Read the full article on the NY Times website.

Today the Department for Education (DfE) published the latest statistics (November 2010) on the school workforce in England, giving a clear picture of who the teachers are in the country.

Here are some interesting facts I noticed:

* There are just over 200 thousand teachers employed in nurseries and primary schools.

* The number of unqualified teachers dropped from 6.4 thousand in Nov. 2005 to 4.1 thousand in Nov. 2010. Considering that most of these unqualified teachers are overseas trained teachers (like me in 2005), it shows the effects of the government’s decision to take primary school teachers off the list of shortage occupations and to tighten the work permit visas.

* Men are still a minority in primary school classrooms: 11% of the classroom teachers in primary school are men and 64% of them are under 40 years old. Overall, 60% of the classroom teachers (both men and women) are under 40 years old.

* Teachers from ethnic minorities tend to have lower level qualification and many are employed as unqualified teachers. 92% of the classroom teachers in publicly funded primary schools are white British/Irish. The remaining 8% consists of mixed background, black, Asian and other ethnic minority groups. It would be interesting to find out the number of ethnic minority teachers in multicultural and multilingual cities, e.g. London and Manchester. Would the teachers’ background in these areas reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of the students?

* Primary school teachers tend to be highly educated: 67% of those who provided their level of education had one of these qualifications – Doctorates and other Level 8 qualifications, Masters and other Level 7 qualifications (e.g. Post Graduate certificates and diplomas), and first degrees (excluding BEds) and other level 6 qualifications (e.g. graduate certificates and diplomas). Again, considering that the vast majority of the teachers are white British/Irish, I wonder what qualifications the ethnic minority teachers hold or what percentage of them have a qualified teacher status.

A simple link wouldn’t be enough to show my full endorsement to Mehdi Hasan‘s article on the Guardian. Here it is.

Migrants boost the economy, provide vital services, raise academic standards and enrich our food. Let’s talk about that. The very first question of the first televised leader’s debate in British political history was on the subject of immigration. Last April, in front of a live audience of 9.4 million viewers, toxicologist Gerard Oliver asked Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg to outline the “key elements for a fair, workable immigration policy”.

So I tire of the lazy argument, advanced by Tory and Labour politicians alike, that “we don’t talk about immigration”. Announcing his candidacy for the Labour leadership last May, Andy Burnham claimed: “There’s still an ambivalence among some in Labour about discussing immigration.” Rival candidate Ed Balls said he warned Gordon Brown not to “brush it under the carpet”. A year on, “Blue Labour” thinkers are pushing a similar line of thought.

David Cameron has been quick to pounce. “[T]here were Labour ministers who closed down discussion, giving the impression that concerns about immigration were somehow racist,” he said this week, adding: “[I]t is untruthful and unfair not to speak about it.”

This is nonsense. There is no conspiracy of silence on immigration. We talk of little else. Only two months ago, in Munich, the prime minister demanded that immigrants “speak the language of their new home”. On Thursday, he repeated the same message: “We’re making sure that anyone studying a degree-level course has a proper grasp of the English language.”

In fact, if it were true that we never talk about immigration, why am I constantly bombarded by BBC producers asking me to discuss the subject on their various outlets? Why, indeed, am I writing this piece for the Guardian?

Don’t get me wrong. I want to talk about immigration; I like talking about it. As the son of (Indian) immigrants and the husband of an (American) immigrant, there’s nothing else I’d rather do.

So here we go. Can we talk about immigration and its economic impact? A government study in 2007 estimated that migrants contributed about £6bn to output growth the previous year. That’s equivalent to a 1.5% cut in the basic rate of income tax. Can we talk about this?

Can we talk about how immigrants, contrary to myth and legend, boost wages in the UK? A report for the Low Pay Commission found that between 1997 and 2005, immigration to the UK made a positive contribution to the average wage-increase experienced by non-immigrant workers. In the words of the report’s author, Professor Christian Dustmann of UCL’s Department of Economics: “Economic theory shows us that immigration can provide a net boost to wages.” Is this worth a discussion?

Can we talk about how the British high street has been transformed by foreign-born entrepreneurs? Tesco, Marks & Spencer, easyJet and countless other leading companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. As the economist Philippe Legrain points out in his book on the financial crisis, Aftershock, immigrants are twice as likely to start a new business as people born in Britain.

Can we talk about how, for the first time, two of our three major political parties are led by sons of immigrants? Nick Clegg’s Dutch mother, Hermance van den Wall Bake, met his half-Russian father, Nicholas, on a visit to England in 1956. Ed Miliband’s parents fled the Holocaust and arrived on these shores as refugees. His father Ralph caught the last boat to Britain before Belgium was overrun by the Nazis; his mother Marion arrived from Poland in 1947, aged 12 and unable to speak English. Meanwhile, David Cameron’s great-great-grandfather, Emile Levita, a German-Jewish financier, came to this country as a migrant in the 1850s and obtained British citizenship in 1871. I have yet to hear the prime minister mention Levita in a speech.

Cameron is also a distant cousin of the Queen. Can we talk about migrants and the monarchy? The German origins of our royal family are often glossed over: prior to 1917, the House of Windsor was the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. And, lest we forget, the Queen’s husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, father and grandfather to the next two Kings of England, was born in Corfu as “Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark”.

Can we talk about the impact of immigrants on another much-loved British institution, the NHS? More than one in three of the UK’s registered doctors gained their medical qualification abroad. Official figures obtained by Channel 4 News a year ago revealed that one of the NHS’s largest private contractors employed not just immigrants, but illegal immigrants. Without foreign-born workers, the NHS would grind to a halt.

Can we talk about immigration and the funding of higher education? One in 10 students in British universities come from outside the EU and these students pay much higher tuition fees than British students – an average of £20,000 a year compared to £3,290. International fees are now a bigger source of income for most universities than research grants. Without foreign-born students, our universities would go bust.

Can we talk about the fact that nearly a quarter of Britain’s Nobel prize winners were born abroad? Take the Nobel physics laureate, Konstantin Novoselov, who holds both Russian and British citizenship and lives and teaches in Manchester, or the 2010 Nobel prize winner for economics, the British-Cypriot Christopher Pissarides.

Can we talk about immigration and the national game? Migrants have helped transform the English Premier League into the world’s most popular football league. In 1992, there were only 12 footballers in the Premier League born outside the Commonwealth; two decades on, more than half of the Premier League’s clubs could field an entire team of foreign-born players. The current coach of the national team is an economic migrant, the Italian Fabio Capello, as is his predecessor, Swede Sven-Göran Eriksson. (Last month, the linguistically-challenged Capello insisted he only needed to know 100 words of English to do his job – will the prime minister denounce his high-profile refusal to integrate?)

Can we talk about the culinary gifts from migrants? The quintessentially British fish and chips, says historian Panikos Panayi, came from French and Jewish immigrants; this is now a land of pizzas, curries and noodles.

Can we talk about all of this? Discussions of immigration tend to revolve around forced marriages and the need for English language lessons. But there is an alternative, positive and uplifting story to tell about the myriad ways in which this country has benefited from its migrant population. In the words of the late Robin Cook: “We should celebrate the enormous contribution of the many communities in Britain to strengthening our economy, to supporting our public services, and to enriching our culture and cuisine.” To focus only on the negative side of the ledger is as dangerous as it is disingenuous, irresponsible as it is ill-informed.

About two months after stating that multiculturalism has failed in the UK (see video below), David Cameron comes back to the topic of immigration and now tackles the overseas students who come over here to learn English.

In today’s speech he even tried to be diplomatic like any good politician by saying that:

Our country has benefitted immeasurably from immigration. Go into any hospital and you’ll find people from Uganda, India and Pakistan who are caring for our sick and vulnerable. Go into schools and universities and you’ll find teachers from all over the world, inspiring our young people. Go to almost any high street in the country and you’ll find entrepreneurs from overseas who are not just adding to the local economy but playing a part in local life. Charities, financial services, fashion, food, music – all these sectors are what they are because of immigration. So yes, immigrants make a huge contribution to Britain. We recognise that – and we welcome it.

However, he made it clear that:

That’s why, when there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighbourhoods … perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there … on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate … that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods.

Obviously that with the current state of the British economy, the government needs to take actions to improve the situation. However, using arguments such as the “discomfort and disjointedness” of the British people because of the presence of immigrants is unfounded. I have been in England for the past seven years and can’t remember of any British national feeling uncomfortable with other cultures and nationalities.

I wonder how David and his assistants will be analysing and discussing the repercussions of today’s speech during dinner – if over shepherds pie or a spicy curry.

Games and Activities for Primary Foreign Languages