Schools in Bracknell Forest have a lower proportion of minority ethnic pupils in comparison to the national average. There has been, however, a steady increase in numbers of both minority ethnic and pupils with EAL relative to the size of the pupil population. According to the School Census in January 2007, 12.7% of pupils were minority ethnic whist 6.3% had English as an additional language (EAL).
Although Bracknell Forest schools have fewer pupils with EAL than neighbouring LEAs, there is a considerable variety of cultures, countries and language backgrounds represented. The School Census revealed that 73 different languages are spoken by pupils.:
Arabic Africaans Albanian Bemba
Bengali Bulgarian Cantonese Chavacano
Chichewa French Creole Czech Danish
Dutch Fante Finnish French
German Gujarati Greek Hindi
Hungarian Italian Japanese Kinyarwanda
Konkani Korean Krio Lithuanian
Luganda Malay Malyalam Mandarin
Marathi Moldovian Nepali Nyanja
Parsee Polish Portuguese Punjabi
Russian Romanian Serbo-Croat Shona
Sinhalese Sotho Spanish Swahili
Swedish Sylheti Tagalog Tambuka
Tamil Telegu Thai Tigrinya
Turkish Tswana Twi Ukrainian
Urdu Vietnamese Visaya Welsh
Xhosa Zulu
The most commonly spoken of these are Nepali, Polish, Hindi, Cantonese, Shona, German, Arabic, Punjabi, Urdu, French, Portuguese and Twi.
Many of these pupils have been born in Britain and may be second or third generation members of well-established communities. A proportion of the pupil population are in UK temporarily. These include children of:
- Short-stay professionals employed by the numerous international companies based in Bracknell;
- Members of the Ghurkha regiment at Sandhurst ;
- Foreign students at Newbold College
There has also been an increase of migrant workers, such as in the health industry from European Union countries and South East Asia.
