[eal-bilingual] Attendance leaflet

Hi Alison
Letters and other correspondence are important in making connections with parents, but often they are not successful because of literacy issues of the parents and sometimes parents lack of knowledge or understanding of the way in which the British education system operates. 
I've found that going to the local community centres and the mosque to talk about achievement in general including attendance is useful. Also inviting mothers into the school for activities.  Using someone who has some social standing within the community to support the school in working with these families is very helpful
The bengali community has a rich cultural heritage with Tagore as one of their greatest poets and philosophers and it may be that some of his work could be used within the curriculum.

I've been involved for a long time with Bengali communities. Most families really value education and will listen to the arguments for not taking their children on extended holidays in term-time.  With sustained effort, and using a variety of approaches, the attendance levels of Bangladeshi pupils rose in our schools 
Best wishes

Prakash Ross

RUTH DELVIN <ruth.delvin at btopenworld.com> wrote: Dear Alison 
  Am forwarding you separately our recently translated leaflet on attendance and punctuality in Bengali/Somali/Spanish/Turkish/English.  You will need to have downloaded Banglaword or have another Bengali font on your machine to access the Bengali sections.  Really think translations of this magnitude should be undertaken by central government rather than individual schools or LAs.  
  However much good it may do children to water their cultural roots during school time, there are obvious disadvantages. Of course parents have valid reasons for taking children out of school - low season air fares, weddings, funerals and harvesting - but on the other hand they do need to realise that they are liable to prosecution and substantial fines if they take their children out of school without consent.  This is by far the most persuasive argument.  

  Being on time and attending regularly is, after all, part of accepting responsibility for one's own progress.

  Regards
  Ruth Delvin
  Highbury Grove School
  N52EG

Alison Mott  wrote:
  In a meeting at school today we discussed intervention programmes and
the fact that the larger majority of children taking part in catch-up
activities are the same children and are those with regular, poor
attendance. This then lead to a discussion about attendance altogether
(our school is failing to hit Government targets) and on to the pros and
cons of children going on extended leave (cons in the opinion of most
taking part in the discussion; there are benefits relating to improved
home language, sense of connection and self esteem in my opinion). Our
headteacher has tried the coaxing route and the threatening route to try
to get parents not to take their children from school during term time,
with little lasting impact (though for the most part parents are now
better at planning these holidays around longer school breaks). We also
had a quick look at the 'official' and extremely wordy letter which the
head sends out to parents to point out the negative effects of taking
their child out of school.

With regard to regular poor attendance, one classteacher stated they had
begun to tell parents that if they want their children to get good exam
results and go on to get good jobs, they need to bring them to school on
time so they don't fall. They had had some, limited, success with this.
Another teacher had commonly heard it expressed in the community that
primary school wasn't really important and that it was secondary school
and GCSE's that count. They felt this impacted on the lack of parental
pressure/sense of urgency in making reluctant children come to school. 

We also shared anecdotal evidence of children talking about how late
they go to bed. 

So, my favour: I offered to:

* re-word the formal extended leave letter to make it parent
friendly;

* produce a leaflet about the problems caused by children
regularly being late and/or missing school (particularly to raise
awareness of the impact falling behind in primary school will have on a
child's secondary career)

* source information/leaflets on the benefits of children going to
bed at a decent time 

* and get all the above translated into the languages spoken in
our school (predominantly Bengali, then Arabic). 

But thought I'd check first to see if anyone had already produced
anything along those lines? 

Alison

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