Students who don’t speak English as their first language would seem to be at a fundamental disadvantage in English-speaking schools, but a focused approach is seeing them outperform their peers, showing that it is possible to come first with a second language.

The rapid growth in the number of non-native English speakers is one of the biggest challenges facing schools today. As recently as a decade ago, they formed a sizeable group in only a handful of schools, but increasing international mobility is changing all that.

Non-native speakers – students with English as an additional language (EAL) in the U.K. and students with English as a second language (ESL) in the U.S. – now make up one in six of all primary school pupils and one in eight of all secondary pupils in the U.K., with EAL pupils in the majority at one in nine schools. In the U.S. ESL pupils comprise one in 10 of the student population.

But while some schools are struggling to cope with the demands of teaching children whose first language is not English, others are developing methods that have proven to be so effective they are outstripping native-speakers.

Data from the U.K.’s Department for Education shows that although pupils whose first language…

Read more | forbes.com

Photo credit | Finish Line by Hope Robertson on Flickr