Case Study

Introduction

Paiwand is an Afghan Association, which runs a large thriving supplementary school. It has been running for three years and caters for about 220 Afghan children and young people aged 7 - 20. Paiwand operates from Whitefield secondary school and The London Academy in Barnet, as well as from venues in Camden and Brent.

The school runs on Saturdays from 10.30 to 3.00pm and students learn their mother tongues – Dari (Farsi) and Pashto, as well as Maths and Science. The formal lessons are complemented with traditional music and sport.

Paiwand have developed the UK elements of the curriculum by taking advice from the secondary schools that host them and working from current KS3 & KS4 textbooks. The schools are run by a small core of paid staff augmented by 19 volunteer teachers, many of who are qualified teachers in Afghanistan.

Collaboration

Paiwand is proactive about engaging mainstream schools in the area where their students attend. They send information about the supplementary school to mainstream schools at the beginning of each academic year and they refer it to the children and parents. In return some state schools do contact Paiwand to help with difficulties and identified needs for supplementary classes. Meetings with refugee support workers from some schools also help to develop a good working relationship with the state sector. Paiwand also requests feedback from schools about children and does get some responses.
Paiwand approached Whitefield school initially for use of premises, however, as Whitefield is a Full Service Extended school, they were themselves keen to develop a more strategic relationship with Paiwand.

In addition to providing supplementary education, Paiwand and its teachers also help with family difficulties involving disabled parents or parents with language difficulties of their own, or those with children who continually run away from home, play truant, are excluded from school, are victims of bullying, or who struggle with their homework.
This places Paiwand in a good position to offer support to Whitefield in a number of areas relating to students and parents. A senior representative of Paiwand now sits on Whitefield’s Extended Services Management Committee and is able to advise on the cultural side, to act as an advocate, and to suggest strategic approaches to dealing with Afghan pupils their families and all related issues. In early discussions both Paiwand and Whitefield agreed to a common mission, i.e. ‘to work together to improve the education of the children in their care’.

Whitefield saw the value of Paiwand’s bilingual teachers and following discussion entered into a Service Level Agreement by which Paiwand has free use of premises including all classrooms, Sports Hall and Drama studio in exchange for the provision of a bilingual Afghan classroom support teacher for two days per week. This arrangement has worked very well for two years.

Similarly a year after Paiwand approached and agreed to hire classroom space from The London Academy to deliver their school, the Academy approached Paiwand with a similar arrangement, which has now been in place for a year.

Benefits to students

Students themselves state that the school is a particularly good vehicle for newly arrived children and young people to identify with a peer group both ethnically and culturally. It has a good structure of informal education, allowing students to improve their understanding of and attainment in core National Curriculum subjects, specifically Maths which is seen as particularly weak amongst Afghan students. It gives them an opportunity to socialise with other Afghans and to complete and gain support with homework, where parents are not able to help. The school also gives them an opportunity to learn mother tongues, giving them kudos within their family and the wider Afghan community, and to follow their faith (Islam) more effectively and helps them to maintain and pass on their culture and the ability to work in Afghanistan.

Most parents are keen for their children to learn the basic rules of society, and respect for the society in order for them to effectively integrate. Qualifications are also essential and most would like their children to go on to higher education and gain professional qualifications. Parents believe that children have too much freedom at maintained school, certainly a lot more than they would in Afghanistan, and this can lead to bad behaviour.

Students who attend Paiwand attend more than 50 different mainstream schools and the majority of these are not aware of the students’ attendance at supplementary school. In many cases mainstream schools only refer to the home background of the students in relation to acting as interpreters or befriending Afghan new arrivals.

17 of 81 Afghans attending Whitefield School also attend Paiwand. The partnership, aware of the many benefits attendance at the supplementary school is providing, has made various efforts to recruit more. A larger number attend cricket sessions, and Paiwand use this as an opportunity to recruit them into the supplementary school and to discuss topics such as attendance, punctuality and behaviour at the mainstream school.

Paiwand monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of their schooling via a number of interventions including an enrolment form and entry test, assessment of needs, attendance, progress, and achievements. Paiwand also arranges termly parents evenings and students forums in partnership with Whitefield.

About the School