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Parents Not Usually Involved

The following text is a transcript of a video clip in which staff and pupils of All Saints Secondary School discuss how the school encourages the involvement of parents who are not usually involved.

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A picture of the front of All Saints Secondary School, the name and logo is shown on the wall beside a glass entrance.

Headteacher: “The All Saints Secondary School takes in a wide range of areas. We’re located in the North side of Glasgow and our catchment area takes in a whole range of different type of places and different types of family backgrounds, which is great – different kinds of children. And the parent groups, again, range from, I suppose you would call professional parents, middle class parents, single parent families, some parents who live with, you know, significant levels of poverty and deprivation.”

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A group of high rise flats taken from the opposite side of a busy road beside a set of garages.

“And a whole range of different international parents who’ve come into the community as asylum seekers, some of them remain asylum seekers, some of them now have refugee status.”

Teacher: “I run the international unit at All Saints and we have about 105 international pupils with us at the moment which makes up about 10% of our school roll.”

Headteacher: “They come from different countries - Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Somalia and inevitably they then bring different levels of English and in some cases different levels of literacy in their own language.”

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A bustling school hall with children sitting at tables and walking around.

“We were keenly aware that our normal procedures for parental involvement were not going to be appropriate but neither were they going to do what we wanted them to do. Which was make these young people and their parents feel a real part of our community as quickly as they possibly could and allow them to understand what it meant to be educated in a school in Scotland.”

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A classroom showing pupils seated at desks at work.

“And what we expected of parents and also what we do for parents. We also had to address the fact that parents couldn’t speak English, in some issues they were very insecure. They were struggling to come to terms with not just the fact that their children had to be educated but they had to settle into an alien environment. They had to deal with a lot of bureaucracy with regard to their own situation and with regard to their children’s education and they were therefore insecure in themselves.”

Pupil: “When a new person comes into the school what they see right in front of them is a little poster saying “Welcome” in all these different languages.”

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A framed poster on the wall with Welcome in bold yellow print at the top and translated underneath. There is a picture of 2 hands shaking hands underneath.

“They have it in Gaelic, Failte and all these different languages so when they come in straight away, when they open through the doors they know that they are welcome by looking at that poster.”

Teacher: “When children arrive at All Saints first of all they’re enrolled by the headteacher and then they come up to the unit and we find out as much as we can from them. Their parents come with them and we also have an interpreter there and we try and find as much as we can about their educational background as well as their country of origin, language and their emotional background.”

Headteacher: “The parents are invited into the school on 3 separate occasions to meet with the staff from the international unit, their child and themselves about their child’s progress, what’s happening and how they are getting on with that.”

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A teacher checking a pupil’s work. Two girls highlighting sections in their notes.

“That allows an ongoing update of the child’s progress, where the child might have to make more progress, and what the parent can do to help with that. And that information is gathered onto the one document and it’s put on the desktop in the school so that all staff can access it.”

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A teacher explaining work to a pupil whilst pointing at a printout in front of them.

“And a copy of it is also given to the parent, again, in their own language. After an initial period of settling in, this Personal Learning Plan is then developed.”

Teacher: “If we have parents nights or nights say for second year where they’re just about to make their choices to go into third year, we’d ask interpreters to come along to these parents evenings and they would work along with us and the parent in explaining what the curriculum consists of and also about the examination system.”

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A picture of the school’s International Unit Handbook published in Somali.

“We also have a Handbook that is published in different languages and that outlines clearly what we represent as a school and what we would ask from parents.”

Headteacher: “We used our own parents within our community to produce audio versions, in their own language and we gave them a copy of the handbook in English and they translated it for us onto either CD or tape.”

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A picture of the Bilingual Units Singhalese audio version if an Induction Booklet (on CD). A picture of the same booklet but in Somali (on tape).

“And therefore where it wasn’t appropriate to give a written document people took these audio tapes away with them and got the same information in their own language. They’re a very positive addition to the school in terms of their attitude to education. For some of them their children were never educated before and they see it as a real privilege to have this opportunity to educate their children and there’s the odd Scottish parent that doesn’t quite see education like that.”