Parental involvement in multi-ethnic schools

Case Study 1: Brook Primary School
Relationship with parents

Brook Primary School is a popular, oversubscribed, inner city school which achieves excellent results, at or above the national average at Key Stage 1 (in 1997: Reading: 91%; Writing: 85%; Mathematics: 91%) and well above the national average at Key Stage 2 (English: 80%; Mathematics: 80%; Science: 98%). In the Year 6 cohort sitting the National Curriculum Assessments there was one statemented child (Stage 5), and 11 children on the SEN register (Stages 2-4).

Free school meals taken were higher than the LEA average (41%) at 48% in 1997, according to school data. Attendance was in line with the national average, and the rate of unauthorised absence below the national average. There had been no permanent exclusions in the last year, and temporary exclusions were very rare. Against all measures, Brook Primary is clearly a very good school, meeting the needs of its pupil intake.

This is particularly striking in the UK context given the profile of the school's intake. The children attending the school come from very diverse backgrounds. According to school data collected in 1997, 28% were of black Caribbean origin; 6% black African; and 12% 'black other', mainly children of dual heritage. Children of South Asian origin make up less than 3% of the intake (Indian: 1%; Pakistani: 1%). Only 37% of children in the school were classified as from a UK white background. The remaining 17% consisted of small numbers of children from a wide variety of other language backgrounds, including children with the following home languages: Arabic, Bengali, Chi, Danish, Dutch, Fante, Farsi, French, French Creole, German, Greek, Gujerati, Hindi, Italian, Luo, Norwegian, Punjabi, Polish, Portuguese (some from Angola), Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Yoruba, Urdu and others. One of the biggest groups was Portuguese speakers (nine children including those of Portuguese, Mozambican and Angolan parentage), followed by Arabic speakers (eight) and Yoruba speakers (seven).

At the time of the last OFSTED visit in 1995, 15% of the children were assessed as needing English language support, at between Stages 1-3 of fluency in English as an additional language based on LEA criteria. By 1997 this had risen to 23%, according to school records, but was still less than the LEA average of 30% EAL learners.

However, this language survey data does not illustrate the true complexity of the school's intake. Many of the children were of mixed ethnic group parentage; for example, one child categorised as 'Indian' had a Goan father and lived with a white UK mother. This is not an exceptional case, for this is essentially one of the late 20th-century inner city areas in which multi-ethnic cultural groupings and diverse new cultural forms are emerging, in which traditional or heritage cultures are only one element among other constructions of identity signalled in clothing, choice of music, choice of food and other affiliations.

This new urban and changing social background was also seen in the school records on the children's religious affiliations. While the majority (60%) of parents claimed to be Christian, as many as 31% claimed to have no religious affiliations at all. There were only 4% Muslim, then 2% Hindu, 1% Buddhist and 1% Jewish children.

Housing in the area was mixed, including large municipal housing estates, some mainly owner-occupied terraces close to the school, and some larger Victorian houses. There was a significant minority of children from professional families, who supported the school energetically through its governing body and parents' association, raising useful extra funds for resources and extra-curricular activities. Although including, like most inner city districts, transient families including a few resettled refugee and asylum seeking families, the majority of people in the area seemed to have been there over more than a generation.

During the research we met a number of parents of Caribbean origin who told us that they had themselves attended Brook Primary. Some had remained living in the area; others had moved away but still had a parent living nearby, who provided childcare before and after school for the working parents, and who had therefore brought their own children back to the school.

Overall, the school community seemed relatively stable, allowing space for the school to build up and maintain its own strong culture and ethos, and to incorporate into this any new children entering into the later years of the school with little disruption. This may be one intake-related factor in the school's success.

On the surface, the composition of the staff appeared very different from the diversity found among the students. There was only one bilingual teacher (Polish) in the school, and only one bilingual (South Asian) assistant, working as a classroom assistant.

However, closer acquaintance suggests this impression is rather misleading. Just as many of the children had complex and multiple ethnic identities, so did many of the families the staff belonged to. For example, the Headteacher was herself married to someone of South Asian family origin and they had children of dual heritage. At least one white classroom assistant was the mother of a black child attending the school. In this sense, then, Brook Primary was an intercultural school. It made the casual ascription of racial and ethnic identities problematic.

In this context, the school worked by creating a strong and distinctive school culture and ethos of its own, which it successfully and confidently communicated to children and parents. In this way it was unlike City Infants, whose case study follows, which gained its success by identifying with, celebrating and trying hard to incorporate the local community. Yet both schools seem equally successful in raising attainment for their students. Long-term research would be needed to see if there were differences in outcome for students at later stages in their school careers.

The Headteacher told us that the success of the school's high expectations for the children relied upon gaining the support and involvement of parents in their children's education. The school aimed to work with parents so that they were "behind us and with us".

Our one-to-one interviews with a large number of individual parents attending a parents' evening suggested that in this the school had been very successful, and particularly with the parents of Caribbean family origin. The Headteacher was clearly held in great respect as someone who knew the community. As parents told us: "Mrs X is so totally tuned in to what's going on out there! She's respected, she's very well thought of." Another said: "Mrs X actually understands people - she's a people's person - and I also don't believe she has anyone on her team who doesn't understand people... You know, they work together as a team, and they help the parents as a team, and basically, in this school, the students, the teachers and the parents are one big team... I believe Mrs X sets herself high standards, but she expects that of her team as well."

Many of the parents had chosen the school from other parents' recommendations, as well as claiming to have read about the school in the local press as a high achieving school. For example, one mother of Caribbean origin explained: "Well, to be honest, a couple of my friends' children came to this school. I had thought of sending mine to Church of England, but then I read up a lot of reports on this school, and then Brook Primary came on top, and I thought, well, it's on my doorstep, you know."

Another said that she had visited and been impressed by "the structure of the school, and other kids were sitting nicely and getting on with their work, while in other schools they'd be running around and distracting each other... Here, honest, you could have heard a pin drop; no throwing string and paper around, and hitting each other, like the other school."

The parents were proud of the school and the public recognition and media coverage it had received in recent years. They felt success had a lot to do with parental involvement. "Whatever your child done, they come to us and they say 'Look, your child has done such and such', and they tell the parents, so that the parents know what their children are doing." One mother worked as a midday supervisor in another school. At that school she said: "Really, we've been abused, and the Head knew, and she never let the child come and say sorry." She believed this would not happen at Brook Primary, where "the children are supposed to acknowledge that they are wrong; it's very important, when they've done something wrong, to let them be responsible for what they have done."

Another black parent explained:

"There was a problem that I had with my son just after he joined the school, where someone had just pushed him in the playground and called him 'boy', and I wrote to the Head. I had a letter back the same day; the child had to apologise to my son, and write him a letter of apology. Mrs X actually dealt with that very confidently, wrote me a letter and told me that it had been dealt with."