The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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FEBRUARY/MARCH The Linguist 11 Vol/53 No/4 2014 AWARD WINNERS dance classes, which are lively and popular, and lead to performances at the school. Several charitable foundations support the programme. However, a great advantage of the partnership model is that we can run 10 Albanian schools in 10 London boroughs with modest funding – reaching more than 500 children aged 5-18. Assessing the partnership model Gascoigne Primary School, which has been in partnership with Shpresa since 2007, commissioned a formal evaluation. Teachers at the large inner-city school said that the programme had raised the profile of the Albanian community, and fostered productive relationships between parents and teachers. The Headteacher was satisfied that the school gets 'good pay-back for it, in community relations, parental relations and during an Ofsted inspection'. There were direct benefits for the children too, with teachers reporting greater confidence and improvement in English language skills through increased knowledge of Albanian. Shpresa is fostering a volunteer and training ethic among London Albanian- speaking adults and young people, and many participants have gone on to teach Albanian and English. Reaching out to other languages The same primary school later worked with Shpresa to extend the model to other communities represented in the school, and soon Portuguese, Lithuanian and Polish schools were operating on its premises. The success of the work in this school led Shpresa to formalise its approach to mentoring other groups keen to develop complementary schools for their own communities. In 2012, we secured three years' funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which has enabled us to tutor community activists to establish new supplementary schools and strengthen existing ones. This has been done with African Portuguese, Bangladeshi, Eritrean, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Somali and Turkish communities, as well as with supplementary schools teaching English. A Supplementary School Toolkit was produced, which can be accessed online (hard copies are £10 from www.shpresaprogramme.com), while volunteers have been trained in leadership skills, management and all the procedures involved in setting up a new organisation – from fundraising and registering with the charity commission to health and safety, legal issues and book-keeping. Three crucial aspects of the Shpresa model were included: consulting parents and children on all aspects and actively involving them in running the programme; negotiating with headteachers to obtain free use of premises in return for an input into the school; and building a strategic presence in the wider community through national and local networks such as the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education (NRCSE) and local voluntary and migrant forums. Mayfield High School and College in Dagenham was a critical partner in reaching out to these new communities. Gaining recognition Shpresa is working towards the official recognition of languages that are not taught extensively in the UK. We refer to these as 'world languages' to avoid a distinction between modern foreign languages (taught at school) and 'community languages' (taught mainly in supplementary schools). Government ambivalence regarding languages spoken in the UK as a result of migration is remarkable. Although they are taught in a few mainstream schools (GCSEs and A-levels are available in 21 languages), take-up is low. Since the 1985 Swann Report, 2 it has been official policy for community languages to be primarily the responsibility of the communities themselves. Following the 2003 'Aiming High' report, 3 which noted the A great advantage of the partnership model is that we can reach more than 500 children with modest funding GAINING CONFIDENCE Children learn Albanian with Shpresa