Ethnic Minority Achievement Services

Children who change school frequently can be at greater risk of underachieving, have poor attendance records and find it difficult to catch up.

Children experiencing temporary accommodation can find it difficult to establish or re-establish social relationships in their schools. As well as trying to pick up their schoolwork again, learning the school layout, timetable and teachers names, children have to build a new set of relationships. Withdrawal and deliberately not making friends has been found to be a common strategy among many pupils who experience frequent moves.

Refugee and asylum seeker pupils also face additional challenges. Whilst the vast majority of refugee children have high expectations of school and achieve success, they will have diverse backgrounds and needs which will often include being new to schooling in the UK and needing to learn English; and they may also have complex needs related to family separation, immigration, housing and health that can also impact on their well-being and progress.

It is essential for schools to respond to these needs and support families so that parents can play a full role in their child's education.

Good practice

A warm welcome and lots of opportunities for the new pupil to make friends. Many schools in Islington have developed formal 'buddy' systems to ensure new arrivals' experience help and friendship in their first few days.
Good communication that identifies the immediate needs of the family and the wider needs of the child. Signposting families to local agencies and services.
Staff roles developed to provide mentoring support to new arrivals.
Tracking systems developed to ensure all new arrivals' progress is monitored and settling-in is carefully reviewed, parents are met and support needs identified early on. See Induction procedures that support curriculum access (link to Induction core page) for more information about this.
Effective strategies across the curriculum for supporting pupils learning English as an additional language.
Bullying and Racism tackled. New arrivals are particularly vulnerable to bullying, including racist bullying. Racist and other bullying incidents need to be monitored and interrogated to ascertain if mobile pupils are particularly targeted. Teaching resources can be developed to challenge racism and promote racial harmony. Guidance is provided by the DCSF website Don’t Suffer in Silence. The site provides anti-bullying postcards for learners affected by bullying, in a range of different languages. New DCSF guidance on tackling racist bullying, including anti-refugee racism, has been provided on the teachernet website. The section on Responding includes advice on dealing with incidents. Preventing includes starting points for whole-school evaluation, and notes on curriculum planning. Training includes materials for in-service sessions. Developing includes links to about 100 useful websites.
Support for children's emotional needs. Schools need a good understanding of pupils' background experiences and current situation, and need to provide opportunities in the curriculum for children to talk and be listened to. School staff should remember that children are normally resilient and each child will cope with adversity in different ways. Any concerns staff have, should be relayed to the pastoral staff and the SENCO for advice and guidance.
A multi-agency response to the needs of the family. This can include initiatives that access families to advocacy and advice, such as 'drop in' sessions on set days of the week.
Support for families' own learning needs. Through their extended school provision some schools have developed learning activities that meet the particular needs of mobile families (see case studies below). For more information about Cambridge Education@Islington’s extended schools strategy and extended services, go to the Cambridge Education@Islington Extended Schools website information.
Home-school liaison to establish contact, build relationships with parents, and support wider needs.
Information and other correspondence sent to parents that is easy to read and in translation if necessary. Also interpretation being readily available when needed.
Collaboration with parent and community groups, supporting them to develop supplementary and community education projects

Case studies

Supporting black and minority ethnic parents’ involvement in their children’s learning

Montem Primary is a school whose inclusive practice has received national acclaim. It has very high numbers of mobile and refugee pupils. Over 80% of pupils are from black and ethnic minorities and approximately 50% are learners of English as an additional language.

Concerned about the achievement of pupils from particular minority ethnic groups, the school developed a family learning project that helped parents support their children’s learning, and increased their involvement in school life.

This case study gives detail to support other schools who may wish to develop a similar initiative. It shows how the project was planned, from an analysis of need to recognition of what key factors could lead to its success. It also provides an evaluation of outcomes achieved, with proposals for further development.

Grafton Primary School: supporting families

Grafton school was judged an exceptional school and outstanding in all key areas by their Ofsted inspection in October 2005. The school experiences significant numbers of mobile pupils, many of whom are from a refugee background. Staff value communicating to parents and regularly talk to them in their day-to-day work. The school has made significant progress improving relationships this way. Initiatives have been developed to support families, including:

Bilingual staff who provide classroom and family support, and interpretation.
A school-home support worker.
A school welcome pack with DVD and Parent and Teachers Working Together (PATCH) workshops to introduce the school and the curriculum to parents of newly arrived children
A family literacy and numeracy project with information in translation.
ESOL, Greek, sex education and sewing classes for parents.
Bengali and French classes for children after school.
Turkish classes for children and parents.
An annual "family supper" where all parents are invited and they bring their food. "When we see all the parents it's fantastic. It pulls the school together" (Teacher).

This case study download provides information about the school’s highly successful coffee mornings for parents. It explains why the coffee mornings were provided, how they have been organised, and the benefits to the pupils, parents and school.

Mother-tongue GCSE projects

This case study describes how parents and children at several Islington primary schools study together towards a GCSE in their home language after school. The project has experienced considerable success and national recognition.

Pooles Park Primary: family learning programmes

For a case study of Pooles Park Primary School’s good practice in this area see the QCA website .

St Joseph's R.C. Primary School have deployed a school-home support worker from the registered charity School-Home Support to extend help to parents and families where possible. The charity works holistically and its workers are developing their roles to work with newly arrived children, parents and communities.

St Joseph's School-Home Worker has developed a welcome pack to help the child's transition by gathering and sharing information about the pupil and developing a connection with the pupil and with the home. She has also translated it into 5 languages common to new arrivals in the school. The booklet can be built up in any order, over a few sessions in the first few days to introduce the pupil to the school. The booklet can help staff provide a safe space for the child to express her or his emotions and needs. The completion of the booklet can also help the child resolve some of these issues.

Rewarding settling-in and achievement

St Mark's C of E Primary School has developed a headteacher's award for new arrivals, celebrating early progress and settling-in. This is presented in school assembly within the pupil's first 2 weeks in school.

Useful contacts for Islington schools

Useful websites for schools

Asylum support
An essential advice website for supporting asylum-seeker families.

Bristol Emas
Bristol EMAS' games for newly arrived pupils. There are games to learn about the school environment, numbers, colours, everyday objects. These are free to download.

Bristol Emas
Detailed guidance for mainstream and specialist teachers planning to support the achievement and English Language acquisition of EAL learners.

Classroom resources available on the Nottingham Schools site giving ideas for use with pupils having English as an additional language.

Information about education, having a baby, early years development, maternity leave, bullying, choosing childcare and all types of parenting issues. The website also has parent’s views, forum discussions and feedback sections.

Torture care
The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture provides care and rehabilitation to survivors of torture and other forms of organised violence. They work with schools and teachers, and are developing art therapy classes in primary schools in Islington.

NALDIC ITTSEAL
The NALDIC (the professional association for EAL) and TTA project to improve initial teacher education regarding EAL learning and teaching. An extensive site including very useful guidance for beginner teachers on strategies for supporting refugee families and supporting refugee children's emotional needs.

a) Interpreting and translation
Guidance from the QCA on providing new arrivals with interpretation and translation

Refugee council
Comprehensive information for refugees and asylum seekers in a range of languages downloadable free from the internet.

Resource unit
The Resource Unit for Supplementary and Mother-Tongue Schools aims to improve the quality of education offered by supplementary and mother-tongue school by providing training, consultancy, advice and support. It also works to encourage constructive relationships between supplementary and mother-tongue schools, and between these schools and the state education sector. The website has a School Directory which provides details of more than 2,000 supplementary and mother-tongue schools in the United Kingdom.

Ethnic Minority Achievement Service

Mobility - Supporting New Arrivals & their Families