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
One of the brilliant things that’s come out of Gathered Together’s work has been the opportunity to build relations with groups. In Falkirk we ran training for community champions (http://gatheredtogether.bemis.org.uk/?p=330) which Megan Farr from Falkirk Council was also able to attend. This helps to build links between the council and one of the groups our community champion Sofia was running. From that meeting they are now working together to start going out to school to visit primary school classes to speak about Islam.
We have also been able to help some of the community groups we are working with to get the support to develop as organisations as well as apply for the Multi-Cultural Homecoming fund http://bemis.org.uk/project/multicultural-homecoming-2014/. It is great to be able to help groups like the International Women’s group and Rainbow Muslim Women’s group to do more and build relations.
In our videos we’ve also been able to showcase and celebrate good practice- there are so many schools and Parent Councils who do a wonderful job and have developed a real ethos of working with families. We’ve tried to make sure we promote good practice as widely as possible so that they get the recognition they deserve.
And finally through our steering group we’ve been able to open up opportunities to work with Skills Development Scotland to promote their website for parents http://www.myworldofwork.co.uk/section/parents-and-carers to parents from ethnic minorities, help communication between local authorities on how to engage parents and start conversations on how the diverse members of the group can work together.
We’ve got lots of partnership work planned for the new year, including with Education Scotland and Bilingualism Matters- these are exciting times!
A couple of months ago we were invited to attend Oakgrove Primary’s Halloween community assembly. It was a brilliant morning- all the children and teachers were in fancy dress and after the primary six class “Thriller” dance we had the song in our heads for the rest of the day. Community assemblies are a chance for families to come into the school, find out what the children are doing in school and to recognise the achievements of the children.
After the assembly we were able to speak to the head teacher, Jane Cerexhe about why it started. “The community assembly was really an attempt to engage with families in the wider community. We had a newsletter that was going out monthly but I was quite concerned that not all families were able to access it. We thought if we did a community assembly monthly we could have things in the community assembly that were also features of the newsletter. . . We just feel getting parents in over the door is a good starting point, and welcomed with a smile and seeing their children happy and engaged and seeing the teachers engaged with the children is important. The wonderful thing about today is you can see all the staff be part of it as well it’s not just my idea, it’s what we do here.
We give out a lot of certificates linked to the school values, and this has a very high profile at these community assemblies. Sometimes it is difficult for children who are arriving say in Scotland, new to the Scottish education system to be able to access the curriculum because English is in the early stages of acquisition but we are looking at the whole child. We celebrate all the traditional achievements in literacy and numeracy but we are also looking at wellbeing things how children are getting on with one another. There was a really nice award handed out today for a child who was looking after another child who was new to the school and new to English. Actually a year ago he was that child, struggling with a new culture and new language, so that’s a really lovely opportunity to recognise that.”
Don McPherson- Head Teacher Denny Primary School
We’ve started delivering sessions with SPTC to parent councils exploring how they can engage with ALL their parents.
We delivered our first session in Aberdeen City at Seaton Primary. This was organised by Aberdeen City Council – thanks to Donna Cuthill and Tony Rafferty for putting everything together and supporting the project.
Here are some photos from our second Parent Council session in Falkirk- a big thank you to everyone who made it along, especially Megan Farr and Diane Cherry for all their help organising the session.
