Immigration committee

debates education issues

 - but will much be learned?

click to enlarge photo

Tomorrow sees the third meeting of the task and finish group looking at the Social Impact of Population Change on Boston – which this time will focus on education.
It comes at an interesting time, as the Lincolnshire Observatory has just published the current figures for the ethnic breakdown of the local schools’ population, which show that around 12% of pupils in Boston borough are from European countries – more than 1,100 of the 8,773 total and by far the highest for any district council in Lincolnshire.
Among the people giving evidence at tomorrow’s session are Adrian Reed, head teacher at Haven High Technology College, Amanda Mozek, the Principal of Boston College, Martin Lister, head of Hawthorne Tree primary school, and Bridget Macpherson, head teacher at Park primary school.
Intriguingly, local farmer Sarah Dawson, Chairman of National Board for Horticulture and Potatoes, will also be attending to ask questions.
These meetings have settled into a pattern since they began, with the questions largely being asked by the Boston Protest March Group – which called and then postponed a planned march after Boston Borough Council decided at long last to address immigration issues in the town.
Tomorrow’s questions to the educationalists include asking how schools are managing to cope with the sudden influx of non-English speaking children, and  how their arrival affects what goes on in the classroom?
A claim  which is regularly aired – that  local children are being denied local school places because they have been taken by migrant children – is accompanied by the question “do you feel this is fair, and if so why?”
The experts are also to be asked if schools get any sort of financial help when they accept migrant pupils; what percentage of their school is migrant and what is the highest percentage they would feel happy to accept; and whether their schools employ, or have a translator or a foreign speaking teacher.
These are just some of the points likely to be raised, and they are all valid, but - based on what has emerged from earlier committee meetings - we  cannot be confident that tomorrow’s session will be particularly productive.
This is because guests at previous sessions have firmly rejected the long-held and in some cases clearly correct beliefs about immigration by questioners, and have been reluctant to abandon the politically correct line.
At the first meeting of the group, Boston’s most senior police officer claimed that language differences created a misconception about immigration, and there were no more migrant offenders than any other group.
Similarly, he argued that the litter problems caused by foreign beer cans were not just caused by migrant drinkers.
"There are some foreign nationals who do that, but there are an awful lot of English and Boston people who do that too.”
On the same lines, when employment issues were discussed three weeks ago, it was declared by local trade unionists that immigration into Boston has had no impact on job availability for local people, and  farmer Ms Dawson, declared that local people do not want to work in packhouses and food processing plants.
Indeed, she went further:  “It seems to come down to three key things. The lack of work ethic in terms of poor time-keeping and shoddy workmanship, a lack of enthusiasm and a disengagement with the work itself.”
We wonder whether her attendance tomorrow is to plead for the inclusion in the local curriculum of special courses on salad packing and caulie cutting  to help improve recruitment.
Given the story so far, we somehow doubt that tomorrow’s meeting will break the mould, as we are sure that none of the school or college experts will admit for one moment that they are unable to cope.
The best they might own up to are a few operational difficulties and pressures.
All of this must surely be making life difficult for the members of the Task and Finish group, who will have their work cut out for them when it comes to making their final assessment of the situation.
It's not a task that we envy them.

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