Devasted that Luljeta Nuzi has died after a long fight with cancer. An incredible, dynamic, fierce woman whose optimism and passion for equality for all, in education, as women, as members of refugee and global majority communities will remain an inspiration for those who met her. I first met Luljeta in 2009 when she came […]
Migration Museum welcomes you
The Migration Museum education team are hosting a drop-in teachers evening at the museum Wednesday September 27th 4-7pm to share education programme plans for No Turning Back.
Come and have a guided tour of the exhibition, browse our education resources and discuss booking your school or group into a workshop.
For more information about the exhibition and all that the museum does, visit their website: http://www.migrationmuseum.org/exhibition/noturningback/
To book a free place at the teachers’ evening please RSVP to Liberty@migrationmuseum.org
Birkbeck University of London
As a supplementary school member of staff you are giving back, and enriching the lives of your communities. Ensure that you do the same for yourself. Have you thought about going back to university, or perhaps starting for the first time? But have lots of thoughts racing around your mind, like:
“It’s for 18 year olds” “It’s too late for me” “I’m busy during the day”?
All of these are valid thoughts, and at Birkbeck, University of London we appreciate that being a mature learner is tough. However, Birkbeck’s mission since inception in 1823 has been to widen access to higher education. We work with a range of students, mature and traditional, who enter our lecture theatres with life or work experience to formal qualifications. We pride ourselves on the fact that we provide full and part-time courses, to suit the diverse nature of our students. What better place to continue or take steps back into studying we hear you say! If you’re interested in applying, or perhaps want to find out more, come along to one of our FREE activities or open evening:
Open evening: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/prospective/open-evenings
Activities: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/outreach
We accept applications for September 2017 study, until August 2017. But we encourage you to come and speak to the respective department first, and make your application as soon as possible. If you would like support with your application or take the next small step to find out more, come along to our workshop, GetStarted, Saturday 5th August (Access from the link above). We discuss the following:
Preparing for Higher Education as a mature learner
Overview of student fees and finances
How to write an application and the application form
For any questions please go to: http://ow.ly/XmtL30drrME 
Cognitive benefits of language learning
Complete the questionnaire to make sure your language(s) are recognised and valued!
The British Academy has commissioned a research team to provide an up-to-date systematic review of research into the cognitive benefits of language learning, analyse its implications for policy and practice, and identify potential interventions and gaps in our knowledge.
This special research project is part of the British Academy’s initiative to deepen awareness and demonstrate the importance of languages.
Supplementary/Complementary Schools are represented on the advisory group for this research by NRCSE Executive Director, Pascale Vassie. We are determined to ensure that all languages are considered and the additional demands and benefits when learning a different script are analysed.
To ensure YOUR languages are valued and recognised – please complete this short survey on where and how you learned language(s). It should take no more than 15 minutes.
There is a questionnaire for children too so please get all your pupils to complete this one – Children’s Questionnaire
Note: you should complete this survey no matter when you last learned a language. When you were a child, more recently? How many languages do you speak? How and when did you learn them. From your parents? At school? When you went to a different country for family or work related reasons. Did you arrive in Britain as an adult and have to learn English from scratch? or did you already have a reasonable or good level of English before you arrived?
This will inform the British Academy/University College London research into the Cognitive Benefits of Language Learning – which will in turn help to persuade government and business to provide money to recognise and increase language skills in GB.
If you are raising a trilingual child take a look at this great website that provides links to children’s radio stations
http://www.trilingualchildren.com/p/kids-radio-stations.html
Two research studies published
Two leading think-tanks, IPPR and RSA, publish reports on supplementary schools
From Institute for Public Policy Research
Satu
rdays for success: How supplementary education can support pupils from all backgrounds to flourish
Mainstream schools can benefit in a number of ways from the work of the UK’s many community-led educational programmes. This report makes recommendations for how more pupils, schools and communities can gain from the rich, extracurricular learning environments that these ‘supplementary schools’ offer.The more diverse Britain becomes, the more scope there is for mainstream schools to take advantage of, and benefit from, the extensive network of between 3,000 and 5,000 supplementary schools that exists in the country. These community-led out-of-school educational programmes, set up largely by migrant and ethnic minority communities, have widespread support from parents and communities, and offer a personalised and informal learning environment that complements mainstream education, covering areas including the core curriculum, languages, and cultural activities.
At their best, these supplementary schools offer children and young adults a rich learning experience, providing personalised learning with strong pupil–teacher engagement, and giving young people the means to explore complex questions of identity, engage with role models from similar backgrounds, and develop networks of peer support.
In this report we recommend greater complementarity and coordination between the mainstream education system and these thriving supplementary schools. This would make some mainstream schools better prepared and equipped to deal with the pressures that come with catering for a diverse student body, and further the government’s commitments to community- and parent-led approaches to education, and to greater diversity and autonomy within the schools system.
We call for more mainstream schools to, through engagement with supplementary schools, become active players in their communities. In doing so, they can raise the capacity of those communities, and of parents, to take ownership over their children’s education. They can help ensure that out-of-school learning and enrichment opportunities are high-quality, and open and accessible to all pupils, particularly those who need them the most.
This report sets out a roadmap for how mainstream schools can build on and engage with supplementary education, where there is a high-quality local offer. We suggest three modes of engagement with supplementary schools:
- mapping supplementary school uptake
- greater coordination with, and referral to, supplementary schools
- cooperative programming with supplementary schools.
Making supplementary schools work for your school
IPPR has also produced a summary of the research presented in this report, tailored specifically for headteachers and other education professionals in primary and secondary schools.
Entitled ‘Making supplementary schools work for your school’, it considers the challenges facing mainstream schools, asks how those schools and their pupils can benefit from supplementary schools, and suggests how they can best work together.
You can download it here.
And from the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) Beyond the school gates
As part of the RSA-Investigate-Ed series, Selina Nwulu explores the developing roles and connections of supplementary schools, in light of the changing needs of black and minority ethnic (BME) pupils and the longstanding barriers they face.
In a changing cultural, social and economic climate, we consider how supplementary schools might adapt, particularly to helping their pupils make successful transitions from school to further and higher education and employment. Over the past 20 years, BME students have made advances within the education system. Chinese and Indian students remain consistently high achievers and Bangladeshi and Nigerian students now outperforming their white British peers at GCSE. Black Caribbean pupils have made some academic advances, but they still attain below the national average. BME students are also far more likely to go to university than they were 20 years ago.
However, beyond compulsory education, the obstacles continue; BME students are less likely to be offered a place at a Russell Group university than their white peers with similar grades. Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups twice as likely to be unemployed as their white peers. By extension, people from BME backgrounds are more likely to work in temporary or precarious employment which has been linked to lower wellbeing.
While supplementary schools cannot and should not address these complex issues alone, how might supplementary schools form a more integral part of the local learning ecology, connecting with mainstream schools, higher and further education institutions and arts and cultural bodies to offer a strengthened network of support to BME young people?
Our report aims to widen the conversation about supplementary schools and their existing roles, so that they are able to evolve with support and intention, This report’s recommendations, therefore, centre on how supplementary schools can harness their strengths to broaden their purpose, connection, impact and sustainability.