We are really excited for this years Scottish Learning Festival in Glasgow’s SECC on Wednesday and Thursday.
Gathered Together will be delivering a seminar on Thursday 25th at 12pm, and we will be looking at the impact of parents being involved in their children’s education and the benefits of getting parents from different cultures to the school and the children. 100 people (!) have signed up for our seminar so unfortunately there are no spaces left but we’ll make sure we put information from the seminar up on our website.
We are looking to hear from teachers about their experience with parental involvement. We want to know what are the barriers you’ve faced, who are the parents that have inspired and supported you, and why you think parental involvement matters. Use #parentsaspartners to get your voice heard and you may be featured in Thursday’s seminar!
Hi Everyone,
My name is Maryam and I am a new intern Development Officer with BEMIS. I applied for this role as I belong to an ethnic minority as well as I am a mother and I understand the importance for parental involvement in schools and community and how not being engaged with your child’s education and activity can affect the outcome of their future. I am currently involved in the Gathered Together Project with BEMIS and my role involves to collect stories, case studies from ethnic minority parents, teachers, parents councils by using videos, blogs, podcasts and social media.
I was recently a part of an interview with an EAL teacher Marylin Gordon at the Golfhill Primary school who also runs a Learning Together Club which offers bilingual parents advice, guidance & support on how to be active partners in their child’s learning. This includes the benefits of reading & developing skills at home and the value of using the first language to support and develop English as an addition a Language. The interview was quite interesting as she spoke about what efforts she is putting into this club in order to get the parents from the Ethnic Minority Community and what difference it has made so far. I am looking forward to attending the Media Trust Training next week which will allow me to develop some media skills.
We ran our second Community Champion training session in Falkirk at the end of August. This session was marked by having participants from a couple of different local authority areas (Stirling and Falkirk) who brought their interesting experiences with them, as well as their different perspectives on being an ethnic and cultural minority parent in Scotland.
In addition to this, we were lucky enough to have Megan Farr from Falkirk education department attending too to hear the experiences of delegates. Gathered Together promotes that the results of its sessions are passed on to Local Authorities, but in this case, it was self-evident. The experience appeared to be useful for both the delegates and for the council, so this was great for all of those attending.
We are really excited to continue to work with our Community Champions – hopefully you’ll be hearing from them on our blog as they share their experiences as parents.
Education
Scottish Child Law Centre Provides free legal advice for and about children
http://www.sclc.org.uk/ 0131 668 4400 and enquiries@sclc.org.uk
Enquire The Scottish advice service for additional support for learning. If you feel a child or young person needs extra help to get the most from their learning and are unsure what to do, Enquire has lots of practical advice and information about the education and additional support needs system in Scotland. Enquire will explain how the system may relate to your situation and advise you on possible ways forward.
http://enquire.org.uk/ 0845 123 2303 (more…)
The Scottish Learning Festival is an annual event, held in Glasgow’s vast SECC over two days in late September. It brings together teachers, local authorities, organisations working with children and for the first time this year parents. It is an opportunity to hear from experts in the field of education, attend seminars and network with professionals. We are delighted that parents are able to attend this year, the theme is “raising achievement and attainment for all” and parents are key partners in improving children’s outcomes in education. Our partners at the Scottish parent Teacher Council and the National Parent Forum Scotland are hosting a “parents connect” zone full of sessions for parents and to share the importance of parental involvement.
Gathered Together will be delivering a seminar (25th at 12pm) looking at the impact of parents being involved in their children’s education and the benefits of getting parents from different cultures to the school and the children. Our seminar will also be the world exclusive premier of our video! We are going to create a resource bank of good practice of supporting parents to become more involved in their children’s education and school community to be shared on our website including videos of parents, schools and parent councils talking about their experiences. The videos will be added to our website but you can see it first at the SLF.
To give you a taster of our session here’s a question from a little quiz we’ll be doing at the start:
What is the most accurate predictor of a student’s achievement in school?
We hope you can make it along and find the answer!