Ethnic Playmobil could help immigrants settle at school

[playmofire]

I came across this on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35783388

Interesting in the light of recent discussions on Playmofriends.

[Klickteryx]

70% of children in Greater London are not white so will they be getting white child klickies to play with?

[StJohn]

70% of children in Greater London are not white so will they be getting white child klickies to play with?

Not that I would mind but that is certainly not the case. Where did you get that figure from?

More disturbing is the mangled figure in the wheelchair. Otherwise a nice article. Thank you, playmofire!

Best wishes
StJohn

[playmofire]

Yes, that figure seems high.

[Tiermann]

In general it's a great thought, and actually there have been more ethnic children in various sets the last couple years. It would be nice if they had a diverse set of figures available from DS. Maybe a group of children, a group of adult men, and a group of adult women?

[Klickteryx]

Not that I would mind but that is certainly not the case. Where did you get that figure from?

More disturbing is the mangled figure in the wheelchair. Otherwise a nice article. Thank you, playmofire!

Best wishes
StJohn

I didn't read the site, it just come up under the google search but I'd read it ages ago anyway and thought it interesting because I'd heard people claiming the UK wasn't diverse enough so I don't know where they got that from.
The below link is from four years ago and has relevant data towards the bottom of the article though it seems to be for secondary schools only, not primary.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/datablog/2012/apr/12/london-school-pupils-poverty-race

65% of secondary school pupils in London were non-White British back in 2012. Primary schools are slightly higher as I understand it.

[playmofire]

70% of children in Greater London are not white so will they be getting white child klickies to play with?

You can be non-white, but your family may have lived in the UK for many years of course.

[StJohn]

Thanks for the reference, Klickteryx. The confusion is between your "not white" and UK gov's "non-white British", which includes, for example, all immigrants from the EU, US, etc. My green self, too, would fall in that category (being "other white"). Just looking at skin colour (how old-fashioned!), the figure is not so high.

Back to topic, lads!

Best wishes
StJohn

[Klickteryx]

Thanks for the reference, Klickteryx. The confusion is between your "not white" and UK gov's "non-white British", which includes, for example, all immigrants from the EU, US, etc. My green self, too, would fall in that category (being "other white"). Just looking at skin colour (how old-fashioned!), the figure is not so high.

Back to topic, lads!

Best wishes
StJohn

This should probably be off topic but doesn't a hyphen join the pertinent words.  So non-white British means all those people who have British residency/citizenship who are non-white? I think there are something like a million Poles (the people) in the UK but they'd be included under white British right? Or is there a separate category for EU types who are living in the UK?

On topic though, I think it fascinating that playmobil gets used for various campaigns. There was the Afghan police being trained with it (though I guess the lack of flexibility to do things like placing your hands on your head might cause problems), there was a Canadian? campaign about child abuse complete with balding man trying to pick up a little girl in his old car and the more recent anti-Trump ad.

[playmofire]

EU citizens (some of whom could be non-white of course) would be included under "sec pupils whose first language is other than English", together with other nationalities (coloured and otherwise) whose first language was other than English, e.g. Russians. 

Under the heading "sec pupils non-white British" would be included pupils who were descendants of, for example, West Indians who moved to the UK in the 1950s or earlier who would have English as their first language. 

The figures need very careful interpretation, particularly the last two columns and especially if you are trying to relate the two of them to draw some sort of conclusion.

My wife, as a white foreign national with English as her first language doesn't get a look in, although she says that the difference between San Franciscan accented American English and West Riding of Yorkshire English in effect meant that she was speaking a foreign language so far as her classmates were concerned and vice versa when she moved to the UK.