Children who speak English as a second language more likely to improve at primary school, official figures show, revealing also that white pupils are falling behind.

New statistics released by the Department for Education (DfE) reveal that non-native speaking children perform better than their English speaking counterparts at grammar, punctuation and spelling as well as mathematics.

For the first time, the DfE has measured how much progress primary school children have made, as well as how many have met the national standard for the three R’s.

Children who speak English as a first language have regressed in reading, writing and arithmetic, while non-native speakers have shown vast improvement in all three.