Prepared by Hassan Ali

The different perspectives of school and community on strength and needs of refugee children.

Introduction

The aim of this report is to carry out an investigation and present an overview on the education needs of the Somali community refugees.
The report will first describe the school context and will consider the strengths and needs of the refugee children are. It will also carry out an interview of the Somali parents whose children attend the school in order to find out the strength and needs of the refugee pupils.

Background

An estimated 1200,000 Somalis live in Britain and many have only lately fled the strife in Somalia. The instability in their homeland means that many of the children have no experience of formal schooling and all will need special provision for learning English

Refugee and asylum seeker children have become an important part in many British schools. It is therefore imperative to develop a curriculum that will be inclusive. Since Somali refugee pupils have experienced traumas and suffering during the civil war they are liable to interrupt their education. Therefore, there is an urgent need to investigate and understand their problems in detail in order to come up with appropriate solutions.
The report will try to understand and get to the root cause or causes that hinders the developments of the education of the Somali refugee student.

Many refugee children are dramatically dropping out from schools, why? Because some of them come to this country already grown up and they are admitted to classes of their same age. The biggest problem for the refugee youngsters above the age of seven is the language barrier for them to follow the lessons. Most of those youths are discouraged and quickly build lack of confidence that they will never succeed to reach as the same level of education with their classmates.

They are ashamed and most of the time bullied because of the way they speak English or in particular their pronunciation. The majority of the refugees & Asylum seekers do not get any help in their family homes for their homework because of the language barriers of the parents or other family members (this is a reality that I know within the Somali school children in the UK and in particular in the Borough of Greenwich where I am head teacher of a (poorly funded) supplementary school where we help Somali children with their homework and that of a school in Islington Borough where I have been working during my placement in November and December of this year). The consequence is then the danger that many minority youths become street children or youth and then end to become lawbreakers or criminals.

There are various perspectives of refugee children in inner-city schools pertaining to their needs and strength. It is important to compare parent’s attitude towards those needs and strength of their children to the way teachers think. In this report I will highlight how refugee children cope with the system of education in Britain basing on my school placement experience.
I will examine what teachers and parents consider the needs and strength of refugee children. Despite a media campaign of vilification of refugee, it seems to me many inner city schools in England I interviewed many teachers, in one particular school in London and 24 Somali refugee parents with children in other London primary school.

Definition:

In this report the term refugee children refers to both refugee and asylum seekers children. Children special education needs refers to those children who need extra support for their education.

Methodology

Formal and informal interviews, observations school views and reviews from research, books, Internet, and articles. I was responsible for interviewing Somali refugee parents. I interviewed 30 refugee parents all of them who come from Somalia. The majority of them fled to the United Kingdom from the civil war that engulfed their country in the later parts of the 1980s and early parts of 1990s

The school.

The school is a large mixed comprehensive school for children aged 5-11, formerly the school was built in 1873. It was originally two separate schools, a juniors and infants, and remained so for many years. At the end of 19th century the schools were noisy, there were no school meals and there was much poverty and sickness. The school has however now been developed and has become a modern and welcoming place. It has a spacious building and consists of eleven classes. There is also a nursery, a library and rooms that cater for special needs, music and cookery.
The school is multi racial and is attended by students who came from diverse background, beliefs and races.

It is located in the London Borough of Islington and it caters for the educational needs of children between the ages of three and eleven. The school is divided into 12 classes of thirty people of almost the same age. Some classes are of mixed ages due to the annual intake of up to forty-five pupils. The school nursery provides twenty-six places to cater for both part time and full time pupils.
The classes are taught by full time experienced teachers and are some times assisted by assistant teachers for languages and special needs.

The school is an ideal example of multi ethnic schools in London. There are 305 students enrolled at present. Out of them 305 are bilinguals including 200 refugees? They have 48 different languages: Sylheti speaking Bangladeshi families making up the largest proportion of the 68% of the children with English as an addition language Kurdish, Turkish Somali and Arabic families making up the other major language group.

Induction

The school has excellent system in place for induction refugee pupils into the classes. The school has a systematic and well-structured procedure of assessing the refugee pupil’s needs. The appropriate teacher is assigned to pupils and they are assessed by gauging their knowledge standard. The strengths and weaknesses of each individual’s pupils are determined. The pupils are then allocated what class to join taking into consideration their ages. Refugee pupils are mostly usually inducted into classes according to their ages. This increases their confidence and therefore makes their induction easy.

The school has a well-coming atmosphere and soon after their arrival the Somali refugee students are attended to by experienced teachers who have long experience in dealing with the needs of refugee children. The teachers are also assisted by Somali assistant teachers who understand the culture and mother tongue of children. The school also provides extra support for children with special needs. The school also provides extra tutoring for students who struggling with their education.
A Somali homework club is being planned to start soon.

Refugee children needs and strengths from teacher’s points of view.

Needs of refugee children.
A.School placement soon after their arrival. They must be able to get placements in schools without time constraint
B.Well-coming atmosphere of a school. There is need to make the Somali children who attend the school that they are at home as soon as possible. One way would be to employ more Somali teachers are assistants
C.English as tool to access school curriculum.
D.Motivation and encouragement
E.Somali language extra support for those with special education needs.
F Cultural and social inclusion be promoted

Strengths of refugee children.

A.Their determination and eagerness to achieve. Since education is a rare phenomenon for Somali children and parents they are very determined and motivated to achieve a good education.
B.They speak more than one language. Somali pupils are mostly multi lingual in that they can communicate in both their mother tongue and English language. A sizeable minority can also communicate in Arabic.
C. Somali refugee children are highly motivated and are eager to learn new culture in their new environment in order to become an integral part of the society.
D.The Somali refugee children have been forced by circumstances to become adaptive and have therefore become highly creative and innovative.

Weaknesses

A.Somali children come from a country where their education system is not similar to British one. They are mostly, if at all educated in make shift school with no proper curriculum to follow.
B.They do have a tendency of not being able to restrain when angered and therefore sometimes occasionally be disrespectful to both their fellow students and teachers.
C.Language barrier: this causes the Somali pupil to refrain asking the teachers question that are relevant to their education. Therefore this hinders their education in the long run.
D.Lack of assistance at home: the Somali child has no one to assist them with their assignment/home work at home. Majority of their parent are illiterate or do not understand English language at all.
E.Trauma: Somali children have experienced and witnessed horrific acts of death, destruction, rape, torture, detainment, grave shortages of food and basic necessities, separation from their close family members many more atrocity. This trauma is a big factor in the high drop out in the number of Somali students who discontinue with their education.
F.Culture shock: Somali children have experienced rapid and varied changes to their lives caused by the civil war in their country and the subsequent relocation to the united Kingdom. These changes have therefore brought about major changes such as learning a new language, different set of cultural norms, attending different type of schools. There also changes in standard of living and status in society. Recognizing the hopelessness and vulnerability of their parents.
G.Bullying: Is a serious issue that is affecting in a negative way the advancement of the education of Somali children. In fact it is one of the main causes of students dropping out of schools. The Somali children are mostly bullied because there are perceived to be different because they cannot speak the English language fluently or if they do it is usually with an accent. They are also picked on because of their dress code and religion etc.

Analysis of the views

On major issues, there is a match between what the school perceive to be the strengths and needs of the refugee pupils to be and what the parents. However there are some differences and has to a large extent has to do with cultural issues.
Most of the Somali parents illiterate and are not in the position to help or assist their children in their assignment when they are at home. So when the refugee children go to school without doing their homework, the teaching tend to assume that parents are not pulling their weight.

Another problem is that most Somali refugee children come from single parent household. This in the end affects in a negative way the education of the child because one (mother) cannot possibly fulfil all the requirements of the child. Here the teaching staff seem to have little understanding of the facts.
The teaching staff find children to be rowdy and rude which in a sense is true however they fail to understand the cultural causes.
Fourteen out of parents interviewed are of the view they have lost so many things in their lives and their only hope is their children. They therefore want their children to have the best education, however the do not have educational ability to do. One of the parents I quoted informed me that she could not even read the read the basic comments that the tutor made about her misbehaving child. She was forced to ask the child to read the comment for her, who for obvious reasons did not present the real facts.
In order to cater for the needs of the refugee children, the school has established curriculum support unit.

Learning support unit.

Ethnic Minority Achievement (EMA) during the 10 years that they have worked as a language support in Islington. Working both within school and inside the parent house, has managed to establish a rapport and a style of teaching with parents and pupils alike. Links, diagues, along with confidence, have all been developed before the start of school day in the playground, on school trips and at the end of day. Over time, with understanding of types of needs, EMAG and the Parent House have tried to ‘tune in’ to the ‘what’, ‘how’ and what of parent outreach work.
They have run Bengali club, delivered by their Community Language Teacher, takes place every Wednesday after school, and attracts between 20-30 children. Other groups they have not run their language.
The school intends to start a Somali Club that I will hopefully be in charge and will be coordinated by the school. The club will be used to improve the literacy standards and language skill of the Somali children.

Ways forward

There are various way forward for schools in developing school practices and policies that recognise the strengths and the needs of refugee children. Some of these ways are.
To increase and consolidate the cooperation between the teaching staff and the parents of the refugee students. This would help in identifying potential problems early on by both the teachers and the parents and thereby devise and implement a solution.
Provide counselling in school for both the refugee children and their parents. This will encourage children to discuss their problems and get help on early, before their problem becomes a serious impediment. The parents should also be involves in this process.
Employ more teacher assistants who understand the language and culture of the Somali children. School shortage of ethnic minority achievement teachers has been a great barrier to improving ethnic minority achievements
Enforce the bullying policy stringently and provide advise material for children in case they are bullied. This will provide them advise on how to deal with it and who to contact.
Schools need to develop further their parent-friendly environment, consolidate the home-school connection and encourage the bonding between the teaching staff, parents and the refugee students. This would lead to the creation of an environment which is conducive to learning - a safe and supporting environment that allows all members of the school community to share ideas and work together on mutual goals. Efforts are grounded in a commitment to the school's educational mission and mutual respect among all educational partners.

Conclusion

The report has managed to successfully to investigate and present the educational needs of the Somali refugee children.
It has done this by understanding and presenting the strengths and weaknesses of the Somali children, and subsequently use this information to assist in the development of the children education.
The report has also made manifest the importance of having a closer interaction between the teaching staff and the parents of the Somali refugee children in order to monitor and control the progress of the childrens education.
The report has also made apparent the steps the school and teaching staff have put in place in order to make the school a welcoming place for the sometimes traumatised Somali refugee children.
Lastly, it has shown the importance of employing more teaching staff that are familiar with both the language and the culture of the Somali refugee children.

ENG: Hasssan Mataan Ahmed Ali ( BSc Computer Studies, PGEC.)
mataan@mataan.cjb.net
matan007@hotmail.com
alihaa@lsbu.ac.uk
matan007uk@yahoo.co.uk
www.mataan.cjb.net