Case Study: Greenwich LEA
The refugee support worker in Greenwich wanted to update schools' knowledge of refugee issues and enhance their ability to meet the needs of this vulnerable group. Being involved in many other projects and the day to day running of the service herself, she decided to call in outside help.
The aim was to bring training into schools that was of a high quality and good value for money. The emphasis of the work was to be practical, i.e. it should enable schools to identify and make whatever changes were necessary to facilitate the successful inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers in the school, ensuring that they feel safe and supported, and best able to fulfil their learning potential.
She made a successful bid to the Children's Fund to pay for seven schools to be offered Salusbury WORLD's Training and Support Package. She identified the schools and liaised with Salusbury WORLD's trainer, who consulted with the schools directly, adjusting the package to meet their individual requirements. Throughout the next school year, the trainer worked in all the schools, providing 3 hours of whole staff INSET, and 3 hours of consultancy in each school. Each school was able to identify their own emphasis for the INSET sessions. The consultancy sometimes took the form of a meeting with designated members of staff to bring about the identified changes in practice, and sometimes it involved partnership teaching, allowing teachers to develop confidence new curriculum approaches.
Altogether an estimated 300 staff took part in the training sessions. In many cases the entire school staff participated, both teaching and non-teaching. In others, Teaching Assistants were able to join in with teachers for their after school sessions, or were given their own specially designed session. Occasionally interested governors were invited to attend. As a result, all schools planned to give a greater focus to Refugee Week, and many reviewed their induction procedures and made those changes they thought best suited their school. Other significant changes were also identified and managed.
There are obvious benefits in working with the whole school:
- everyone is involved, and can feed their own experience and viewpoint into the discussion
- there is a general raising of awareness and enthusiasm, and so discussion is more likely to continue after the sessions have finished
- there is more understanding and support for any subsequent changes in practice or procedures
- compared to running sessions at a central professional development centre, there is a much greater number and diversity of people involved.
The feedback from the schools was overwhelmingly positive. An unexpected benefit was that the EMA Co-ordinators from the identified schools were able to share their experiences and resources with their colleagues across the borough at their regular termly co-ordinators meetings.