Case Study

Introduction

In the absence of mainstream provision, the Asian Resource Centre (ARC) started its heritage language school in 1976 and now provides teaching in seven community languages leading to GCSE, AS and A2 exams. Community languages taught are Panjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Nepalese, Arabic and Hindi. The Centre is a recognised and approved OCR, ICAA/EDEXCEL and AQA examination centre and has been conducting exams for a number of years. The school currently has 350 students.

The partnership

At an early stage the ARC came to the conclusion that they could not operate on their own if they were to be successful in their work. They needed to collaborate with maintained schools and other community organisations in the area.

The first step was to approach Plumstead Manor School to investigate whether they could use the school premises to teach their children. Ameen Hussein, ACR’s Head teacher explains that they received a very warm welcome from the Head and Deputy Headteacher as well as from other staff in the school.

Plumstead Manor School benefits from the partnership through the presence of ACR. If they ever experience language problems where parents do not understand the teachers, ACR is called in to help translate. ACR also helps out by explaining to parents whose children attend Plumstead Manor School, how the British Education System works and also explains the importance of attending parents’ evenings. If ACR needs help they can always turn to Plumstead Manor School. For example, they get to use their hall for assemblies.

Both schools share good practice, test results and performance monitoring of pupils. A contract has been signed for use of the premises, and Greenwich City Council pays for the rent through grants. Aside from hosting the Asian Resource Centre, Plumstead Manor School also host four other complementary schools from Greenwich.

Impact

The impact has not been measured yet, but many of the students who attend Plumstead Manor School also attend classes at the ARC. Both schools have noticed that as children learn their mother tongue and more about their culture, their confidence level increases and they become proud of their culture. This has a direct impact on their performance in the mainstream school subjects. As well as the activities themselves, the presence of strong role models from within the ARC and the Asian Community contribute to the good behaviour of the students.

ARC have regular monthly meetings with the students to find out how the students are doing in school, what needs they have, and together a future agenda is agreed on what to learn and also how to learn it.

According to Ameen, it is important that the students have a say as the school is driven by the students and their needs need to be met.

He says, 'Supplementary schools offer a variety of different teaching methods as the teachers come from different backgrounds and countries. Some students learn best from reading, listening, singing or through drama. As every child learns in a different way supplementary education is a great complement to mainstream teaching.'

Successes

• Sharing good practice
• Working together as a team
• Sharing information about students

'Basically, everything has worked well. We now also have access to the dance and music room and get to use the different instruments, which is another great way to learn languages and more about your cultural heritage,' says Ameen.

Challenges

No real challenges have been faced with regards to the partnership. The only problem may be that because the ARC uses the school premises on Saturdays only, they don’t have as much contact as they would like with staff at Plumstead Manor School.

How are they continuing the collaborative work?

ARC is growing but they have encountered problems as the council wants to stop the funding for use of Plumstead Manor premises, which means that that the school may have to close and that children will lose their mother tongue classes as well as the other subjects taught. Neither ARC nor Plumstead Manor School understands why this decision has been taken, and both schools are very upset.

School background

In addition to community languages, they offer dance, music and drama classes in partnership with Plumstead Manor School as well as classes in Maths, English and ICT.

In addition to the supplementary school, ARC has also started heritage language workshops targeting maintained schools in different parts of Greenwich. This very popular project has added another dimension to the centre as many mainstream schools in the borough are showing interest in the project. Through this project ARC will be able to provide much needed language support and also help mainstream schools in organising exams in heritage languages.

About the School