Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made a recent estimate of how many primary school children do not speak English as their first language.

The department publishes information on whether a pupil is known to speak English as a first language or not. This data can be found in the ‘Schools, pupils and their characteristics’ publication, based on the January 2024 school census. The most recent figures are accessible at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics. A pupil is recorded to have English as an additional language if they are exposed to a language at home that is known or believed to be other than English. This measure is not a measure of English language proficiency or a good proxy for recent immigration.