Brexiteer Priti Patel predicts influx of 570,000 migrant children to UK schools if Brits vote Remain

A TIDAL WAVE of up to 570,000 EU kids could flood into Britain’s schools by 2030 if the nation votes to Remain – Brexit bosses claimed last night.

Anti-EU Jobs Minister Priti Patel predicted an explosion in super-size classrooms in a damning eve of Referendum attack.

In comments that will infuriate Downing Street, she warned the huge demand for new places could cost taxpayers an eye-watering £29 billion.

She said that uncontrolled immigration meant record numbers of Brit parents were already missing out on their first choice schools for their kids.

She stormed: “We have seen that with the scale of migration, and the impact this has had on local communities – and key public services such as the NHS, housing and schools.

“With more countries waiting to join the EU, including Albania, Serbia, and Turkey this problem can only get worse.”

An investigation by the Brexit campaign claimed that on current immigration projections 261,000 additional school age European citizens would be in the UK school system by 2030.

But this number could hit as high as 571,000 if the ‘A5’ accession countries – Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey – join in the near future, “as currently planned”.

The figures are based on the basis that one in ten immigrants from the EU are currently of school age – and they assume the rate of immigration matches recent growth over the coming years.

The blast comes just weeks after Priti Patel infuriated Education Secretary Nicky Morgan by warning sky-high immigration was the reason many parents would miss out on the first choice of school for their kids this summer.

In a so-called ‘milestone’ immigration speech two years ago, David Cameron admitted the pressure for some communities was “far higher than our schools and hospitals can cope with”.

Vote Leave said there were 108,000 infants now educated in classes over the legal limit of 30 per class – an increase of 8 per cent in just one year.

And they said the explosion in EU migration over the past decade had already pushed schools to breaking point.

One in five primary school children has a first language other than English. And almost 12 per cent of children fail to get into their first choice of primary school.

An estimated 152,000 EU migrants of school age came to Britain between 2000 and 2014.

But the annual average has almost tripled from 5,800 a year between 2000 and 2004 to 16,200 a year between 2010 and 2014.

Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliott said: “Parents are facing the problem of packed classrooms, which means their kids are not getting the education they deserve.

“Too many have found that their children are missing out on a place in their first choice of school.

“It’s Government’s duty to ensure a good quality of education for all the nation’s children.

“At the moment there are hundreds of thousands of children who aren’t getting that.

“Just imagine how much worse this is going to get if migration continues at the levels we are seeing at the moment.”

Around £21.7 billion of the estimated £29 billion bill from the extra EU kids come from the cost of education funding – from the pupil premium to grants.

And £7.3 billion in “capital costs” would be needed to build new schools.

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