WE need an extra 750,000 school places in England to keep up with a population bulge, says an official forecast from the Department for Education.

This is not new. Schools have faced sixteen consecutive years of rising numbers, so that between 2009 and 2016 schools took in an extra 470,000 pupils.

The National Association of Head-teachers describes this as “a massive increase which will make it even harder for parents to get their preferred choice of school.”

The primary school population is now 4.5 million - and the forecast predicts a rise to 4.68 million by 2020. And the next big increase will be in secondary schools, currently with 2.76 million pupils, and forecast to rise to 3.04 million in 2020 and still further to 3.33 million in 2025.

It means that within the next decade secondary schools will have to create an extra 570,000 places – and these figures do not include sixth forms.

How to explain this astonishing surge in the number of pupils when the birth rate among white, British-born women, already at an all-time low, has declined further from 1.85 children to 1.83? The Education Department’s analysis says that this surge is owing to the large number of non-UK born mothers, who tend to have much bigger families.

Notoriously, statistics are always interpreted by different political groups to reflect their own prejudices and perceived interests. For reliable figures we should turn to those published by the Office for National Statistics and here we read that the percentage of live births in England and Wales to mothers born outside the UK continued to rise in 2014, reaching 27.0 per cent compared with 26.5 per cent in 2013 and 19.5 per cent in 2004. The proportion of births to mothers born outside the UK has increased every year since 1990 when it was 11.6 per cent. This means that more than one in four of all births in Britain are now to women not born here.

So, as the NAHT says, the Department of Education will have to find the means and the money to provide for this “massive increase.”

This will involve an increase in the budget for school building and for the training and provision of thousands more teachers. The money can come only from either higher taxes or more government borrowing, or both. But the huge logistical and financial problems are not the root of the matter. The central issue is uncontrolled immigration. We recall that this unsustainable increase occurred under home secretary Theresa May. Net immigration – which means you subtract the 300,000 leaving Britain annually – stands at 350,000. It’s a simple sum: we have 650,000 foreigners arriving every year. It was Mrs May who famously said during the referendum campaign that she was powerless to reduce immigration owing to the EU’s Shengen rules. Having so said, she then voted Remain – which tells us all we need to know about her capacity for rational thinking!

Obviously, this continuing vast influx of aliens, set against the decline in the numbers of the indigenous population, is bound to lead to colossal cultural, social and political upheaval. Look at recent events in France. It’s not “racist” to point this out.

It would be madness and national suicide to ignore the facts. So I should like to know what our new Prime Minster proposes?