ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that there was a not unreasonable fear on the part of teachers and head teachers about possible misuse of statistics which would be seen as in some way 'ethnic', or related to the countries of origin of the pupils' families. It was clear that the data collected by the Schools Language Surveys should be such as to assist not only the Department of Education and Science at national level, but also local education authorities and individual schools at local level. In view of the complexities outlined in the chapter, it was important to devise a consistent coding framework for the languages reported, especially the South Asian languages. 'Chinese' refers to a group including all language labels referring to one of the regional Chinese languages, Cantonese, Hakka, as well as the general label 'Chinese'. It uses the term 'language groupings' which only broadly corresponds to 'linguistic minorities'.
