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Schools in Swansea may have to take more responsibility for helping thousands of pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds achieve their potential.

Nearly 15% of pupils (5,338) in the county fall under the ethnic minority bracket, speaking 145 languages and dialects.

They have traditionally been supported by a central Ethnic Minority Achievement Unit (EMAU), particularly the 4,220 who learn English as an additional language.

But concerns about funding for this £1.2 million per year EMAU service has prompted education chiefs to suggest different alternatives.

The preferred option is to cut the unit’s current 30 full-time equivalent posts down to just three, and end the bilingual and translating service.

Spare funding would then be devolved to primary and secondary schools, potentially allowing them to employ EMAU bilingual teaching assistants.

A report going before cabinet on March 22 said a key principle was that “the achievement of minority ethnic learners is everybody’s business”, and that one of the anticipated positive impacts was that there should be “reductions in discrimination and feelings of isolation as all schools develop their capacity”.

Top 10 languages spoken by pupils in Swansea, after English and Welsh Bengali (all dialects including Sylheti) 593 Arabic (all dialects) 551 Polish 484 Chinese (all dialects including Mandarin) 191 Malayalam 165 Tagalog/Filipino 154 Urdu 135 Romanian (all dialects) 110 Turkish 75 Kurdish (all dialects) 68 Top 10 languages supported by Swansea’s Ethnic Minority Achievement Unit service: Arabic (all dialects) 410 Sylheti/Bengali 367 Polish 364 Chinese (all dialects) 139 Romanian 98 Malayalam 85 Kurdish (all dialects) 80 Urdu 80 Tagalog/Filipino 63 Turkish 56 Russian 34

The recommendation is for the preferred option to be partially implemented on September 1 following a consultation, prior to being fully rolled out on January 1 next year.

St Joseph’s Cathedral primary and St Helen’s primary have a significant proportion of pupils (216 and 207 respectively as of January 2017) who learn English as an additional language.

Parkland primary and Gors primary also have a large cohort, while Welsh-speaking primaries and those in Gower have far fewer and, in many cases, none.

Bishop Vaughan, Olchfa and Bishop Gore have the largest number of secondary school pupils who learn English as additional language.

The current EMAU translating service provides bilingual support in Arabic, Sylheti/Bengali, Cantonese, Mandarin, Polish, Urdu, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish and Romanian.

The report added: “Nursery and reception children are not included as the model of language acquisition used by the service is based on an understanding that very young children can develop their language skills through immersion rather than specific support.”