I'm aware that this particular news story is a week old, the last real news controversy regarding it several months older and Labour's plan to introduce such a test actually a couple of years old, but I saw a discussion about it on TV yesterday ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/27/lawyers-condemn-migrants-english-tests

What do you lot make of it? My girlfriend is a primary school teacher in the Royal Oak area and her biggest difficulty on a day-to-day basis is not just trying to teach children whose first language isn't English (which is apparently very difficult, but can be overcome with effort), but communicating with first-generation immigrant parents who don't speak English themselves. A basic level of English would much improve their children's education and the consequences of that on poverty, community cohesion and social mobility are fairly clear ...

I still have a lingering sense of unease with these as a concept though. You?