Count Us In: A sense of belonging: Meeting the needs of children and young people newly arrived in Scotland: page 7

Count Us In: A sense of belonging: Meeting the needs of children and young people newly arrived in Scotland

6. Do schools have a clear sense of direction?

Strengths

Many schools and education authorities have strengthened their policies in relation to diversity, equality and fairness.
Education authorities are giving due attention to the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 to guide schools on how to address the needs of children with English as an additional language more effectively.
Education authorities and senior managers in establishments use collaborative working between schools and EAL and bilingual support staff to improve outcomes for newly-arrived children and young people.

Aspects for improvement

Education authorities should develop clear approaches to integrating children arriving from outwith the UK.
Senior managers in schools should work with staff to establish effective admissions and induction arrangements for welcoming newly-arrived children and young people.
Education authorities and senior managers in schools should take a stronger role in leading improvements in the quality of provision for newly-arrived children and young people.
Teachers need CPD and the sharing of effective approaches to supporting newly-arrived children and young people with EAL.

Overall, education authorities and schools demonstrate a clear commitment to equality and positive attitudes to diversity. In recent years, many education authorities have strengthened their policies in relation to diversity, equality and fairness in response to legislation, such as the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. The polices are helping to ensure that staff in schools are aware of their collective responsibility to include fully all children and young people in the life of the school and to meet their needs.

In the past few years, education authorities have been faced with the challenge of meeting the needs of increasing numbers of newly-arrived learners. The information from the survey of all authorities indicates that only five of them have specific formal approaches to integrating children arriving from outwith the UK. Staff working within EAL services are given a key role in helping children to settle into school life and access the curriculum. The approaches they use give due attention to children’s ethnicity, religion, cultural norms and the language needs of both the child and his/her family. One authority had implemented a successful formal integration policy in relation to the Gateway Protection Programme. In this instance, a multiagency team planned, monitored and delivered appropriate actions to enable children and families who were refugees to settle and thrive in local communities. Education authorities recognise that a more strategic approach is required across council services to meet the needs of newly-arrived children and families more effectively.

Results from the survey also show that most authorities do not yet have formal arrangements in place to guide schools on appropriate induction arrangements for newly-arrived children and young people. Education authorities delegate a significant leadership role to EAL services in helping newly-arrived children and young people become accustomed to school in Scotland and to overcome potential barriers to learning and achievement. They are implementing the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 appropriately to support staff in addressing the needs of children with English as an additional language. However, almost all authorities are experiencing unpredictable patterns of change in bilingual communities and the challenge of newly-arrived families being dispersed across their geographical area. This is placing considerable demand on existing resources. Information from the survey of all authorities indicates that all but two authorities have between one and eight FTE specialist teachers, proportionate to the overall school population, to advise teachers and provide specific support to pupils in schools with English as an additional language. Most also employ a small number of bilingual assistants. These posts are usually part-time, temporary positions. From the information given, bilingual assistants are mainly supporting pupils whose home languages are Urdu/Punjabi, Cantonese and, in a few cases, Polish. The two largest authorities have up to 140 FTE EAL and bilingual support staff. Authorities recognise that there are areas for improvement in relation to staff development and training and the current lack of capacity within mainstream schools to address the needs of bilingual/multilingual learners.

Education authorities have set clear expectations for schools to have suitable recording and monitoring processes in place. A few are using data management systems such as SEEMIS or ScotXed to track attainment effectively. Only two made mention of using the Stages of English Language Acquisition data on SEEMIS. One education authority is developing a new data collection system to highlight the progress of newly-arrived learners. Responses from five authorities indicate that they have no specific arrangements for tracking the progress of newly-arrived children.

There is considerable scope for education authorities to develop more effective strategic approaches to enabling children and young people settle quickly into school in Scotland and make good progress.

In many schools, senior managers have successfully shaped a common vision and agreed values for their school that demonstrate and promote inclusion and diversity. Many headteachers are striving to challenge and support staff to meet the wide range of needs of an increasingly diverse and mobile school population. In the best examples visited by HMIE, headteachers had developed clear approaches to induction, assessment and on-going support for learning and teaching of newly-arrived children and young people. They are taking an active lead in raising the achievements of newly-arrived learners.

Senior managers in all schools value the specialist support provided by colleagues in EAL and bilingual services and encourage staff to work collaboratively with them. We found that most schools do not have specific admission arrangements for welcoming new arrivals and their families. They rely on EAL services to gather information, provide induction programmes and track and monitor the progress of newly-arrived children. Staff in a number of schools do not feel confident in addressing the language needs of children. They are not always aware of the potential emotional, social and educational difficulties newly-arrived children and their families may be experiencing in moving to a new country. Senior managers need to provide a stronger lead in implementing a whole-school approach to welcoming new arrivals and to ensuring that they have the opportunity to achieve well.

Improving education for newly-arrived children and young people

Our vision, values and aims set out clear expectations for, and positive attitudes to, diversity. We are strongly committed to equality. We promote equity and celebrate diversity and inclusion and this is reflected in our improvement plan.

QI 9.1 Vision, values and aims

Staff demonstrate through their actions that school improvement and raising standards of achievement are of paramount importance. They promote and ensure equality of opportunity and equal access.

The Journey to Excellence Part 2 Page 51

Issues to consider

How are you building capacity in schools to support the achievements of newly-arrived children and young people?
Are all staff sufficiently aware of the challenges that newly-arrived children face in starting school in a new country?
How effectively are you targeting EAL and bilingual support to address the needs of newly-arrived learners?
Are you providing well-targeted professional development for staff to help them to address and meet the needs of newly-arrived children and young people effectively?

School: Hillhead High School, Glasgow City Council

Focus: Vision and leadership

Description of practice

The headteacher plays a very strong role in promoting positive attitudes and practices to success for all learners, with a clear commitment to equality, inclusion and the celebration of diversity. The school policies on equality, and on learners with English as an additional language, provide staff with advice and strategies for meeting the needs of newly-arrived young people. Specialist EAL teachers within the school have a key role in training all staff to respond to newly-arrived young people’s diverse learning needs.

Each year, the school improvement plan has clear priorities for ensuring that newly-arrived young people have equal opportunities for fulfilling their potential. Senior managers and principal teachers promote equality and diversity actively in their departments and include aspects of equality and diversity in departmental improvement plans.

Senior managers give young people from different backgrounds posts of responsibility in the school and encourage them to be effective role models. They successfully foster positive relationships with parents from a range of ethnic minority backgrounds. They actively encourage them to be involved with the school and be represented on the parent council. Cultural diversity is evident on the school website and in school publications such as the school prospectus, where information is translated into different languages.

Senior managers clearly demonstrate the school’s commitment to valuing diversity. They actively seek opportunities to celebrate different cultures. For example, the Indian High Commissioner came to the school to commemorate the life of Ghandi. Religious festivals and cultures are celebrated in a variety of ways. All religious beliefs are respected. For example, Muslim pupils can arrive late on Fridays to enable them to attend morning prayers first. The senior management team has allocated additional staffing to the physical education department to allow single sex classes, in keeping with the religious beliefs of some pupils.

The school is successful in:

building the capacity of staff to enable newly-arrived young people to overcome barriers to learning;
encouraging young people to support each other; and
promoting an ethos of fairness and equality for all.

Outcomes

The school community is well integrated.
Diversity is embedded in the school’s aims, environment, publications and curriculum and is actively supported and celebrated by staff and pupils.
Young people show respect for people from different cultures and backgrounds.

School: Cuthbertson Primary School, Glasgow City Council

Focus: Leadership for learning

Description of practice

The headteacher demonstrates a strong commitment to success for all learners. In her two years in post, she has successfully challenged and supported the staff to establish a learning environment that values diversity and helps children overcome potential barriers to learning. In recent years, the school has received a significant number of newly-arrived children and families. The school population is currently made up of 20% monolingual white children, 60% bilingual children from Urdu and Punjabi speaking families and 20% newly-arrived children from Czech, Slovak, Libyan and Malay backgrounds. The headteacher has focused clearly on learning and teaching as the key to school improvement. She has provided a range of staff training, including twilight sessions on meeting the differing needs of bilingual learners. She encourages staff to learn collaboratively and to share and evaluate the successes or otherwise of classroom practice. The headteacher and principal teacher work directly with staff to model and advise on teaching strategies. Staff confidence is growing and teachers are taking responsibility for meeting the needs of all children.

The headteacher carefully deploys available specialist staff to maximise the impact of using their expertise in providing additional support for children’s learning. She encourages staff to plan jointly and also to deliver and plan lessons. The headteacher takes an active lead in ensuring the achievements of newly-arrived children. She meets with class teachers to discuss their plans for each term’s learning and teaching and ensures that learning targets are appropriate. She monitors carefully the progress of newly-arrived children.

The school is successful in:

securing a shared commitment and sense of responsibility to meet the needs of all learners; and
increasing the confidence and ability of staff to provide high quality learning experiences.

Outcomes

newly-arrived children are making good progress in becoming confident individuals and successful learners.
Staff are taking lead roles within, and beyond, the classroom.

Conclusion: The way ahead

Globalisation and the ensuing demographic changes are bringing new challenges to Scottish education. Migration is a common feature in today’s society, as is mobility in school populations. Increasingly, and particularly in the current economic climate, many families move around frequently and children have to deal with multiple transitions to different schools. Schools need to have effective approaches to helping newly-arrived children and young people settle in quickly and make progress in learning. Staff have to develop their understanding of a wider range of diverse backgrounds and needs. A number of education authorities and schools are successfully supporting newly-arrived children and young people to maximise their progress and achieve highly. This good practice should be shared widely and built upon in order to bring about improvements in the following areas.

Welcoming new arrivals, and approaches to initial and ongoing assessments.
Providing suitably challenging learning experiences to enable all children and young people to maximise their progress.
Enabling newly-arrived children and young people to use their first language as a tool for learning.
Specifically tracking and monitoring the progress and achievements of newly-arrived learners.
Supporting learning, including establishing effective partnerships with parents.
Providing well-targeted staff training to support staff meet the needs of newly-arrived children and young people more effectively.

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