 |
Rochdale is an industrial town in the northwest of England which
has a significant ethnic minority population, mainly from Pakistan
and Bangladesh. Since the 1980s, Rochdale local education authority
has pioneered family literacy programmes to suit particular
contexts and communities, retaining an essential vision of enabling
parents and children, separately and together, to celebrate
their talents and enjoy learning. One of the ways that this
works is through the Partnership Education Service, made up
of teams who encourage and support parental involvement in improving
the literacy of pre-school and school age children, particularly
with families where English is a second language. A key aim
is to encourage creative and practical learning and enjoyment,
using different environments and projects with artists.
Funding
Funding comes from a variety of sources - the local education
authority, the Single Regeneration Budget, Sure Start, the Learning
and Skills Council, the Basic Skills Agency, the National Lotteries
Charity Board, the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and other smaller
grants. The funding supports a manager along with a team of
eight part-time multilingual workers, based in 13 primary and
nursery schools. They promote home-school liaison and develop
family learning courses in these and other schools, as well
as early learning programmes in Sure Start projects for 0-4
year olds and their parents.
What goes on
Rochdale's family literacy programme encourages parents to spend
time looking at how children learn and then try out practical
activities with their own child. Some of the sessions take place
outside the school. There is an oracy trail in the local park,
an environmental print walk in the community and a day trip
to an interactive museum or aquarium. Three sessions are working
with an artist.
The course is taught, where appropriate, by multi-lingual tutors
from the Partnership Education Service who speak community languages,
and materials are produced in Urdu and Bengali as well as in
English.
All courses take place once a week in the primary school, supported
by a crèche. They are spread over the school year so that parents
can be involved longer-term in the life of the school and take
part in many other types of courses set up in response to parents'
needs. These include craft workshops, learning English, making
storysacks, using computers, and passing the written driving
test.
With the support of the family literacy tutor, community artists
and the school, local parents decided to reclaim a derelict
area next to the school and make it into a garden and play area
so that the daily walk to school was more pleasant. Parents
and children worked with artists to build areas such as a mosaic
reading circle, a musical wall and planting areas. The project
built on the experiences from the range of family backgrounds
of the parents; for example, the parents demonstrated and made
musical instruments that they knew in Pakistan and the musician
developed this into other activities using percussion and rhyme.
Asylum seekers, who were among the 20 parents involved in
the project, found a supportive social group for themselves
and their children (who particularly liked being outside as
they missed this aspect of their former lives). The project
took place during daytime with dinnertime clubs for children,
which mothers also attended. Since part of the project activity
took place on Saturday mornings, fathers and siblings were
able to join in too.
Learning
through the garden
Literacy improvement was an integral part of the project.
Books were source materials for the musical wall and the mosaics.
Parents got involved in writing plans and diagrams. Discussing
and giving opinions on the planning and execution of the garden
built parents' confidence and speaking skills. Day trips out
for parents who attended regularly, for example, the Yorkshire
Sculpture Park, broadened experiences and gave parents new
ideas for developing the garden.
Teaching staff also got involved as they used the teaching
area within the school curriculum, for example, when looking
at the Victorians, they grew herbs and cooked with them as
well as making posies from the flowers in the garden. As the
musical wall is built, it will encourage a new range of activities
around music and dance.
An unexpected outcome of the project is that these parents,
with their new self-confidence, have been leading a campaign
to keep the school and garden open which is now threatened
with closure. They have spoken at public meetings and organised
opposition.
In consultation with parents and teachers, the Partnership
Education Servichas produced an activity pack for use by children
on extended holidays to Pakistan and Bangladesh. The pack
enables family learning with early primary years children
and can be personalised for each child and school. It contains
an introduction in Urdu and Bengali, and practical activities
which value the culture and environment of the places visited.
Topics include weather, local arts and craft, transport, kites
and rhymes. Literacy skills are used in a real context and
for communication, and the open-ended curriculum encourages
learners to follow their own interests.
Multi-lingual liaison workers from the Service help schools
and families to work with the pack before and after the visit,
building positive relationships between families, workers
and schools, and encouraging partnership and feedback. The
pack encourages family learning and enthusiasm for learning,
and families feel that their heritage and languages are included
and valued. Pakistan and Bangladesh are seen as contexts for
learning rather than being "under-developed", and
the children have something unique to contribute to school
on their return. Their diaries, photos and artefacts are brought
in and used as resources, and an exhibition of photos is planned.
The pack has been judged a success based on the responses
of families and teachers, and the observations of teachers
and workers from the Service.
Inspire Aspire was a project to extend the creative family
learning work of the Partnership Education Service (PES),
part of Rochdale LEA. It enabled 10 women of Asian heritage
to develop new artistic and literacy skills through a residential
week based at the Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró
art and education centre in Mallorca.
Before the trip the group attended 10 weeks of classes where
they learnt to use the internet for research, which together
with the diaries and reports they wrote improved their use
of English. Once in Mallorca they used sketch pads and cameras
to record the natural beauty and signs of Islamic influence
on architecture, and then worked together, with the support
of a community artist, to use their work to produce silk screen
prints, which were later exhibited at a Rochdale gallery.
Following the trip two of the women became parent governors
- a role to which none of the group had previously aspired,
seven took up new courses and four gained jobs; some have
also joined the management group of a new Community Arts Learning
Centre. Staff assess that these outcomes are due to increased
confidence and self-esteem, which has also benefited their
children. The women contributed to the cost of the trip, subsidised
by various grants and support.
"I really enjoyed working in a group, helping each other
… all different, sharing opinions, talking about what
we were doing. We were doing art!"
Participant
Reference
N. Jackson and A. Cunningham (2004) Inspire Aspire. Basic
Skills, Winter 2004, pp. 14-16.
Contact the Partnership Education Service, Floor 2, Crossfield
Mill, Crawford Street, Rochdale OL11 5RX. Tel: 01706 747270 or 0845 601 9113. Email: Joanne.Thomas@rochdale.gov.uk.
| |
80px.gif)
