Those provided so far have been: The Immigrant Child in School (problems of learning and socialisation); Human Relations in a Multi-Racial Society, The Anatomy of Prejudice. The Reading Institute has run several part-time courses lasting up to eight weeks, and some intensive courses of a week's duration. At least four more institutes have run conferences or set up working parties.

Other substantial and valuable contributions to the in-service training of teachers of immigrant children are made by a variety of organisations directly or indirectly connected with education. Mention has already been made elsewhere of the relevant courses, conferences, seminars and meetings held by voluntary and other organisations. The contribution of the British Broadcasting Corporation and of Independent Television in this field has been considerable. The National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Schoolmasters in their national and regional conferences have both recognised the importance of offering help and advice to their members in questions relating to the education of immigrants. A number of colleges and institutes of education have organised meetings and seminars in this same field. The College of Preceptors has arranged courses for teachers concerned with the education of children and people from cultures other than our own and have produced important reports about this problem. A three-day residential course on 'Teaching Immigrant Children' held by the Advisory Centre for Education at Cambridge in April 1967 is an example of the kind of activities in this field which a number of similar bodies have organised and continue to organise.

The contribution made to teacher training in the immigrant field by the Royal Society of Arts should not be overlooked. Its Certificate in the Teaching of English as a Second Language is designed primarily for teachers in further

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education establishments, but has proved of value also to teachers of older immigrant pupils and students. The Department has consistently offered encouragement to the Royal Society of Arts in this work. In 1967, when the first examination was held, there were 56 candidates. In 1968 the total was 107. In 1969, 7 establishments in this country entered a total of 132 candidates. Provision is also made for examining external candidates. The Society is now planning to offer certificate courses especially suited to the needs of teachers of immigrant children in schools.

Trinity College of Music, too, has conducted examinations in spoken English for foreign students for 30 years. It also offers a Teachers' Licentiate Diploma in English as a second language. The examination for this Diploma consists of 3 hours' written test, a 15 minute oral examination and a 40 minute classroom practice test in which the candidate is required to teach in front of an examiner. The Department provides annually a programme of 200 short courses for teachers and others engaged in the education service in England and Wales. For many years an annual Department Short Course on the Teaching of English as a Second Language has concentrated on the problems that confront teachers of immigrants. Since 1966 the annual Commonwealth Course has concerned itself with immigration and the background of children from India, Pakistan and the West Indies. Different areas are highlighted in successive years, so that the topics can be treated in some depth.

In June 1968, following visits to schools in immigrant areas, the then Secretary of State emphasised the importance to immigrant children of learning English and requested that immediate steps be taken, particularly through in-service training courses, to help improve teachers' effectiveness in imparting English to immigrant children. To implement this request 14 short courses on the Teaching of English to Immigrants were organised for the period january 1969 to january 1971. These courses aimed at offering practical help to teachers at all levels in the educational system. Thus some of these courses were directed specifically towards the needs of teachers of very young immigrant children aged 3-8 years, others aimed at helping teachers of immigrants in the primary school or in the secondary school, two were intended for teachers of immigrant pupils aged 9-16 years, while two others were concerned with the teaching of English as a Second or Foreign Language to adults. Two courses in the series concentrated on the provision of books, equipment and materials necessary for teaching English to immigrants. Throughout the courses there was emphasis on the background problems arising from the different cultures from which the immigrants come, so that linguistic problems were not handled out of context.

The Department intends to organise two study visits to India and Jamaica respectively in 1971 for groups of teachers, college of education lectures and

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local education authority advisers who are closely involved in the education of immigrant children. The purpose of the visits will be to enable participants to study some of the backgrounds from which immigrant children come. To enable suitably qualified individuals to take part the joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Social Service Trust have generously agreed to contribute towards the costs of the overseas journeys.

In addition, two different kinds of longer courses relevant to the education of immigrants have been approved by the Department for the secondment of teachers on full salary. These courses are described in detail in Teachers' Course List No. 1, published annually by the Department.

One-term courses for in-service teachers on the teaching of English as a second language have been sponsored by the Department from 1966 onwards. These have been under-subscribed and one or two have had to be discontinued. The remaining two courses take place at Edge Hill College of Education in Ormskirk and at the Wolverhampton Teachers' College for Day Students and are specifically aimed at meeting the needs of teachers of immigrant children. The linguistic needs of the children are set in the context of human development. The social fabric of some areas of origin is studied, as well as the social psychology of prejudice and the conditions of living, the norms and values in areas of mixed racial groups in Britain. There is considerable emphasis on effective ways of developing pupils' control of English in the light of modern linguistic principles and techniques, and on relevant problems of school curriculum and organisation.

There are three one-year special advanced courses, leading to the award of a diploma in the teaching of English as a second or foreign or auxiliary language: these are held at Bangor, the London Institute and Manchester. The emphasis in all of these is more specifically linguistic, and the courses are not slanted to have a precise bearing on the problems of teaching immigrants. They do, however, provide the essential linguistic foundations for the enlightened teaching of English to non-English speakers of different kinds.

Although attendance at the courses listed in the preceding four paragraphs has been reasonably satisfactory it has not been overwhelming, perhaps because of financial stringency affecting local education authorities. The supply of courses could be quickly augmented if the effective demand existed.

Immigrant teachers in England

Concern in the teacher training establishments has not been confined solely to the education of immigrant children. The position of the immigrant teacher

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has not been forgotten. The number of immigrants entering the three-year course at colleges of education, after completing secondary education in this country, is still very small, but there is now a trickle of adequately qualified candidates, and it is hoped that their number will increase. In the meantime, attention has been directed to the man or woman who qualified in his country of origin and then came here as an immigrant, perhaps after several years, or even many, years of teaching experience at home. In order to practise as qualified teachers in this country immigrant teachers, from whatever country or continent they come, must first, in common with anyone entering the profession after training in this country, seek qualified teacher status. If this status is provisionally granted by the Department they may then seek appointment on equal terms with any other qualified applicant. Some immigrant teachers have done so, obtaining initial appointments and completing a probationary period satisfactorily. Others have doubted the adequacy of their spoken English or their grasp of current teaching methods and have either not sought teaching posts or have been unable to give satisfactory service. There is no means of estimating with any accuracy the size of this group. However, in 1965, discussions began with the Leeds Institute and the Margaret McMillan College in Bradford, as a result of which a four-term course designed to meet the needs of immigrant teachers holding qualified teacher status was established. In 1966 similar courses were established at Whitelands College, in conjunction with the West London College of Commerce, at Wolverhampton Teachers' College for Day Students and at Nottingham University Institute of Education. Two further courses, at the University of Leicester School of Education and at the City of Coventry College, began in 1968 and 1969. In all, at the six centres, 15 courses have either been held or are in progress, involving some 320 students.

Immigrant teachers attending these courses are carefully selected in order to minimise the risk of failure. They attend on grant, or on salary if seconded by a local education authority. They study alongside the English students but follow courses which concentrate on those areas of study where they need special help: spoken English, the English social background and educational system, the approach to teaching, and curriculum work. They experience supervised teaching practice in the same way as other students. The principals and tutors concerned with these courses have met from time to time for an exchange of their views, either independently or under the auspices of the Department. Experience shows that the demand for places in these courses is sustained and they are serving a useful purpose. Though there have been cases of failure to stay the course or to pass probation satisfactorily, evidence suggests that most immigrant teachers on these courses have been helped, by the work they have done, to settle to a useful professional life in this country.

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Conclusions

Experience over recent years indicates that although there has been growth, there are a number of limitations to be accepted and unresolved problems still to be faced. Some of them are implicit in what has been said above, but it may be convenient to spell them out. First. as regards initial training, the proportion of young teachers who will teach substantial numbers of immigrant children in their first post is comparatively low and, apart from those students who have a clear vocation for this work, they cannot be identified in advance. Except in high contact areas it is therefore difficult to know at whom courses dealing with specific techniques in teaching immigrants should be aimed as distinct from work designed to produce harmonious relations in a multi-cultural society - which should form part of the education of all young teachers. Second, it is not practicable to arrange teaching experience or other contact with immigrant children for students in some areas. The third problem, touched upon earlier, perhaps needs some elaboration. Since Education is a title large enough to include every field of knowledge, this subject is constantly exposed to the danger of fresh accretions. To regard race relations and the education of immigrant children as yet another of these is to encourage still further the erroneous belief that the central core of the college of education course is a convenient rag-bag always open to receive extra material. Many colleges, frustrated by just this situation, are reviewing their Education courses and their curriculum work to give them greater cohesion and to relate them more closely to Main subjects. Here is an excellent opportunity to include the education of immigrants, whether it features for all students or as an option for some, as an integral part of a co-ordinated whole. Such an approach brings with it the advantages of team work and avoids the suggestion of missionary zeal which sometimes accompanies isolated endeavour. Fourth, colleges generally might perhaps investigate more closely whether they are sufficiently exploiting the help of voluntary liaison groups, of local community resources and of national organisations. The information available gives some evidence of this, but less than might be expected. Fifth, the need for closer relationships between colleges and schools is rightly being stressed nowadays. Many colleges, inexperienced in the field of immigrant education, have proved how fruitful such co-operation can be. It is encouraging to hear of one college where teachers on an in-service course elected to attend the 'immigrant option' with students and of 'immigrant options' run by colleges in conjunction with local schools. Sixth, colleges might explore the possibility of making available, towards the end of the summer term or in vacation, accommodation for camps for immigrant children, which their students might help to organise. Seventh, there is a real need for factual information about the number of students who actually teach immigrants in their first post. If colleges were to collect such information over a few years (as one college has done for one

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year) they would be better able to judge how much attention they ought to be giving to this aspect of the training they offer.

It is clear from what has been written above that information about the nature and extent of in-service training in the education of immigrant children is for understandable reasons far from complete. Nevertheless, given the important role which in-service training must play in this context and the rather disappointing response to the courses which have been provided, it seems doubtful whether LEAs and schools have yet considered sufficiently the need to develop a more coherent pattern of in-service training directed towards the problems of educating immigrant children. Certainly it would be helpful if more colleges of education could be involved in such in-service work.

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7 The situation in further education

The further education service

It is estimated that some 10,000 15-year-old immigrants leave school each year (out of a total of some 700,000 in England and Wales) and that this proportion will rise to about 40,000 out of 800,000 ten years hence. For those immigrants entering employment the normal patterns of further education will be available, complementary to the training processes in industry, commerce and in professional training. Others, particularly those whose educational standards truly reflect their natural abilities, will progress to full-time and sandwich courses provided in institutes of further and higher education. In this way, immigrants will increasingly share in the usual provisions and the normal progressions offered by the further education service.

Special problems

The special problems that arise are those which occur when immigrants enter employment which is not commensurate with their natural abilities, potentials and aspirations. Lack of appropriate educational background and qualification is a major reason for failure to equate employment prospects with individual ability. Nevertheless, this is but one of a number of factors in a complex situation which sometimes may include social non-acceptance in specific areas of employment. Also, there is the immediate attraction of low-level employment which, without further training, may offer immigrants greater financial reward at the outset.

Limitations imposed by previous background

Educationally, colleges of further education report two main limiting factors, both of which require remedial courses. Firstly there are the social and vocational handicaps imposed by an inability to communicate. Secondly, there are the handicaps imposed by the variance in educational standards and backgrounds of those entering employment, either directly on arrival in this country, or after participating only for a short time in secondary school education. For some years past the special remedial work of the colleges of further education has been concentrated on efforts to improve these two educational disabilities. By so doing it is anticipated that an increasing number of immigrants will be enabled to benefit from normal part-time-day, sandwich and full-time courses, the successful completion of which will enhance their

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prospects for integration and future employment. The limiting factors in this remedial work - and often these impose severe limitations on what can be done - are the initial standards both in the English language and in the immigrant's general education. Further education remedial courses can improve these standards only within the restrictions previously imposed by the individual's background. The symptoms of the disability are all too obvious; the COMPLETE educational remedy may, at times, be impossible to apply.

Nevertheless, reports from various colleges indicate that much is being attempted and much is being accomplished, particularly in the ad hoc provision of special courses to increase linguistic standards. The objective is to increase the ability to communicate, both orally and in writing, with the ultimate aim both of an increased social acceptance and of a vocational integration.

English language courses

English language courses are available at many centres in the country. Young immigrants above school age arriving in Leeds, for example, are referred by the Immigration Reception Centre to the Park Lane College of Further Education where new full-time courses in English start each term. With the use of language laboratories, the variance in individual standards is catered for and those whose circumstances allow it, and who can benefit from it, are encouraged to proceed to a second and third term. The intensive learning of English is the major objective and special attention is paid to the raising of standards in oral communication, although some general education is included in the course.

The Pathway Centre, an out-station of the Ealing Technical College, takes some 80 or so newly arrived immigrants (mostly Indian) aged from 15 to 18. The Centre, well supplied with audio and visual aids, including language laboratories, provides a one-year full-time course concentrating on English language teaching but with an increasing vocational guidance and emphasis. During the course, contact is made with the youth centres and with the local community centre. Experience here indicates the need to relate the teaching of English language very closely to the aims and aspirations which can motivate the individual student in the learning situation. The vocabulary and structures taught reflect the language of the social environment, including the workshop or factory. Those students who show an interest in and bent for a course like an ONC course, or an apprenticeship are helped to acquire the language necessary to succeed in these.

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Other technical colleges and colleges of further education - from Brixton to Bradford - make similar provision for immigrants who wish to improve their English immediately on arrival in this country. In other cases, where there are concentrations of other students wishing to learn English, the immigrant provision may be combined with the requirements of temporary overseas students from continental countries. A report, published in 1968, showed that in the three London General and Commercial Colleges, of 3,600 students from overseas countries in the colleges 60% were from West European countries, 25% from Asiatic and 15% from African and South American countries.

Evening class provision

As a continuation of full-time courses in English language, or as an introduction for those immigrants unable to take advantage of full-time courses on arrival, part-time evening class provision constitutes the main contribution. In the London area a significant contribution is made to the benefit of evening students - and inspection indicates that the response of immigrant groups is 'enthusiastic and appreciative'. In evening courses of general education (including English language) a recent report by HM Inspectors describes the teaching as 'almost invariably sympathetic and encouraging'. There is much evidence, too, of part-time day class provision for English language, particularly in areas of high immigrant density, where immigrants who work in night shifts are able to spend time in study during the day. Day release from work to attend English language lessons is important for both young and older immigrants if they are to integrate successfully. Some firms with the cooperation of their local education authorities have arranged English language teaching either at a college of further education or on their own premises and - where it has been shown to meet industrial needs - have been eligible to receive a grant for the purpose from their Industrial Training Boards, most of which are prepared to consider grant for such training. Some immigrants are not able to enter vocational training or take up work for which they are potentially capable because their knowledge of English is inadequate. The Department and the Department of Employment and Productivity in collaboration with colleges of further education at Leeds and Kennington are experimenting with a pre-training and assessment course which is designed to help immigrants and others to overcome this difficulty.

Classes for immigrant mothers

Further education establishments in general have recognised the importance of providing opportunities for immigrant parents, and particularly the mothers, to learn English. They realise how necessary it is for immigrant children who are learning English at school to be able to return at the end of the day to

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homes where English still continues to be spoken and understood, if only for part of the time. A working knowledge of spoken English is of obvious help to immigrant mothers in such matters as shopping and visiting the clinic - and essential if they are to play a full part in the new community in which they are living. Most further education establishments serving areas with an immigrant population have, therefore, offered classes in English language for immigrant parents; many have offered such classes specifically for immigrant mothers. In the majority of cases the response to and enrolment in these classes have been poor, attendance has been unsatisfactory, and in many instances they have been discontinued. Where they have run successfully a number of factors have operated. The likelihood of such classes being successful is clearly greater if steps are taken to ensure that the immigrant parents are made fully aware of their existence.

For some years Birmingham has published a special leaflet with sections in Arabic, Bengali, Hindi and Urdu giving details of classes in English for immigrants. Warley and Croydon are among a number of areas where publicity material about such further education classes has been prepared in four or five languages and widely distributed with the help of voluntary immigrant organisations. Some local education authorities have felt that a more individual approach to immigrant parents is necessary if they are to be persuaded to enrol for further education classes in English. In one or two, liaison officers regard encouragement of immigrant parents to join such classes as a part of their normal duties. The Huddersfield Authority attributes some of the success it has had in the running of such classes to the work of an Asian immigrant whom it employs as an Organising Tutor for Adult Education.

There are, of course, a number of factors which deter many immigrant mothers from joining the normal type of English language course offered by further education establishments. Their total or partial ignorance of the language induces feelings of shyness and embarrassment which they find difficult to overcome. At the time when such classes are usually held their husbands are in many cases out on night-shift work and they have to be at home in the evening to look after their children. For many, even day-time classes may not solve their problems in that they are out at work themselves during the day. In addition, traditional customs cause many Asian women to be unwilling to join normal classes. Many further education establishments have not been slow to recognise these difficulties and have approached the whole question of arranging classes for immigrant mothers with commendable imagination and flexibility. When it became apparent that women immigrants were not attending week-end classes organised by the Technical College, arrangements were made in Bradford for classes for Sikh women to be held every Sunday

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afternoon at the Sikh Temple. Keighley Technical College not only provides classes in English for immigrant parents on Sunday afternoon, but has also set up English teaching groups in the homes of immigrant adults. Barnet and ILEA are two examples of a number of areas where some successful English language work has been undertaken with immigrant mothers attending classes at maternity and child Welfare centres. The Evening Institutes at Waltham Forest have established close contact with infant schools and have organised afternoons and evening classes in English in such schools for immigrant mothers. In Hounslow arrangements have been made for classes to be held immediately after immigrant mothers have collected their children from primary school. Helpers have been provided by one further education establishment in Sheffield to look after the children of immigrant housewives attending classes in English language.

A number of further education establishments have arranged orientation courses for immigrant adults on some such topics as: 'The English Way of Life' or 'Living in Britain'. These, too, have not met with a very satisfactory response and in at least one area there is a tendency to believe that possibly immigrant adults feel a sense of resentment that such courses should be offered. Many immigrant adults are certainly in need of the help that the content of such orientation courses offers but it may be that this content can be more acceptably and effectively put across in the material used in English language courses. The Priory Centre for Supplementary Education in Coventry seems to be doing just this in the pilot scheme it is designing, with financial help from the Coventry Community Relations Committee, for teaching English to Asian women. The organisers of this scheme are producing controlled, lively, linguistically authentic material based on everyday situations which not only helps their Asian women students to carry out their day-to-day activities with increased confidence, but which also gives them a growing knowledge of and insight into the English way of life.

The need for general education courses

Perhaps inevitably, Careers Advisory Officers report that they spend more individual time and effort in placing immigrants than in placing other school leavers. Many student advisers within the colleges also give untiringly of their energies to advise immigrants of the opportunities open to them and realistically to advise on further education courses and employment prospects. They sympathise with the natural aspirations of immigrant parents, many of whom, however, tend to believe that an extended period of education, of itself, will ensure better career prospects and fail to make a sufficiently practical assessment of their children's past educational background and aptitudes.

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Entry to other further education courses at higher technician and technologist level demands clearly defined educational standards, without which students would derive little or no benefit. Thus there is an urgent need to provide either through the part-time route or through full-time provision in the further education sector, courses of general education by which immigrants are enabled to remedy past educational deficiencies. Even those with sufficient linguistic standards may often be disqualified from entry to technician and technologist courses, or their equivalent, through not having an appropriate educational basis in certain general subjects.

Colleges of further education have, therefore, been called upon to make provision for the full-time general education of immigrants above school leaving age. These courses may in some cases provide for the furtherance of general education, sometimes at a level below that of the General Certificate of Education and in other cases specially aimed at GCE passes at Ordinary and Advanced levels. It would be wrong to assume that these courses provide for the young immigrants a panacea for all educational disabilities. For some it would be better to advise specific vocationally orientated courses or the acquisition of industrial or commercial skills in an employment environment. Where, however, there can be a reasonable hope of a successful conclusion to the GCE courses (in a matter of one or two years) this form of education may provide the key to the entry to further and higher education which might otherwise be denied.

Practical situations

Teachers of general subjects in the colleges are being called upon to face novel and challenging situations with classes which include immigrants. Gillian Flint, teaching in the Hammersmith College of Further Education, records:*

'I was therefore ready, I thought, for whatever level my new students should prove to be. But I was wrong. In my first year with the immigrants, the majority of my class of 16 students were West Indians. They spoke with a sort of Creole, which is a kind of elaborated third or fourth generation pidgin English with a definite and logical grammar of its own, but far removed from standard English. They were, in addition, highly inarticulate and I became used to various responses to simple questions but all falling short of an answer. In the beginning, when they were very shy and bewildered at the strangeness of new people, a new school, a new country and often parents that they hardly remembered, they just hung their heads.'

*'Immigrant Teenagers in Further Education'. Technical Journal, June 1969.

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gration will take place naturally among young people when there is a similarity of interest and attitudes. The top end of the class, whose standards by the end of the session enabled them to join general classes are, in this their second session, encountering no integration problems. Our objective must be to bring them up to this standard as soon as possible.'

Again, quoting from Mrs. Gillian Flint's impressions:

'What is needed is first of all an adequate method of testing to determine which students need remedial teaching and which merely have a language problem. The mixture which we had in the first year, of highly intelligent. well-educated but non-English speaking students, with a remedial group of West Indians, proved almost unworkable.

The remedial group must be concentrated in small numbers for intensive coaching in speech, oral and written English, personal relationships and child development courses, and general and social studies. Otherwise their low academic standards and poor spoken English will condemn them to low-grade menial occupations and they and their future children will become a permanently depressed section of the community.'

Placement difficulties in courses of higher education

There is, however, another and serious placement difficulty which colleges face. In several courses in higher education establishments, including degree courses, it is often necessary to arrange an industrial, commercial or professional placement as an integral element in the qualifying process. In some cases an employer will have sponsored the student, and the placement during the course will be assured. In other cases the student will be 'college-based' and the college will be required to make the approach to employers. Too often colleges report difficulty in finding an appropriate placement for coloured immigrants and overseas students, despite the high educational standard of the student. Although many notable firms nowadays do not draw distinctions, some reports from colleges indicate that it is still necessary to draw the attention of employers and employees to the fact that the future of immigrant students in such courses depends upon correct industrial placement in an atmosphere of mutual trust and encouragement. Coloured immigrants are accepted as nurses and doctors under training in our hospitals; it is urgently

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required that complete acceptance will be encouraged in industrial and commercial occupations and in the professions.

The non-vocational Institute

Within the college community, where young students of various backgrounds share common educational objectives, there is a natural integration and very little, if any racial intolerance. It is this natural spirit of social harmony which, it is to be hoped, will spread to the wider community beyond college life. In this wider aim of social integration, especially where the neighbourhood is populated by mixed nationalities, the opportunities available to the nonvocational institutes are numerous. Many of the large London Evening Institutes quote numerous examples of the opportunities taken to integrate a variety of cultural traditions. In much of the work there is apparent a deepening international understanding in which one group derives value from another: art classes, social occasions, sports activities and:displays all reflect a social integration and an integrated purpose. There are also the voluntary efforts of those, not always based on particular institutes or centres, whose work in the interests of the immigrant population enlarges an(extends the more formal educational objectives.

Overseas students

Overseas students, although sometimes mistakenly thought to be immigrants, are those who come to this country solely to acquire educational, industrial or professional qualifications and who will, on completion, return to their own countries. They, too, may have their language difficulty and, in exceptional cases, deficiencies in other subjects. In the main, however, they are highly intelligent students, qualified to embark on their chosen courses, whose special problems are not necessarily those of the immigrant.

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8 The contribution of the Youth Service

The Hunt Report

Immigrants and the Youth Service, a report produced by a committee of the Youth Service Development Council, was published in july 1967. The committee under the chairmanship of Lord Hunt, had limited their study to coloured immigrants but had concerned themselves with much more than the leisure needs of young people and with other agencies as well as the Youth Service. In a foreword the then Secretary of State announced that all the recommendations which affected the government had been accepted. Circular 8/67, issued at the same time as the report, called for a study to be made of it by all concerned and invited local education authorities to send in before the end of 1968 statements of the action they had taken and of developments in their areas designed to further integration.

The Committee declared itself uncompromisingly in favour of full integration with the long-term aim of creating 'conditions in which the young immigrants, whatever their origins and whether or not the United Kingdom is to be their permanent home, should be able to settle happily in this country without prejudice and in close relationship with the indigenous population, and that they should be able to enjoy the social and recreational amenities they prefer, find work according to their individual capacities and so contribute to the life of the whole community.' At the same time it recognised and accepted the value and importance of certain segregated activities - which it preferred to call separate provision - the pursuit of national and regional cultural activities, meetings with members of one's own group, for example, to learn English or to gain confidence in congenial company and attempts to meet the leisure needs of Asian girls. It was anxious that where a separate provision is established as a temporary measure it should not become permanent; the transition to a fully integrated provision should be planned in advance. While seeing a special role for the Youth Service in the process of integration, especially as a means of enabling young people to meet together in their leisure time and, through shared activities, to form friendships and to develop mutual understanding, it stressed the need to consider it alongside the other agencies engaged in helping young people as they move from school to work and to the adult world.

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The Committee found the general picture of the extent and manner of attracting young immigrants into the Youth Service 'far from encouraging'. It called for changes in the Service; for an out-going, community-orientated service in contact with other influences on the lives of the young persons and involving them with one another and in the community, a service sufficiently flexible and creative to respond to young people's wider needs and changing interests.

The Committee advocated a comprehensive and planned approach in each area beginning with a survey of the local situation which identifies the different groups of immigrants and their children's ages, discovers the attitudes of both immigrants and the local population and appraises the local Youth Service and other helpful agencies. Such a survey could serve as the basis of improvement through discussions in local groups with which local Liaison Committees might help. If immigrant leaders or representatives are involved in local committees concerned with youth work, all should benefit.

On the crucial question of establishing contact between the young immigrant and the Youth Service the Report, having stressed the importance of local initiative in developing mutual understanding, referred to the vital parts played by all categories of youth worker - the full-time leader, the detached worker, the part-time leader, assistant leader, instructor or helper - and the importance of team work - each worker knowing the target and being prepared and trained for his role. No less important in the process of integration is the role of the members themselves; their co-operation and contribution is more certain where they already participate in club affairs, in management, in policy making and in the conduct of activities. As with the youth worker, preparation of the member for his role in integration is important. There is no need for the youth workers to approach integration in isolation. There are other helping agencies - the churches, the Youth Employment Service, the schools, further education, employers and immigrant representatives - with which co-operation might be established.

The Committee was anxious that the local Youth Service should have the resources to enable it to play a full part in social integration. It recommended a review by the statutory and voluntary agencies concerned of the adequacy of premises, including more intensive use of what exists, of equipment, of other facilities available in the area and of the staffing and staff training. It recognised that local situations vary and that the differences between areas will be revealed by the surveys it suggested as a preliminary to action. When local variations have been determined, policy decisions must be made on the basic choice between ethnically mixed or separate provision. In offering advice on the choice it reaffirmed its support for multi-racial rather than separate provision

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and accepted separate provision only in exceptional circumstances as a transitional measure in a planned process aimed at full integration or to meet a specific need which precludes integration. Where there are separate clubs it urged that they should belong to the local Youth Service, in every sense, and to the local community. It also suggested that separate groups within clubs may be more appropriate than separate clubs where, exceptionally and temporarily, separation is considered necessary.

The Hunt Report made several references to the relative success of uniformed organisations in attracting immigrants, especially the younger ones, and gave as reasons the ideology of the movements, the ceremonial, the uniform, familiarity with these organisations in their homelands and activity-based programme within a formal framework.

The development of a multi-racial club is a difficult and delicate task for the leader and his team demanding sensitivity to the needs and feelings of both immigrant and white members and flexibility in control and programme. The leader needs support in this unfamiliar and potentially explosive situation and team work in the club, the Committee suggested, should be mirrored by team work in the area. Leaders should come together to consider their problems and exchange experiences. Workers, committee members and club members should be prepared and trained for their special task; there should be preparatory discussions with immigrant representatives and with teachers in touch with immigrants; the leader should be in touch with immigrant parents and some might serve on club management committees.

The Committee recognised there may be many ways of introducing immigrants to the club. It suggests they might come in small groups of friends rather than individually. These groups may remain separate initially but later mix through activities. Community service may prove to be another 'mixer', helping the young immigrant to make his contribution. The problems of participation and integration of young adults received separate consideration in the Report and to tackle them 'the Youth Service needs to keep in touch with the mood of the young adult generation, its culture and its idealism, its spontaneous concern for others in the community'. It suggested that it would be to the advantage of the Youth Service to gain the co-operation and contribution of student groups, and of those who have completed a period of voluntary service overseas. It is well known that the Youth Service has limited appeal to the young adult. The Committee asked for different approaches which take account of different cultures and yet appeal to a wide cross-section of young adults. It hoped the Youth Service will enable young adults, through fee association within organisations, to play their integrative role, leaving them their independence.

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The Committee recognised the value of youth field workers in multi-racial communities and emphasised the desirability of all authorities appointing them in such communities, either separately or on an inter-authority basis, and enabling them to work with a team of community workers. The youth field officer and his team can help young people find their feet in the community; he is a link-man between the members of the immigrant community and those of the wider community and its agencies and, as a part of the Youth Service, knows what it has to offer, enables young people to make contact with it and, where appropriate, establishes new groups.

Throughout its work the Hunt Committee saw that the contribution of the Youth Service - or of any other single agency - to social integration cannot be effective if made in isolation. There needs to be the closest co-operation with all the helping agencies - schools (which it regarded as 'at the centre of the integration process'), the Youth Employment Service, further education establishments, the churches, social workers and local Liaison Committees. There needs also to be 'a new social conscience throughout the country ... percolating through to every neighbourhood, street, classroom and club and to each individual man, woman and child. Racial integration is a moral issue, and it affects the newcomer as well as the native residents. We have to learn to live together, to understand one another's outlook and background, to recognise the differences of class, customs and colour, the common elements of human dignity.'

The response to the Hunt Report

The replies from the local education authorities and the Standing Conference of National Voluntary Youth Organisations to Circular 8/67 showed that the Report and the Circular were welcome, that a good deal of action had been taken or was planned and that although the majority of recommendations of the Report were accepted some bodies disagreed with some of the findings and illustrated their views from local experience. In many areas there were few immigrants of ages 14-20, so that plans laid to assist social integration through the Youth Service were untried. Cuts in educational expenditure had restrained some local education authorities from acting on the Report as fully as they might; one reply stated that cuts in Youth Service estimates made special provision or experimental work unlikely for some time.

The Report and the Circular prompted a great deal of discussion and consultation, some of which continues. A number of special ad hoc conferences on the theme of the Report, 'Immigrants and Youth Service', were held; many of the committees of local education authorities and voluntary organisations charged with responsibility for Youth Service discussed the Report in detail or established working parties or study groups to advise them. Some of these

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working groups were themselves multi-racial, including representatives of local coloured communities as well as of different educational and social interests. Some working groups established two-way communication with local immigrant liaison committees. One Council of Youth, which brought together both coloured and white representatives of local youth organisations, formed a multi-racial study group to discuss the Hunt Report. In at least two areas Committees for Community Relations were an outcome of consideration of the Hunt Report. There has been discussion also at club level, initiated by youth officers or club leaders. One club leader was joined by leaders of the coloured community and local church workers on a small committee established to formulate policy for the club.

A number of surveys have been made in local education authority areas - although none appears to have been as comprehensive as the Hunt Committee envisaged. They have, however, provided useful information about immigrant membership of youth groups and about the young immigrants' leisure interests. The Hunt Committee stressed the need to collaborate with all the other helpful agencies in developing an integrated Youth Service and it is quite evident from replies that there is a great deal of this. The affiliation of a Youth Leaders' Council to the local International Friendship Committee, close liaison between the Youth Service and the Immigration Liaison Officer, reciprocal representation between Youth Organisations and the Community Relations Council, links between Youth Service and International Students' Societies, young immigrants co-opted to local Councils of Youth, contact between leaders in immigrant areas and local immigrant associations are examples of collaboration between youth workers and immigrants. In addition, some local education authorities and voluntary organisations extend their areas of collaboration to cover different phases of education, the Youth Employment Service, the churches and other social and welfare agencies.

A wide variety of methods was being used to inform immigrants and their parents about facilities and opportunities within the Youth Service. Contact with immigrant children and their parents is part of the regular activities of some youth workers. Through such contact one youth officer has been invited to join immigrant families in their homes, where he is able to give information about the local Youth Service and discuss it with parents. In another area a youth leader showed a film of club life to a room full of Indians of both sexes in the home of one of them who had forbidden his son to continue to attend the club. They viewed the film critically and asked questions. Afterwards the boy continued in membership and several of his friends have joined the club. Young immigrants are often approached about the Youth Service through schools and colleges; the provision and facilities are described and their special needs

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discussed. Sporting events also have been used for publicising the facilities of the Youth Service. One authority makes a special effort to persuade immigrant parents to permit and encourage their children to attend Youth Service residential courses for school leavers and gives some priority to schools with an above average proportion of immigrants.

The need for the appointment of youth field workers in multi-racial communities was expressed by the Hunt Committee and had found wide acceptance. Some appointments had been made by both local education authorities and voluntary organisations; others had been approved in principle and were to be made as soon as finances permitted. A variety of other appointments had been made to assist integration - immigrant leaders serving in both maintained and voluntary clubs, full-time and part-time; an Indian social worker helping part-time with the investigation of social problems of integration of young immigrants; an Education Organiser with special responsibility for immigrants sitting on the Youth Committee and assisting Youth Service projects. One local education authority had seconded a full-time youth leader to assist the development of youth activities for the large number of West Indian young people connected with a local church and had appointed an experienced part-time leader to work with him as leader-in-charge.

The local training of youth workers can contribute to the integrating process in three ways - by recruiting immigrant adults for training courses, by considering the condition and methods of integration and by providing opportunities to study race relations and the ways of life of both immigrant and host communities. Replies to Circular 8/67 indicated that all three aspects were receiving attention by local education authorities and voluntary organisations. There were reports from most immigrant areas of adult immigrants enrolling for part-time youth leadership training courses; some had completed courses and were working in youth groups. One local education authority encouraged youth leaders to attend a short course arranged within its Adult Education Service for 'those who desire better knowledge and understanding of guest communities.' The same authority's part-time leadership training course included a study of the young immigrant in society, and a week-end conference of local youth leaders considered the introduction of the coloured immigrant into the multi-racial group. One advanced training scheme for part-time youth leaders offered a special option to study working with immigrant young people under the supervision of a full-time detached worker.

The Hunt Committee's very firm advocacy of multi-racial provision and its acceptance of separate provision 'only as a stage in the process of integration' are easily the most contentious parts of the Report. Nevertheless, they would

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appear to be accepted by most local education authorities and voluntary organisations. All recognised the many difficulties of achieving multi-racial groups and among the examples given were: 'the permissiveness of the English approach to young people being seen as a threat to moral standards'; Asian girls who have reached puberty are still withdrawn from out-of-home activities; the special difficulty of establishing contact with Pakistani girls. One authority sounded a warning note when it pointed out that where, as happened at one club in its area, immigrant members numbered more than half, the immigrant community may wish to change the structure of the club to meet the needs of immigrant youth or what are considered to be their needs. There was a danger that the character and, purpose of the club would change. The reply from another local education authority stated they had not established separate clubs; these had sprung up spontaneously.

Some local education authorities and voluntary organisations felt that there was value in establishing and supporting separate groups or clubs as a means of introducing young people of one race to social and recreational activities and in encouraging multi-racial contacts through inter-club visiting and participation in festivals, sports competitions, residential conferences and other events within the local Youth Service. This, it was believed, could lead to a growth of multi-racial memberships as coloured young people gained confidence and both coloured and white young people were attracted to clubs and groups because of their programmes and activities. One local education authority planned to use separate provision in the early stages of developing a multi-racial policy by setting aside for immigrants two of the six evenings a week of an existing youth club. The full-time youth leader had the help of a small team of white young people who shared activities with the immigrants. It was hoped that as immigrants gained confidence in the club within a club they would find their way into the activities of the other four nights of the week.

There are other examples of separate provision which, by intent or otherwise, have become or it was hoped would become, multi-racial. A club for Pakistani girls extended its membership to European and Indian girls and now functions as an open girls' club in the evening and on occasional Saturday afternoon. A group of churches of different denominations started a youth club in an immigrant area. It is hoped that gradually this will merge with an Indian youth club meeting on the same premises and become an international interdenominational club supported by all the churches and the immigrant organisations. One maintained authority club, catering for young immigrants and meeting at the immigrant education centre three evenings a week with white and immigrant leadership, had made contact with other local clubs through visits and inter-club games and tournaments. The dangers of separate

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provision were appreciated but it was felt that in familiarising immigrants with club activities and with what other clubs offered, the transition to open clubs would be easier. This had proved to be the case; many were joining the two major clubs in the area in fairly large numbers and, interestingly, the club was beginning to attract members from the wider community. A West Indian youth club in the same town participated in meetings, leagues and competitions and exchanged activities with local church clubs. Local young people, mainly girlfriends of the West Indian boys, were joining the club. Another town with a well established West Indian youth club which contributed a great deal to the local Youth Service had established a club primarily for young Pakistanis. The request came from the Pakistani community and the club met on Saturday and Sunday evenings for boys; on Sunday afternoon it was open for girls and mothers. It was hoped the club would share in the joint activities of local youth organisations. One deliberate attempt to establish a 'transit' centre, described as an experimental, temporary youth club, in a West Indian area with Pakistani and West Indian leaders, was open to all. It had a predominantly West Indian membership with some Pakistanis and some whites. The purpose of the club was to introduce its members to the local Youth Service and then encourage them to join the normal units of the service. Local experiences suggested there was little or no hope of coloured youngsters joining the ordinary Youth Service provision without first sampling it.

Some authorities have adopted measures to enable full social integration to begin early. In one area, junior youth centres have been established for those between 11 and 14 years. Two already had memberships of 200 each and long waiting lists; 34% of the members were coloured. It is hoped that 'during the years in the junior centre, leading on to the senior centres, proper integration will have taken place by the age of 21', One immigrant centre had organised a junior youth club for 8-11 year olds in the hope that at the adolescent stage the girls will join youth activities. The leaders included 16-year-old Asian girls. Another youth and community centre in an immigrant area had an 11-14 club with 80 members, half of whom were coloured immigrants. The senior club, smaller in numbers, had a similar proportion of coloured members.

A number of local education authorities had opened clubs based on schools or immigrant education centres as a means of achieving integration, of enabling integrated social groupings to pass from school to Youth Service and of introducing immigrants to the wider Youth Service. An International Youth Club meeting at one immigrant children's centre was led by the teacher-in-charge and had a balanced membership of immigrants, mainly Asians, and non-immigrants. Immigrant parents were prepared to let their children attend

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because the premises were familiar to them. A number of immigrant young people had 'crossed the bridge' to the open youth club which met on the same premises on other nights. An experimental multi-racial centre for secondary school pupils, based on a secondary school with a civic youth club annexe and meeting from 4.30 to 6.30, was planned in one town. The heads of secondary schools with a high proportion of coloured immigrants in one area were being encouraged to form youth clubs on school premises in the evenings with the aim of extending into a social situation the daytime inter-relationships of coloured and white children.

Many local education authorities reported multi-racial membership of organisations:

• Coloured young people in membership of many local youth groups in roughly the same proportion as their percentage of the population.
• The immigrant areas were served by three clubs all with vast numbers of immigrants; these in other areas were absorbed by local education authority youth centres and voluntary groups.
• Two clubs in the central area where there were many immigrants had a very strong membership; two other clubs had a high proportion of coloured youngsters.
• A youth club in a new purpose-built centre had a membership of over 300, of whom 70% were coloured.

• A Civic Youth Club was to be opened close to the town centre and immigrant communities. It was hoped it would become a multi-racial club. The full-time leader will be expected to hold discussions with representatives of the immigrant communities and parents of coloured children.
• A new youth centre was being built in an immigrant area. It expected to achieve rapidly multi-racial membership.
• There were very few immigrants. Where they were found 'the majority have joined the local Youth Club. This is the natural process in clubs that are by tradition community orientated'.

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different racial and social backgrounds were they they are known internationally, the uniform is a levelling influence and the educational content of the programmes is easily recognisable.

Several local education authorities and voluntary organisations have found that special interests and single activity groups are a means of bringing the young immigrants into the community and effective agents for social integration. One local education authority return spoke of its Youth Service reaching out to young immigrants through catering for their special interests. For some years the Youth Service of this authority has organised an annual festival of music, drama and dance which attracts participation by young coloured immigrants. The dances of India have been featured at the festival. Another authority has recruited young immigrants to classes in maintained youth clubs through such pursuits as woodwork, needlework and photography. Some returns referred to physical recreation as a means of interesting young coloured immigrants and assisting multi-racial developments. Multi-racial teams played in one local Youth Service football league and 5-a-side competition and young immigrants who represented the league in the inter-league matches found themselves in other social situations such as annual dinners. One maintained multi-racial club had an Asian hockey team which supplied a recruit for leadership training and its members are being assimilated into other club activities. West Indians were more ready to join Youth Service activities, in another area where sporting activities, particularly cricket, football and athletics, were emphasised. One club made a special effort to meet the needs of coloured girls by arranging netball coaching and matches. Many young immigrants belong to specialist sports groups catering for activities such as weight training, judo, aikidu, wrestling, hockey, volley ball, soccer and cricket.

In a number of areas there were plans for young immigrants to join other young people in community service activities. A co-operative venture between the Community Service Volunteers and the local International Liaison Committee had resulted in some 60 young people teaching English to Asian women in their homes through a home-tutoring scheme. The Young Volunteer Force Foundation enlisted the help of a small number of immigrants in one of their projects and in another district the Community Relations Council promoted an inter-racial voluntary service group which tackled some site clearance work.

Those local education authorities and voluntary organisations which reported multi-racial residential holidays, courses and conferences in their areas were convinced of their value in the process of integration. The Council for Racial Harmony in one district had held two one week summer camps, each for about

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120 young people between 14 and 16 years of age of both sexes and of different nationalities drawn from a wide area. The local education authority assisted financially. One local education authority had provided several opportunities for West Indian youngsters to attend residential week-end courses. The first, restricted to West Indian boys and girls, aimed to promote discussion about their social and recreational needs and related problems. For the first time many of them were helped to consider their personal situations as immigrants and how to cope with them. On another occasion equal numbers of police cadets and West Indian club members of both sexes came together at a residential week-end course. This authority's most ambitious residential arrangements were made jointly with the youth service of an authority in another part of the country and developed into a series of 'Living Together' week-ends centred on creative drama.

Authorities reported a number of local committees concerned with youth work which had representatives of immigrant interests. This was particularly true of club management committees. The immigrant community was represented on the adult advisory committee of a multi-racial club with a West Indian leader in one area. In another, where Pakistani immigrants pre-dominated, the Community Relations Officer was invited to the Central Youth Club to discuss with the members their attitudes to immigrant newcomers. Since then young Pakistanis had come to the club in ones and twos and were becoming more involved in club life.

The Youth Service Development Council, in their recent advisory Report Youth and Community Service in the 70's, endorsed the views of the Hunt Committee and hoped that the implementation of the Committee's proposals would be pressed forward.

The examples of local action quoted in this chapter point to the kinds of individual initiative and community participation which are required, and which need not wait upon structural changes.

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9 Careers guidance

The problems of the coloured school-leaver

Until he begins to look for a job or enter work, the coloured young person may have shared his life almost wholly between home and school where he has been relatively sheltered. At school strong efforts will have been made to achieve an integrated community which tolerates ethnic and other differences and provides many opportunities for white and coloured young people to meet and to mix in educational, recreational and social pursuits. When he begins to seek work he may find himself at a disadvantage compared with other young people for a number of reasons.

On 15 November 1968, the House of Commons appointed an all-party Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration to review policies in relation to the operation of the 1968 Race Relations Act and the admission of Commonwealth citizens and foreign nationals for settlement in the United Kingdom. The Select Committee chose as the subject of its first enquiry the problems of coloured school-leavers. It made this decision for four reasons. First; it was seen as a continuing problem, for even if immigration ceased tomorrow coloured young persons would still be leaving British schools to 'seek employment and acceptance in British society'. Secondly, because 'the treatment of coloured school-leavers is, in a sense, a test case in race relations', for failure to give the coloured school-leaver the same opportunities as other young persons could mean failure in every other sector of race relations. Thirdly, 'the proper treatment of young coloured people is in the direct interests of the British people as a whole' in relation to the best use of manpower, the national economy and the dispersal, through opening up a wide range of jobs all over the country, of the immigrant communities. Finally, unless young coloured immigrants, in particular those of the second generation, get equal treatment with their white contemporaries 'the seeds of racial discord may be sown'.

Summarising its conclusions on employment problems the Select Committee stated: 'Coloured school-leavers are still liable to experience considerable difficulties over jobs. When placed by the Youth Employment Service they often obtain employment commensurate with their educational standards. They may not, especially if they are late arrivals, obtain employment com-

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mensurate with their natural abilities, potential or aspirations. There is still some colour or racial discrimination in important areas of employment, especially shops, offices and white collar jobs, and especially outside London. At present promotion prospects are uncertain. Late arrival immigrant children have particular difficulties getting anything better than unskilled work. Thus coloured school-leavers do not at present always enjoy full and equal opportunity with white school-leavers in seeking employment. Equally their opportunities have improved considerably especially in the London area, in the last two years. This improvement has been assisted by the passing of the 1968 Race Relations Act'.

Among the principal recommendations made by the Select Committee, which covers a very wide field, are a number which bear directly on careers work in schools. These include recommendations about the need to begin careers teaching 'well before the last year' and for the careers officers to 'become involved at least two years before the children are due to leave'. The Committee recommends more 'introduction to industry' schemes and information in immigrants' languages about local employment; it seeks the appointment of 'more full-time careers teachers' and more careers officers 'in areas of immigrant concentration'.

The Select Committee attributed the following causes to the difficulties experienced by young immigrant school-leavers which put them at a disadvantage compared with other school-leavers in obtaining appropriate employment:

• Lack of British education.
• Inadequate command of the English language.
• Colour prejudice or colour discrimination.
• A 'complex of disabilities to which social deprivation, deficiencies in education, psychological stress and racial prejudice all contribute'.
• The 'culture shock' resulting from the change experienced in moving from the native to the British environment.
• Lack of contact between school and parents.
• Special need for appropriate careers guidance to correct unrealistic aspirations and to assist a young immigrant to close the gap between what he wants and what he can at the moment achieve.
• Narrow range of job aspirations.
• Inadequate educational provision for late arrival young immigrants. Problems of finance and finding suitable courses of further education.
• General deprivation.

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Sound careers guidance can do a great deal to reduce or to overcome some of these difficulties. The rest of this chapter is devoted to illustrating how the different agencies can contribute.

Measures taken by central government

The Department's pamphlet Careers Guidance in Schools, published in 1965, offers advice based on the best practices in schools, including some which were recommended by the Select Committee. It emphasises, for example, that guidance if a long-term process involving an early start if it is to be effective, and suggests that systematic consideration of the range of educational and vocational objectives possible for the pupils might well begin at about 13 years of age and continue during the rest of school life. It distinguishes between the needs of the majority of school leavers and those of special groups or individuals; points out the need for pupils to develop powers of self-assessment, ability to weigh evidence and make decisions; and stresses the importance of parental co-operation in the careers guidance process. The application of these and other principles outlined in the pamphlet, whilst intended to serve all pupils, may prove especially beneficial for immigrant pupils.

The Report of the Hunt Committee, Immigrants and the Youth Service, considers young immigrants in school and in colleges of further education and their entry to employment as well as young immigrants in the Youth Service. A section on 'The Transition to Employment' sets out from the Committee's experience and from evidence received about employment the extent and the nature of prejudice and discrimination against coloured people, and describes the efforts of a number of bodies and agencies to improve the situation. The Report appeared, of course, before the passing of the Race Relations Act 1968 to which reference is made later in this chapter. 'The most valuable and widespread means of creating proper contacts between young people and employers', states the Report, 'is through careers guidance in schools and the Youth Employment Service' ... 'The task is twofold: to make young immigrants aware of employment possibilities and to give employers an opportunity to meet and get to know them'. In a later, short section on 'The Youth Service and Employment' the Report mentions the benefits which derive from a close association between the youth worker and the careers officer. Their work may on occasion overlap. The former may be the only person outside the family and close friends aware of a youngster's employment difficulties; the latter may be in a position to advise the young immigrant on the use of leisure, even the choice of a youth club or group, on leaving school. It is important that they should consult and co-operate with each other.

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The agent of central government for the Youth Employment Service is the Central Youth Employment Executive. Among its functions the CYEE produces and distributes a wide range of careers information in a variety of forms - booklets, leaflets, wallsheets, a Careers Guide, a periodical Careers Bulletin and films. It also issues advice to schools on the classification and filing of careers literature so that it may be readily accessible to teachers and pupils. Advice to careers officers is offered by the CYEE through printed circulars. In recent years several of these have related to the careers officer's concern 'to assist young people from Commonwealth countries to find suitable employment and to persuade employers to consider young people on merit without regard to colour, race or national origin' (CYEE Circular 149: Racial Discrimination). One circular describes the cultural and national characteristics of Commonwealth immigrants and their countries and supplies the careers officer with invaluable background information for his work with immigrants. Full advice about dealing with cases of racial discrimination has been given to careers officers and Youth Employment Committees have been issued with a memorandum describing the Race Relations Act 1968 which makes discrimination in employment on grounds of colour, race or ethnic or national origins unlawful.

Training in various aspects of race relations is included in the training courses for careers officers. In addition a number of short courses and conferences have been organised locally in areas of high immigrant concentration, and race relations questions are also frequently discussed at regional and local meetings of careers officers. The inspection of the Service, carried out jointly by representatives of CYEE and HM Inspectorate, has also helped towards the development of a better service to immigrants.

For a number of reasons the careers officer often finds he must spend more time helping a young coloured person and his parents than a white person. There is a problem of communication, even if an interpreter is available, with someone whose English may be poor and whose knowledge of British education and industry may be very limited. Many coloured young people rely entirely on the careers officer for introductions to employers, and careers officers sometimes have to make more submissions in placing a coloured than a white young person. The CYEE has recognised the need for an extra allocation of time for work with young immigrants and is prepared to give priority in the approval of grant aid to local education authorities wishing to appoint additional staff for this purpose.

Contacts with employers have always been governed by the policy of the Youth Employment Service not to condone racial or colour discrimination, and

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careers officers have sought, with considerable success, to persuade employers to consider young people on their merits. The effectiveness of their efforts has been reinforced by the Race Relations Act 1968.

Local arrangements which assist immigrant pupils

If the development of careers guidance is encouraged by the local education authority, if schools, colleges and the Youth Employment Service are given the relevant resources, and if careers teachers and other teachers work with careers officers as a team, there is more likelihood that the needs of special groups of pupils, such as young immigrants, will be met. This is particularly so if the local education authority is sympathetic to the problems and difficulties met by the immigrants and encourages discussion of them within its service and committees and with other agencies and groups concerned.

An example is provided in a recent Annual Report of one Youth Employment Sub-Committee. This contained a section on 'Pupils of Immigrant Origin' and stated that the extra effort required from the Service had been recognised by the appointment of two additional officers. The Sub-Committee had supported the establishment of English classes for newly arrived immigrants over the minimum school-leaving age and for those school-leavers unable to converse in English; and also English classes arranged by an employer in collaboration with an institute of further education and the Engineering Industry Training Board. Another local education authority has established a working group of its senior officers, including those concerned with further education, the Youth Service, the Youth Employment Service and secondary schools, to concert immigrant policy and provision. Several authorities have appointed specialist officers to work with young immigrants.

Careers guidance should be a continuous process involving pupils and parents over several years. The various aspects and phases of the process often reveal a need for special arrangements on behalf of immigrants.

Realistic decisions can only be made on the basis of clear and comprehensive information about employment and educational opportunities. Such information may need to be provided in immigrant languages, and this is in fact done in several areas. One local education authority is preparing a booklet about the education service, including the Youth Employment Service, in Punjabi; another is issuing a pamphlet about the Youth Employment Service in four immigrant languages. The Youth Employment Service of a northern industrial town issues a leaflet in Gujerati, Hindi and Urdu describing the job-seeking process and how the Service can help. It has also prepared illustrated leaflets in simple English about basic operations in the principal local industry and a

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series of articles about the Youth Employment Service which have been published in the local Indian Association's News Sheet.

Printed information can be supplemented and explained through personal contact with pupils and parents. Some authorities have overcome the reluctance of immigrant parents to attend careers meetings by using interpreters - perhaps older pupils or immigrant teachers or persons nominated by the local Community Relations Officer. In one area an adult education course was offered in the immigrants' language to inform parents, who may have unrealistic aspirations for their children, about the real employment possibilities. Volunteers from members of the school staffs of another authority, with an interpreter where necessary, visit immigrant mothers in their homes to provide information about jobs, including apprenticeships, and further education courses. A number of authorities have supplemented the normal careers evenings and interviews for parents and pupils. A West Indian organisation in one town promoted a conference on careers in close association with the Youth Employment Service. A local careers office arranged a careers meeting at an immigrant education centre on a Sunday afternoon; at other times fathers were on shift work. Careers officers in another area, finding that the factors affecting choice of job or course are not fully understood at the initial vocational guidance interview, hold additional interviews for fuller exploration of individual cases. Elsewhere, if they find a young immigrant clearly needs to improve his English or some other subject careers officers invite parents to discuss the questions with them, if necessary using an interpreter.

Special arrangements are often made within the schools to ensure a full understanding of careers information. In one city, secondary schools with a high proportion of immigrant pupils arrange for these children to be taken as a group for careers work so that information may be presented verbally in a manner to suit their needs. The immigrant teachers who accompany their groups into schools from the immigrant reception centre in another town are given information about going to work to pass on to their pupils. A careers officer in the same town has experimented in two schools with group discussion with special classes of immigrant pupils who, because of limited English, are not yet in the mainstreams of these schools. Special careers courses have been arranged in two secondary schools in another town with the particular needs of immigrants in mind. These incorporate a meeting with parents and their children at which the careers officer hopes to leave suitable pauses so that the children can translate to the parents as the talk proceeds.

A critical point in the guidance process is the time when occupational or

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educational choice must be made. Thus usually follows a vocational guidance interview by the careers officer, who then needs the fullest possible information about the young person and his potential. At the immigrant reception centres in one town the careers officer, in consultation with the head, tries to assess the potential of the immigrant school-leaver by reference to academic progress in his country of origin as well as in England. If the leaver is unable to converse in English or has made such progress that he might reach examination standard, he and his parents are told of a suitable college of further education course and an appointment at the college is offered. The officers of the Youth Employment Service and the university are co-operating in another district in an effort to devise psychometric tests suitable for assessing the ability and the aptitude of the young immigrant. The services of an interpreter may be useful in vocational guidance interviews, even though this may create occasional problems of rapport. For example, the Youth Employment Service of one authority borrowed the services of an Indian born careers officer from another authority, who was able to help in a situation where effective communication had proved impossible.

For immigrant pupils the transition from the comparatively sheltered life of the school to the adult world of work or further education may pose acute problems. Links between the school, the Youth Employment Service and the Youth Service sometimes contribute to easing the transition. In one urban borough the principal careers officers, the youth officer and youth club leaders combine to help immigrants on a personal basis. Two colleges of further education in another borough run induction courses for immigrant students. One immigrant education centre which is concerned solely with teaching English, arranges for its staff to accompany students who attend other colleges of further education part-time. This enables the staff to study the non-linguistic problems of the students, including those associated with technical subjects such as understanding spatial relationships. Many local education authorities and schools arrange short residential courses which include talks, discussions and visits related to entering work, using leisure and joining the adult community. Careers officers frequently play an important part in these courses. Being open to all leavers they are often miniature multiracial societies which in themselves provide useful experience for the participants. Two colleges of further education of one authority run courses in English and the British way of life for young immigrants which include short residential courses at which careers officers assist.

Placing young people in employment is a function of the Youth Employment Service. In his evidence to the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration one principal careers officer said that the submission of young

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people for employment may be preceded by an approach to the employer by a careers officer to arrange an interview and to discuss the applicant with him. This is particularly important in the case of young immigrants. They, much more than other applicants, are likely to be vulnerable and sensitive to rejection. In one area it is found that a greater proportion of immigrants than of indigenous young people rely heavily on the Youth Employment Service for placing in employment. Individual approaches are made to employers from time to time on behalf of immigrants, both where the employer has thought that an immigrant would not be able to fill the vacancy satisfactorily and where the careers officer feels that considerable potential is masked by lack of spoken English and of formal qualifications. Pupils in one town are given practice in completing specimen forms of application for employment. In another, careers officers accompany to interviews for employment those immigrants who have problems of verbal communication.

Perhaps the most difficult of the careers officers' functions is that of reviewing the progress of young people in employment. Most officers invite young workers to open evenings at the careers office or elsewhere after a short spell in employment but the response from immigrants as well as others is not normally high. A follow-up by questionnaire, produced in four immigrant languages, was tried in one area. One careers officer makes a point of contacting young immigrants when he visits employers and the officers in another area make occasional visits to evening classes. In several areas officers and college staff make a special point of keeping in touch with those young immigrants who take courses in further education colleges. In one town immigrants who attend special immigrants' courses in colleges of further education are re-interviewed by the careers officers, for further studies may reveal a much higher level of potential.

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10 Conclusion

A great deal of dedicated and successful work with immigrant pupils and students of all ages is being undertaken by an increasing number of teachers in schools and colleges. The efforts and achievements of these teachers is as hopeful a sign for the future as anything else that is happening in this country in questions relating to immigrants. The best of them show an informed knowledge and sympathetic understanding of the problems of the immigrants in their classes and succeed in seeing them as individual persons, each with a separate identity and unique potentiality, and capable of contributing to both the intellectual and social quality of the school or college.

Clearly the problems will be considerably less difficult when secondary schools are receiving pupils of immigrant origin who have passed through the full stages of primary schooling. For some time yet, however, dependants of school age will continue to arrive bringing with them the familiar problems - and infant schools will continue to admit 5-year-olds born in this country but scarcely able to speak or understand a word of English. The need for providing improved educational facilities in areas with large numbers of immigrants will remain for many years. Teachers entrusted with the education of immigrant pupils must be helped to arrive at a clearer understanding of linguistic, cultural and social deprivation - of the nature of racial and colour prejudice - and at an appreciation of the need for working in close co-operation with the social services, with the pupils' parents and homes, with the neighbourhood and community in general. Colleges of education are paying increasing attention to these needs; local education authorities and professional bodies too will have an important role in providing varied opportunities for in-service training. Staffing ratios in schools with large numbers of immigrant pupils on roll should be such as to make possible more individual tuition in English language; the extended use of teachers' aides is also important. Curricula need constant re-appraisal. Information of all kinds - including the results of research - needs to be widely disseminated. Teacher and student participation in such co-operative activities as holiday projects, adventure courses, extracurricular community projects, designed to enable mixed groups to work and live together, need to be developed.

Possibly the weight of effort in the schools has so far been directed towards

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meeting the needs of newly arrived immigrant pupils of all ages. This was an obvious priority and had to be met if these pupils were to be enabled to move into the main stream of school life. As such pupils move into ordinary classes new problems arise. Continuing attention has to be paid to their special needs, linguistic and non-linguistic, if they are to realise their full potential and go on to find a place in further education, or employment commensurate with their ability. At this stage all teachers, including specialist subject teachers - and not only teachers with special responsibilities for the education of immigrant pupils or teachers of English - must be involved. The essential involvement of all teachers at the 'second phase stage', as it has come to be called, is not as widely recognised as it should be and is a factor which organisers need to take into consideration when planning appropriate in-service training courses for teachers.

Reference has been made to the problem that will very soon be presented by the coloured children born in this country who in a few years will be young adults. These are the children of immigrants who have been brought up in the local culture and environment - completely English - having shared the same experiences as their white contemporaries - and many having acquired the same academic and technical qualifications. Some will no doubt still be experiencing the strain of divided loyalties described in the opening chapter, but they will have developed aspirations similar to those of their white companions, and will find any form of discrimination extremely hard to bear. Society must ensure that they find opportunities commensurate with their ability, training and qualifications.

The arrival of immigrant pupils in the schools has greatly enriched the lives of other children. The descriptions of their experiences before they came to this country, the new musical, dramatic, dance and visual art forms which they have introduced into the schools have given fresh colour and vigour to the life and work of many schools. Their presence in the classroom has given added significance and immediacy to many lessons and school activities.

They have given the schools a unique opportunity to get to know something at first-hand about how peoples in other parts of the world live, and, perhaps more significantly, have provided the opportunity for everyone in their school, themselves included, to experience a multi-racial society in miniature. In this special situation, the schools can demonstrate how people from different ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds can live together happily and successfully, and can help to create the kind of cohesive, multi-cultural society on which the future of this country - and possibly the world - depends. In many schools today, these children are working and playing together in

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harmony - in an environment largely and often totally unmarked by the hostility shown at times by the community in general towards immigrants. Although the acceptance in school life of immigrants does not necessarily lead to their acceptance in after-school life, what is done in the schools is vitally important. The education service can help to promote the acceptance of immigrants as equal members of our society - by fully involving all pupils and students in the life of the school or college while at the same time permitting the expression of differences of attitudes, beliefs and customs, language and culture that are not only held in esteem by those who profess them but which may eventually enrich the main stream of our cultural and social tradition.

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Appendix A

Selective introductory bibliography

Some suggestions are given for further sources of information. Where titles of books are included it is because they are themselves introductory and include bibliographical information.

General

1. Publications of the Community Relations Commission, Russell Square House, Russell Square, London WC1.

These cover all aspects of social need and education in a multi-racial society. Examples as follows:

2. Publications of the Institute of Race Relations, 36 Jermyn Street, London SW1.

These include a special series of studies on Race Relations, a monthly magazine Race Today and a quarterly journal Race.

Bibliographies

3. Coloured Immigrants in Britain: a Selected Bibliography 1967 (A. Sivanandan). Research Publications, 11 Nelson Square, Greenwich, London SE10 (for Institute of Race Relations). 21s.

4. A Bibliography for the Teachers of Immigrants. Free from Community Relations Commission.

5. English for the Children of Immigrants. Free from Centre for Information on Language Teaching, State House, 63 High Holborn, London WC1.

6. A Language Teaching Bibliography. Cambridge University Press (for Centre for Information on Language Teaching). 35s.

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Education - General and language

7. Spring Grove: The Education of Immigrant Children. T. Burgin and P. Edson. Oxford University Press (for Institute of Race Relations). 35s.

8. The Education of Coloured Immigrants. G. Bowker. Longmans. 10s. 6d.

9. New Backgrounds, edited Robin Oakley. Oxford University Press (for Institute of Race Relations) 1968. 12s. 6d.

10. Teaching English to Immigrants. J. Derrick. Longmans 1966. 12s. 6d.

11. The Teaching of English to Immigrant Children. J. and F. Stoddart. University of London Press 1968. 15s. 0d.

12. Immigrants at School. Joti Bhatnagar. Cornmarket Press. London 1970. 42s.0d.

Professional bodies

Most teachers' organisations and many voluntary bodies have produced reports and surveys (see item 3 above Coloured Immigrants in Britain). Two examples as follows:

13. The National Union of Teachers View on Education of Immigrants 1967. Free from NUT.

14. Education and the Immigrants 1969. National Association of Schoolmasters. 5s. 0d.

15. English for Immigrants. Published by Oxford University Press for the Association for the Education of Pupils from Overseas is a special journal devoted to the general field. 10s. 0d. annual subscription.

16. English Language Teaching. Oxford University Press in association with the British Council. Published three times per year. 12s. 6d. subscription. This journal helps with language learning problems.

Commonwealth

Much useful background material is obtainable from:

17. The Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street, London W8.

18. The Commonwealth in Education. Department of Education and Science. Pamphlet No. 51. HMSO. This gives good bibliographical information.

Race and prejudice

Publications of the Institute of Race Relations and the Community Relations Commission should be consulted. Other useful titles as follows:

19. Colour in Britain. R. Hooper, BBC 1965.

20. World Questions. J. L. Henderson. Methuen. 12s. 6d.

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21. Colour and Citizenship. Institute of Race Relations Report 1969. Oxford University Press. Paperback. 55s. 0d.

22. Race Relations. Michael Banton. Tavistock Publications. 1967.

23. The Nature of Prejudice. G. W. Allport. W. H. Allen 1954.

24. UNESCO a. The Race Question in 'Modern Science Series' - other titles:

The Race Concept 4s. 0d.

Race and History
Race and Culture
Racial Myths
Race and Psychology
Race and Society
- all at 2s. 6d. each (complete series. £1)

Visual Aids

25. Audio-Visual Material for English Language Teaching. Published by Longmans Green for the British Council 1967. 8s. 0d.

26. Publications of National Committee for Audio-Visual Aids in Education, 32 Queen Anne Street, London W1, e.g. English as a second language.

27. Booklets, Pamphlets etc. issued by Overseas Visual Aids Centre, Tavistock House South, Tavistock Square, London WC1.

e.g. No. 1. Some books, booklets and other publications relating to audiovisual aids.

Films

28. A list of films dealing with race etc. is available from:

a. Community Relations Commission.
b. Council of Christians and Jews, 41 Cadogan Gardens, London SW1.
c. Contemporary Films Ltd., 14 Soho Square, London W1.

29. English for Immigrants. Ministry of Education. Pamphlet No. 43. HMSO 1963. 3s. 0d.

30. Immigrants and the Youth Service. HMSO 1967. 8s. 0d.

31. English for the Children of Immigrants. Schools Council Working Paper No. 13. 1967. 3s. 6d.

32. Teaching English to West Indian Children. Schools Council Working Paper 29. 1970. 7s. 7d.

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33. Immigrant children in infant schools. Schools Council Working Paper 31. 1970. 6s. 3d.

34. Scope, Handbook 1. 'The Social Background of Immigrant Children from India, Pakistan & Cyprus'. School's Council 1970. 12s. 0d.

35. Report from the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration. The Problems of Coloured School Leavers Vol. 1. Report and Proceedings of the Committee. HMSO. 7s. 6d. Vol. 4 Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence. HMSO. 10s. 6d.

36. Commonwealth Immigrants in Britain. Free from Central Office of Information, Hercules Road, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1.

37. See Recent Annual Reports of the Department of Education and Science: Education in 1966/67/68. Also Plowden Report, Children in their Primary Schools.

Miscellaneous

38. The National Book League, 7 Albermarle Street, London W1, has a touring exhibition of books entitled English for Immigrant Children. There is a useful catalogue priced 6s. 0d. obtainable from the National Book League.

39. Various publications of the BBC especially Look, Listen and Speak. V. Huggins and R. Chapman. A Beginner's Course of 52 lessons for Immigrants to Britain from the Indian Sub-Continent aimed primarily at teaching spoken English. Obtainable from 35 Marylebone High Street, London W1.

40. Academic Courses in Great Britain - Relevant to the Teaching of English as a Second Language. From English Teaching Information Centre, State House, 63 High Holborn, London WC1.

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Appendix B

Report from the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration

Reference has been made in one or two chapters to the deliberations of a Select Committee appointed in November 1968 to review policies but not individual cases in relation to:

a. the operation of the Race Relations Act 1968 with particular reference to the work of the Race Relations Board and the Community Relations Commission, and

b. the admission into the United Kingdom of Commonwealth Citizens and foreign nationals for settlement.

A Report on the proceedings of the Select Committee became available in September 1969. In addition to the Select Committee's findings of fact and analyses of the problems of coloured school-leavers, this Report contains a number of suggestions, proposals or recommendations to solve these problems. They include:

i. 'We ... emphasize the importance of improved housing, schools, hospitals and services generally in areas of immigrant concentration (paragraph 43).

ii. 'White people in the host community should try to understand coloured people and immigrants, and coloured immigrants should try to understand the problems of the host people. But the main obligation for improving race relations rests with the indigenous people of this country, if only because they are by far the majority' (paragraph 74).

iii. 'It would be beneficial if it were explained to intending immigrants, either in their countries of origin or on their arrival in this country,

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that a long delay in sending for their children would be much against the best interests of those children' (paragraph 113).

iv. 'Special problems need special treatment ... This principle should be equally applied to the problems of immigrants and especially to those of coloured school-leavers. In so far as they are handicapped in competing with other school-leavers, then special assistance is needed to give them equal opportunity' (paragraphs 123-4).

v. For the Civil Service 'we would like to see the Civil Service Commission and other recruiting departments try to recruit more young coloured people, on the basis of merit, by letting it be widely known that they are looking for suitable coloured school, college and university leavers as candidates for appointment to the Civil Service' (paragraph 139).

vi. 'We were glad to meet teachers and education officers who have been specially appointed to advise on the education of immigrants in three places ... We hope that other towns with large immigrant populations will consider making such appointments' (paragraph 143).

vii. 'Local authorities should ... seek positively to encourage young coloured people to compete, on the basis of merit, for responsible positions in local government' (paragraph 149).

viii. 'The CBI ... could, we believe, give an important lead by making clear to all their members and to the general public their acceptance of the need for positive action to ensure equality of opportunity for coloured school-leavers entering employment' (paragraph 152).

ix. 'We hope the TUC will lend its weight in support of a positive policy' to 'help young immigrants overcome some of their particular problems in employment including colour discrimination' (paragraph 156).

x. Through the Community Relations Commission 'successful projects and methods', developed by local community relations councils, 'should be made more widely known to other community relations councils' (paragraph 161).

xi. 'Immigrant organisations should ... take an active interest in the practical problems of their members.' For example, some of them 'could themselves run English-language classes' (paragraphs 165, 167).

xii. 'Initially, at least, the cost of giving the further assistance we believe necessary' for some immigrants 'should be met under section 11

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of the Local Government Act 1966 or under the Urban Programme (paragraph 173).

xiii. 'Schools should prepare all their children for adult life in a multiracial society' (paragraph 175). We make a number of specific proposals to this end (paragraphs 176-181).

xiv. 'Local authorities should ... issue information to all immigrant parents in their own languages about the local education services ...' (paragraph 183).

xv. 'Immigrant centres ... should rank for assistance under the Urban Programme' (paragraph 187).

XVI. The local authorities concerned should increase the number of teachers employed to teach English as a second language as soon as they can be trained (paragraph 188).

xvii. To improve contacts between parents and schools we favour 'the wider appointments of educational social workers' (paragraphs 191-2), and various methods of encouraging immigrant parents to visit schools (paragraphs 193-5).

xviii. 'Careers teaching in the schools should begin well before the last year. The YEO's themselves should become involved at least two years before the children are due to leave' (paragraph 197), and 'more full-time careers teachers ... should be appointed' (paragraph 198).

xix. We hope more local authorities will try out 'introduction to industry' schemes (paragraph 199).

xx. There should be 'more courses specially designed for immigrants in colleges of further education in areas with large numbers of immigrants ...' (paragraph 200).

xxi. 'There is need for more use of part-time day release for general studies courses, including English language' (paragraph 201).

xxii. For late arrivals 'day release for English language courses should be available, for those who need it, up to the age of 21 ...' (paragraph 202).

xxiii. 'We would also like to see more Industrial Training Boards recognise day release for language courses as ranking for grant ...' (paragraph 203).

xiv. For 'vocational and technical training for the late arrival immigrant ... probationary or pre-apprenticeship courses in college of further education', or '"a crash course" in technical training' are needed (paragraph 204).

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xxv. 'Voluntary language courses provided by various unofficial bodies ... should be encouraged and assisted by local education authorities ... and where possible extended' (paragraph 205).

xxvi. 'Language-training classes' provided by employers, 'should rank for grant from the Industrial Training Boards' (paragraph 206).

xxvii. 'We would like to see every college of education in the country teaching its students something about race relations and the problems of immigrants' (paragraph 214).

xxviii. More 'refresher courses, conferences, and other forms of inservice training ... are needed' for 'the great majority of teachers' who 'have had no specific training at all regarding either race relations or the teaching of immigrants' (paragraph 216).

xxix. 'We hope that education authorities in all parts of the country will look for more coloured teachers, and that they will be widely employed' (paragraph 218).

xxx. Information should be published locally in the immigrants own languages describing the local employment system and opportunities (paragraphs 220-2).

xxxi. YEO's should 'try to remedy individual cases of discrimination ... they should also seek to widen the field of employment of coloured boys and girls' (paragraph 226).

xxxii. 'The DEP's regional officers and local exchange managers and YEO's should jointly try to arrange periodic conferences with employers, trades unions ... representatives of community relations councils and immigrant organisations', where 'broad questions regarding the employment of coloured people ... could be discussed' (paragraph 229).

xxxiii. 'For those who entered the country after the age of (say) 13, the services of the Youth Employment Service should be available up to the age of 21' (paragraph 231).

xxxiv. 'YEO's should keep as complete progress reports as possible regarding the employment of those they have placed, during the first five years of their working life, and ... such records should be retained for several years after they have been completed' (paragraph 232).

xxxv. 'Representatives of various immigrant communities ... should be invited to talk to YEO's attending in-service training courses' (paragraph 234).

xxxvi. With one proviso, we see advantages in the appointment of more coloured YEO's 'The ultimate aim should be to have one coloured

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YEO, of some seniority and experience, in every borough with a large immigrant population' (paragraph 236).

xxxvii. 'The Central Youth Employment Executive should sanction further posts in areas of immigrant concentration, and ... local authorities should seek to fill these posts as speedily as possible. Such expansion should continue until YEO's in these areas are able to give as much attention to locally-born school-leavers as they can in areas where there are no immigrants' (paragraph 238).

xxxviii. Employers 'must ... ensure that those who recruit or who can receive or turn away applicants know ... the board's policy and apply it' (paragraph 240).

xxxix. We favour various steps for encouraging the wider adoption of 'fair employment policies' (paragraphs 242-4).

xl. We hope that more young coloured people will apply to join the police (paragraph 255).

xli. 'We hope local authorities will be sympathetic' in permitting the use of premises 'where different types of youth club may meet' (paragraph 258).

xlii. 'Some extra assistance to the youth service, to meet the extra needs of all races in areas of immigrant concentration, should be granted under the Urban Programme' (paragraph 259).

xliii. 'Statistics should be kept that give a better indication of numbers of coloured people', provided they are not used 'for any discriminatory purpose' (paragraph 263).

xliv. The Home Office should 'open discussions with local authorities and industry, with a view to statistics being kept locally and by individual employers on a common basis' (paragraph 267).

xlv. We list several proposed research projects which appear most worthwhile (paragraph 271).

xlvi. 'Professional teaching associations and the DES should work together' in furthering arrangements 'to keep local authorities informed of each others experience' (paragraph 277).