Wingrove Primary School
Wingrove Primary School is a large, inner city primary school in Newcastle Upon Tyne, with 80% bilingual pupils, most but not all from a variety of Muslim backgrounds. The project was set up to meet the needs of pupils and their families, and to meet the responsibilities of the social cohesion and Every Child Matters agendas. This was a new approach to the existing policy and practice of promoting an ethos of tolerance and respect throughout the school community. The project scope was broader than the communities the school serves in order to avoid tokenism and to widen the children's horizons and experiences. ‘Respect Week' was very successful with more than 20 participants from the community coming to work across all parts of the school. In addition school staff as a whole planned ‘Respect' themed work for their classes. Display work was planned as well as songs, poems and plays for assembly performances. The intention of Wingrove School is to make this an annual event and continue with its steering committee so that the connections and relationships already formed will ensure liaison through the year from now on. Hopefully new providers will continue to join the project as it gains momentum.
At the start of the project the following brief was sent out by Alison Ainslie (co-ordinator of ‘Respect Week' at Wingrove school) to contacts inside the school and to the outside commumity.
"At Wingrove we are a school community which is fortunate in embracing children from many cultures and backgrounds. We believe that children who feel safe and happy learn well and achieve more.
With this in mind we are working towards a ‘Respect' week in school to which we are inviting interested and able people to help us to engage our children. The plan is that links built with outside agencies for this week of workshops, events and discussions will continue after the event.
We wish to facilitate consistently positive attitudes of tolerance, respect and ‘good neighbourliness' within school by forming positive links with a diverse range of external agencies. The starting point must include raising children's pride in their own identity in order to be able to respect others.
The ‘Every Child Matters' agenda will be met: in particular the ‘Stay Safe' aspect - staying safe from crime and anti-social behaviour both in and out of school; also the ‘Positive contribution' aspect - to develop positive relationships and choose not to bully or discriminate.
Community cohesion guidance refers to the promotion of spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at school and of society, to prepare pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. It refers also to the duty of schools to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between people of different groups. We feel that this project will help us to meet these criteria by improving our pupils' attitudes and tolerance towards others".
The first steering committee meeting in November 2007 included the Imam from the local mosque (who has since joined the Governing Body as a Community member); representatives from: the local authority Children and Young People's Service; the Community Relations branch of the police; the local authority anti-discrimination unit (Arch); EWO Service Anti-Bullying project (Response); the school's EWO; ‘Young Voices' project (a local organisation which is already working in the school to provide additional support in the form of clubs); the Head Teacher and Alison Ainslie as English as an Additional Language Manager/Parent and Community Coordinator. By the second steering committee meeting also had on board were the local Sure Start Manager and a member of an Islamic Voluntary Organisation whose aim is to improve the educational aspirations of the local Islamic communities.
Authors :
Alison Ainslie, Wingrove Primary School
Article Id :
14751
Date Posted:
14/8/2008