REVEALED: Nearly 80% of pupils in NI school do not speak English fluently
New figures show just 185 children out of 855 at Co Tyrone primary have English as first language
Last updated 5th Apr 2018
Figures obtained by Downtown/Cool FM have shown that nearly 80% of pupils in a school in Co Tyrone had a different native tongue.
That means out of the 855 children at St Patrick's Primary School - only 185 spoke fluent English.
And over half of pupils in six schools in Northern Ireland didn't have the satisfactory language skills to participate fully in the school curriculum, and the wider environment.
But St Patrick's and Presentation Primary School in Portadown had by some distance the highest number of pupils whose main language was neither English or Irish.
Drelincourt Infants, Fane St Primary and Dungannon Primary were also in the top 5 schools that had the highest levels of newcomers.
Earlier this year, the Department of Education revealed that overall - more than 15,000 pupils here do not have a good enough grasp of English to fully participate in school life.
The figures below show how many pupils speak different languages in Northern Ireland.
English - 307569
Polish - 6671
Lithuanian - 2797
Portuguese - 1279
Romanian - 1005
Malayalam - 814
Arabic - 723
Tagalog/Filipino- 668
Slovak - 580
Latvian - 567
Chinese (Mandarin/Putonghua) - 545
Bulgarian - 502
Hungarian - 502
Irish - 454
Chinese (Cantonese) - 483
Russian - 474
Tetum - 426
Spanish - 326
Chinese (Any Other) - 256
Hindi - 24
The Department of Education said the growth in diversity in the school system may be explained by increased levels of migration among school age children over the last number of years and say schools receive around £1,000 per newcomer pupil.