What is it like to move to the UK not speaking English as a child.

Throughout the world, many people pick up and leave, bringing their children with them to another country where they do not speak the language. In which the children who are making these life-changing journeys in a crucial time in their school years.

Figures released by Office of National Statistics in 2018 in the United Kingdom, it is estimated that there were 8.1 million pupils in state-funded schools in England. Of these, 1.6 million (19%) were recorded as having English as an additional language. For these children, they may encounter bullying and isolation.

This cases study is about three children who came to the UK when they were in primary school.

Klaudia Bojaniwska arrived in the UK when she was eight years old. She talked about her first memories coming to London and not speaking English. She said her biggest surprise was more the culture shock, arriving from Poland in June 1998. She said: "In Poland, there were no black people, and my brother was not comfortable around ethnic minorities. "Our step-dad, who was a Jamaican man taught us English to the best of his ability. "It was difficult because he spoke with a strong accent.”

She mentioned on my first day in school, she missed lunch because no one told her what to do. She explained she sat in the classroom alone while the teacher and the other pupils left. “I felt embarrassed, nervous and hungry. “I would never forget that day; it felt like the worst day of my life. "Moving to a new country and school, everything was different, even the food.”

D'angelo Evangelau spokesperson for Dwight School London said: “We teach English as an additional language for those who need to use the program. He added the school supports children who need help with socializing. He said: “We have a buddy programs at the school. “Where new pupils are shown around schools and told the secrets of school. “The buddies help children make new friends by including them into their friendship groups.”

Czarek Pawplszczak said he came to the UK at four-years-old. He said: "Because I came here when I was so young everything was all new to me, so I didn't know any different. "England very quickly became all I knew, and Polish became my second language.”

The third case study is of Juel Saddique, he said: "It was a complete shock I came when I was seven years old. "The biggest surprise was it was completely different than Bangladeshi. "I had to go to school on my own and make new friends who were hard because I couldn’t speak a word of English. It took me 3 to 6 months to learn English it was relatively easy to learn. I had a Bengali teacher gave me extra lessons to learn English. “The culture shock was also about the lifestyle that British people led. “It had laid back approach then I became basically normal to me.”

The cases studies showed that moving to another country which is not of the mother tongue of the children can influence their social and mobility skills. However, in the long term, these children are likely to catch up with support from their teachers, families and peers.

In 2018 statistics released by from the Department for Education (DfE) showed almost 30 per cent of four and five-year-old’s lacked the early communication skills. Evidence suggest that young people with poor vocabulary at age five are more than twice as likely to be unemployed aged 34 as children with a good vocabulary.

That is the conclusion of new research from the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) and funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Finds that an increased presence of children who do not speak English as their first language is not disadvantageous to the educational achievement of native English speakers.

Evidence from Catholic schools attended by the children of Polish immigrants suggests that the presence of non-English speakers might in some cases, have a positive effect on natives' results.

In primary schools in the UK, non-native English speakers in primary schools in have increased by a third to around 12% over the past 10 years. This has led some commentators fearing a detrimental impact on native English speakers as teachers time is taken up supporting children who are not native English language speakers.

Yet several studies have shown that first and second-generation immigrants are typically better educated than the native population.