Do we have any TA's or other support staff who work in schools with high number of students who are refugees? If so would you care to discuss the issues and challenges they face in general?

I am not looking for discussion on tactics within schools but a general discussion on the challenges they face in fitting in within our culture and local community.

For instance I understand that some parents will not inform their children they are refugees to protect them and so do not identify themselves as 'refugees'. That students often feel dissafected (right word?) from the local community and culture.

How does this effect their education?

Many parents do not speak English or work. Could more be done to help parents?

What role can local social landlords play?

Is there enough collaboration between schools and the local community to meet the needs of families? Could things be improved? Should it be?

How do we help refugees to fit in with the best of society while avoiding the pitfalls?

George I have been so busy I haven't had time to think of aTOTW would you like me to put this on there to highlight you post?
We have Polish and Bulgarians but no refugees now although one child from Africa may have been but her mum works at the Hospital so that may be why they came over.We have a few that come and go because they are working/training there.

Hi JOAT,

I have no objections to you moving the topic.

As many of the posters here are aware my interests are more towards community development, empowering individuals to make local decisions for themselves.

In general the views of children tend to be ignored, well actually children tend to be ignored unless they are creating a nuisance. So my main interest is how we do we meet the needs of a group which is practically invisible to society. ie Refugee groups tend to be hard to reach and engage, let alone the children. I am hoping those who work closest to them might have ideas on how we can tackle the various issues outside of school, or even if schools might have an additional role to play.

We have had more than our fair share of children who are refugees. We find the main problem is that they move on very quickly. Just as they are beginning to get to grips with the language, gain confidence and trust and begin to make friends they leave. Most are only with us for a few weeks before the authorities move them, hopefully to somewhere more permanent. What does this do to a child's confidence especially when they have experienced such awful things before coming to Britain.

One of the things I heard, and on reflection it is fairly obvious but had not realy thought about it, is a strong sense of not belonging and feeling disconnected.

Unlike many refugees in the past, these children are not only moving to a country they probably know very little about, but also culturally very differant. Moving for any child is disruptive. Trying to fit in with a new set of people, where friendships are already developed and a social pecking order has been established. New school to contend with etc.

It does sound from you have said that your local area has transient population, with at least some provision for temporary accomodation while the wheels of national and local government move slowly on.

I guess this is necessary to some degree while their petition for status is being considered, and more permanent housing is found.

I would be interested in knowing if there has been any research on how this effects young people. Also if we need to consider other ways of handling this.

Idealy it would seem that temporary housing should be close to where the family might finaly be settled. This way there could be some continuation for the children at least. However would this lead to 'ghetto' estates where families are moved in. Instead of helping to integrate into mainstream society people are moved into single status estates with an artificial barrier?

It must be very frustrating for everyone hollyw

Yes, I work in a school in an inner city where there is a very high number of children from ethnic minorities. We have a lot (approx 60%) of children who have come over from Somalia as refugees. Our other main ethic minority group is children from Bangladesh.

However, there is a well defined Somali community in the local area with the school as the "nucleus" so we tend not to have many children moving on into more permanent housing. As far as I understand the situation, the male figurehead of the family comes over to the uk, gains indefinite leave to remain, then brings the rest of his familiy over under family reunification rules.

If I can remember correctly, well over 75% of our children are EAL children, with a lot of our children coming to us with little or no understanding of English. Quite often, we find that in a family, the father speaks better English than the mother. We do have link workers/multilingual ta's in the school who are willing to assist us wth any language support, but quite often, I have found myself asking the oldest child in the family to pass on a message to their mum (e.g. is your child having school dinners or packed lunches today) which I dont necessarily feel is ideal, but sometimes it just neds to happen. I have also before used one parent to translate for another parent, which I dont partculary like, but it is often out of sheer desperation. We also have all displays in the school in somali and english, and we send letters home in somali, urdu and english. We have a multilingual library with books representing all of the languages used in the school.

Although I feel the school does work extremely well with the families, we have recently had an issue where a whole school project we were doing with the children ended up offendng a large number of the parents due to their religious beliefs. Before we started this work we did have a parents consultation day where we showed the parents the materials we would be using, and made sure our link workers were avaliable to translate the materials, however there was a lot of misunderstanding and rumour spreading about exactly what the project involved. We did have meetings with the parents, community leaders, and staff from the school, but the whole issue ended up making the national media. We have also had similar (in-school) issues with parents r.e. sex education, changing for p.e. and (muslim) girls going swimming. I feel that the school does try its hardest to consult with the parents, pupils and staff on important issues, but sometimes one gets the impression that the 'majority' group seems to win due to the sheer numbers involved (especially with the cessation of the project mentioned above) We do work closely with the parents and community leaders, but due to culture/language/gender barriers it can be hard work at times.

I feel youve made a very interesting point George about 'Ghetto estates'. This is exactly what is happening where my school is situated, and it seems that although people at grass roots level are trying to work together to promote community cohesion, the local council arent doing that much to help

Hope this helps

OWUP

I found that a very interesting post to read O&U.Thank-you for that insight.It seems like you school is trying very hard.
Just a case of 'You can please some of the people some of the time.........'
I think.At the end of the day you are trying to educate the children.

George I haven't heard of any.Try Edgehill they seemed to be doing lots of Research on various topics when I was down there.