❓WHAT HAPPENED: Primary (elementary) schools in Britain’s “asylum capital” report that nearly one-third of pupils do not speak English as their first language, highlighting challenges linked to record migration levels.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Glasgow City Council, Councillor Christina Cannon, and Glasgow children, parents, and teachers.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The latest data was revealed in December 2025, focusing on primary schools in Glasgow, Scotland.
💬KEY QUOTE: “We have seen an explosion in the number of children who need English as an additional language support.” – Councillor Christina Cannon
🎯IMPACT: Schools are struggling with stretched resources, cultural divides, and concerns over integration and education standards.
New figures from Glasgow, Scotland‘s largest city and Britain’s “asylum capital,” show that 31 percent of primary (elementary) school pupils now require support for English as an additional language (EAL). That represents a 24 percent rise since 2020, with Arabic, Polish, Urdu, and Punjabi among the most commonly spoken.
Glasgow City Council education lead Christina Cannon said the increase reflects waves of migration, including refugees from Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan, with Glasgow having far more asylum seekers dumped on it per capita than any other city in the United Kingdom.
“We have seen an explosion in the number of children who need English as an additional language support,” Cannon said, warning of severe strain despite expensive efforts such as hiring EAL coordinators in over 100 schools, with some schools forced to rely on tools like Google Translate for parent-teacher meetings.
One parent described her child’s class as having “15 different languages—it’s wonderful in theory, but [my son is] struggling because the teacher spends half the day translating.” Others worry that children are forming cliques rather than mixing across backgrounds.
Murdo Fraser, a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP)—roughly equivalent to a U.S. state legislature—warns “parallel societies” may begin forming, as in certain areas in London, where integration has failed and social tensions have grown.
England, which is more diverse than Scotland overall, also faces substantial issues in its schools, with White British students being in the minority at one in four schools. At least 72 schools have no White British students at all, and they comprise less than two percent of the student body in a further 474 schools.
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