More than one million children speak English as a second language as a record one in six pupils at primary schools and one in eight at secondary don't speak the language at home.
The number of non-native speakers topped one million for the first time, rising from 957,490 last year, the Mail Online reported citing the figures released as part of an official census of schools conducted in January.
Besides Punjabi, other widely-spoken native languages are Bengali, Gujarati, Urdu, Somali, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish and Tamil.
A separate analysis released earlier this year showed how children who speak English as their first language are now a minority in more than 1,600 English schools.
The number of schools where fewer than half of children are native speakers has virtually doubled in 15 years. Pupils with English as their main language now form a minority in one in 13 schools
