The most important reason to promote parental involvement in their children’s education is because it helps children to thrive. We have been speaking to parents, teachers and other professionals who all recognise the huge impact that having parents working with the school as part of the school community makes to the children. As one teacher said “confident individuals, guaranteed!”
However we haven’t done much work listening to the children’s point of view. As part of the film we made with the wonderful students from City of Glasgow College’s television department we wanted to speak to children and hear their voices too. We were lucky enough to be able to speak to two groups of children from Golfhill Primary and St Albert’s Primary. I think we found some future film stars and got some lovely footage of the children’s faces lighting up when they talked about how their parents got involved.
Golfhill Learning Together Club
In Golfhill children from the Learning Together club (run by the EAL teacher Marilyn Gordon- see http://gatheredtogether.bemis.org.uk/?p=663) spoke about how they felt about their parents coming in to school. One young boy, whose older brother attends the group told us about a time when they acted out a play with puppets and then he and his brother read a story together “and the class stopped but I wanted to go on reading forever”. My favourite moment was when a girl was asked how she felt when her mum came into school said “I feel GENIUS!” (a word she had just learned in learning club).
The children we interviewed at St Albert’s were a mix of children whose parents were in the Parent Council, came to St Albert’s learning club or were involved in the bilingual story telling (to see some of the mothers from the story telling group go to http://gatheredtogether.bemis.org.uk/?p=854). The children spoke about feeling proud that their parents and that it showed them their parents cared and took an interest in them.
Sadia reading to children at St Albert’s
It was great to be able to capture the positive stories and experience of children but we know that this isn’t the case for every child. After speaking to parents with the Rainbow Muslim Women’s group, who had some difficult experiences getting involved in their children’s education (go to http://gatheredtogether.bemis.org.uk/?p=878 to see Samina and Tasneem talking about their experiences). They suggested that we could also speak to children from within the Rainbow women’s group and we met with Niem and Nailah to hear their story.
Nailah said that she felt quite uncomfortable about her mother coming into school because English wasn’t her first language and she was worried what the teachers would think. She also talked about not wanting her parents to be involved and throwing letters from school in the bin. It can be really difficult for families who are new to Scotland (and parents who are new to English) to become involved in the school community and the dynamics between children and their parents can change because of the language barrier. Niem, Nailah’s younger brother, spoke about the difference that it made when his parents became involved after he was being bullied at school. He felt that the teachers listened to his parents more and also that when they do get involved it showed that they cared about him and how he was getting on at school. We made a podcast of their conversation- to hear Nailah and Niem just go to http://gatheredtogether.bemis.org.uk/?p=878
Gathered Together has been running for seventeen months now and we thought the end of the year would be a good time to look back at what we’ve done over the year. Here are a few figures-
35 workshops for ethnic minority parents, reaching 358 parents
22 training sessions for Parent Councils reaching 257 parent council members and head teachers
10 videos on our website with parents, head teachers and key stake holders sharing good practice (and more videos to follow in the New Year)
Our workshops with Ethnic Minority parents have been a wonderful opportunity to find out about the experiences of parents in relation to their children’s schools. It’s helped highlight good practice with some great stories of how schools engage with parents and help them feel a part of the school community as well as helping us to understand the barriers that parents can face. The biggest barrier for the majority of Ethnic Minority parents face is language and we’ve been able to do simple things like make parents aware of their right to get an interpreter for meetings with school as well as share ideas for how they can get involved despite the language barrier. We’ve also raised awareness about parents’ rights to get involved and have their voice heard within the school. So many of the parents at our sessions hadn’t heard of the Parent Council or had only the vaguest idea of what they do and we’ve been able to raise awareness of the work Parent Councils can do and the impact they can have on the ethos of the school.
Parent Council training- Rimbleton Fife
We’ve been able to take the barriers and experiences we’ve heard from our EM sessions to pass on to local authorities and feed into our training for parent councils. The training is meant to give parent councils the chance to think about the experience of parents who experience barriers and challenge them to come with practical solutions to help overcome these barriers. This is often a rare opportunity for parent councils to come together, share ideas and talk about their experiences. The time and space to think about participation and what they can do to help parents become more involve is incredibly valuable and some brilliant ideas have come out of these discussions. The training is also an opportunity for us to share the good practice we’ve come across including community assemblies, newsletters as podcasts, meeting new parents when their children is transitioning and international days. The parents who came along to the training have feedback that it’s made them aware of the diversity within the school. One mother said that she just found out one of her daughter’s best friends was Polish and that the school has a sizeable Eastern European population she hadn’t been aware of.
One of the best parts of our work has been gathering the stories of the people who are supporting parental involvement. We have met some inspirational people including ethnic minority parents who are taking an active role in their children’s schools, teachers who passionately believe in working in partnership and parents sharing the challenges they’ve experienced in getting involved in their children’s education. Being able to record the interviews has been fantastic so that people can hear about these experiences in their own words. If you haven’t already go have a look- http://gatheredtogether.bemis.org.uk/?p=538 and let us know what your favourite videos are.
In April 2014 we had an article in Children in Scotland, giving a little history of the project and some of the things we’ve learnt from working with Ethnic minority parents and the work we’ve been doing to support EM parents and parent councils.
In our sessions with parents from Ethnic Minorities we always ask what activities they are involved in at the school. Often the parents we speak to will only drop their children off at school and attend parents’ evening- they don’t have the time (or the confidence) to do more. We believe that schools need to be creative in thinking of ways that parents can get involved and feel a part of the school community and at our session with mothers at the West and Central Integration Network in Glasgow we were given a host of ideas.
A lot of the parents talked about going into school for end of term Mass, school plays, Christmas fairs and school assemblies. As well as giving parents a chance to see their children’s school, it is always important for children to have their parents come along. At school concerts you will see children looking into the audience to see their parents and that level of support can really help a child’s confidence. Some of the parents have taken a more active role- from making rice dishes for Fair Trade day to helping out on school trips. This helps parents feel part of the school community and children are proud of their parents (at least in primary school!). Our favourite idea was a parents’ netball team! We were very impressed with the parents who do this.
When we were talking about barriers one of the issues that came up a lot was distance- many of the families need to travel quite far to school and this can stop them getting involved in school activities, particularly meetings after school. We also learned that taxis are not able to take a child on their own- this means if one child is off sick then the other child will need to stay at home too as they are not able to get to school by themselves. The parents we met also said that they didn’t feel they could commit to groups like the Parent Council because they wouldn’t always be able to make it- being able to offer flexible ways to get involved could really help these parents.
Sadly racism was also mentioned as a barrier, the mother said that she didn’t feel that the head teacher listened to her concerns and in the end she moved her daughter to another school. We have found the best way of tackling racism is for the school to acknowledge and celebrate the different cultures that the pupils come from- showing all the pupils that difference is to be respected.
The Gathered Together team were at the Scottish Learning Festival last week. It’s an amazing event bringing together a huge range of organisations involved in education and children’s learning – from Skills Development Scotland to Amnesty International. This year was the first time that parents had been officially invited to attend and the National Parent Forum Scotland (NPFS) and our partners Scottish Parent Teacher Council had a “Parent Connect” stall just for parents. It seemed to be constantly busy- and not just because of the tempting home baking available! There were sessions on how parents can support their children with literacy and numeracy and what Parent Councils do, visiting displays from organisations supporting families- including Gathered Together and vast amounts of information about parents’ rights, the Curriculum for Excellence and the role of Parent Councils. (more…)