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10/02/2008: "Polyglot pupils turn to signing"
Staff and pupils at a primary school where the children speak 26 languages have turned to sign language to ease their communication problems.
Lithuanian, Polish, Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Mandarin, Wolof and Shona are among the mother tongues of the 55 pupils at Fairlight primary school in Brighton for whom English is not their first language.
Now all the school's 300 children - and their teachers - are learning to finger-spell words in British sign language and communicate their emotions and feelings using the signing system Makaton. Since the start of the new term assemblies have begun with a signed "good morning".
[ 55 out of the 300 pupils do not have English as their first language and so every single pupil now has to learn sign language if they are to understand their teacher. No this is not a joke, and you are not dreaming. The article appeared in The Guardian, and goes on to uncritically report the gushing enthusiasm of the head teacher who describes the development as "fantastic" especially because it puts all the pupils at the same point of incomprehension from which they must then learn the new langauage. We can't have the immigrants put at a disadvantage due to not learning English can we?! ]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/02/schools