Case Study

Introduction

This complementary school is run by the British Arab Resource Centre (BARC), providing complementary education for deprived children from low income, Arabic-speaking families. The overarching aim of BARC is to build and encourage social cohesion and to act on behalf of the local Arab community. BARC regards ‘language as culture and culture is community’ and believes that learning the mother tongue of one’s family and community has multiple benefits.

The school, which has successfully run for 13 years, currently caters for about 100 students aged 5 – 18, and delivers from St George’s RC School in Maida Vale. An open admissions criterion attracts pupils from many different national backgrounds. Children who attend the school originate from Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Iraq (including Kurdish), Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Kuwait and Egypt, as well as the UK. While a few Christian children have attended in the past, the focus on teaching Arabic and the Qur’an means that primarily Muslim children attend.

At present, the school provides teaching in: Arabic to GCSE and A’ level; Islam (the Qur’an); and tolerance & integration into UK society. Complementary lessons in core subjects of the National Curriculum (NC) – specifically Maths and English – are being phased in, in response to parental requests. All current teachers at the school are first-speaker Arabic and qualified teachers in their home country. For the new lessons in core NC subjects, UK-qualified teachers will be used.

Parental involvement and consultation is strong. Parents are in regular contact with teachers through informal chats before and after classes, as well as more formal open forums and one-to-one meetings, where parents can discuss their child’s progress and input into the running of the school.

Collaboration

As with many complementary schools, it is the parent organisation – BARC - that establishes and maintains collaborations and partnerships. Original collaboration with Westminster City Council dates back to 1999 when the council funded BARC via the Joint Financing Initiative (a collaboration which also included the Westminster Primary Care Trust). Over a period of years the council, at all levels, has come to respect BARC’s frankness, honesty and ability to highlight concerns from the point of view of the Arab community in a constructive way. As such, the council now invite BARC to sit on various forums to evaluate and improve local services, including education.

The collaboration also makes raising the profile of the complementary school easier via personal relationships leading to promotion by local politicians. The relationship with their host maintained school is fine, although they are hoping to elevate this to a more strategic working partnership.

Successes

BARC’s partnership with the Westminster City Council has been a positive experience: for example through funding regimes BARC has learned to be accountable for what they do and what monitoring and evaluation is required. It also found ‘first hand learning’, that is, learning on the job as a result of having a grant, was most effective and this, too, is a good way to establish contacts.

Challenges

BARC has approached (and has been approached by) a number of maintained schools seeking to establish a strategic partnership with its complementary school. But offers from the maintained sector have been disappointing and not in accordance with BARC’s own understanding of what the Extended Schools Strategy aims to do.

BARC’s experience is that many local authorities and other statutory bodies do not yet have a proper appreciation of the value of voluntary sector organisations and that there is still some way to go in establishing genuine partnerships with complementary schools or other voluntary organisations.

Funding and Future developments

It costs about £40,000 PA to run the school including teachers’ pay, rent, office, books and meetings. This is met by grant assistance and a parental contribution of about £3.50 per week.

The school is looking to open a second centre delivering from Earl’s Court and has a three-year strategy to sustain the school over the long tem. They have a pro-active approach to funding, looking for three-year grant regimes rather than single year funding.

About the School