Pupils by first language in London boroughs (2015)

A while ago I discovered the London Datastore, a government data repository with a wide range of interesting datasets. One that caught my eye breaks down England’s school population by first language. As a non-native English speaker myself, I wanted to see whether any patterns stood out, and to make a set of choropleth maps.

The maps show that pupils with English as a first language are concentrated in the outer London boroughs, such as Havering, Bexley, and Bromley. Pupils whose first language isn’t English, by contrast, are more common in East London, with Tower Hamlets and Newham standing out in particular.