Head: Refugees improved our school

The variety of nationalities is staggering. In a school of just over 700 children, more than one in five is a refugee or asylum seeker, representing many of the world's worst trouble spots.

Marion Rosen, head of Star Primary School in Canning Town, scans the newspapers daily wondering where the next influx will be from.

But far from resenting the burden, the school welcomes the children of the world. "These children have changed my school," Mrs Rosen said, paying tribute to the motivation of refugee youngsters who arrive with a burning desire to make a success of their new home and start by making the most of their lessons.

The school has 130 such children from more than 15 countries spanning four continents - more than the average even for Newham, which has one of the country's highest proportions of pupils with English as an additional language.

Two years ago, Star Primary was of ficially failing its pupils, condemned by inspectors for low standards and poor teaching. Now it is hailed by the Ofsted watchdog as a "very good school".

Its success is a powerful counterblast to Government proposals to remove asylum seekers' children from local schools to be taught in new reception centres, as part of the policy of dispersing such families from London and the South-East.

The Home Office claims schools cannot cope with large numbers of children with no English, and with all the family problems which flow from an uncertain legal status.

But Mrs Rosen said removing such children from local schools would damage their prospects. "They learn much faster surrounded by the local environment, in classes with local children," she said.

The schools themselves could lose out. Test results at Star Primary have gone from rock-bottom to just below the national average in the last two years. Mrs Rosen says the success of asylum-seeker children played a significant part.

"When you analyse the results, you find it is some of these families who have made the most progress," she said. "There have been other factors behind the school's success. We have completely changed the way we teach and raised expectations of all pupils. But if you took these children away, it would make a huge difference.

"It stems from their parents, who are very motivated. They desperately want their children to learn and they are very supportive of the school. They are often learning English alongside their children and they make phenomenal progress.

"A lot of the parents have professional backgrounds, while the children's skills are as good as local pupils, but they just haven't acquired the language. They can do that very quickly."

Mrs Rosen was at pains not to minimise the complications which result from accepting significant numbers of asylum-seeker children.

In any one year, 20 per cent of the school's pupil population changes as parents are re-housed or move into the area, and this causes inevitable disruption for teachers and other pupils.

For the children of asylum seekers, the proportion is much higher. When new families arrive or are re-settled by immigration authorities, teachers have to become legal advisers, helping families negotiate the minefields of immigration and housing law and social security benefits.

But the very diversity of backgrounds in the school, and the parents' eagerness to help their children learn, is an advantage. "When children first arrive, we obviously have to find some means of helping them to access their lessons," said Mrs Rosen.

"We have been able to develop a buddy system, where other children with the same language help out new arrivals. We also find that parents are very willing to act as translators."