Supplementary Benefits
It's a bright Sunday morning in Enfield, north London, and the choir, whose average age is about eight, is practising Canakkale, a sad Turkish song about the pointless slaughter of young men on both sides during the Gallipoli campaign in the first world war.
This is Enfield Turkish school - a supplementary school that meets at weekends and evenings at Albany school, a slightly bedraggled, but vibrant 1970s secondary.
Over 400 pupils are learning about Turkish culture, language and history, and supplementing their mainstream education from Sats up to A-level, with impressive results. Last year pupils achieved an 81% pass rate in maths, English and science GCSEs, of which 63% were grade A.
Enfield is one of 5,000 supplementary schools across the UK, run by volunteers and subsisting on donations, grants and sponsorship from foreign governments. The schools represent almost every ethnic group in the UK, including African-Caribbean, Afghan, Somali, Greek, Jewish, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian.
Until now their achievements on shoestring budgets went unsung. But in January, the schools minister Andrew Adonis announced the creation of a new national resource centre for supplementary education, funded by the Department for Education and Skills and with a £150,000 grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Adonis praised supplementary schools for driving up national educational standards and promoting pupils' British and ethnic identities. "A national survey found that eight out of 10 pupils who attended a supplementary school said it helped them with their mainstream school work," he said.
The centre will act as a resource and support for supplementary schools, offer help to those establishing new schools, and celebrate the work they do.
It will develop a quality framework and code of practice and accreditation for school leaders and tutors. It also wants to create a national network of supplementary schools; to campaign for better funding; to encourage mainstream and supplementary schools into closer partnership; and to encourage local authorities to provide more support
But Suleyman Soydag, the chairman of the Enfield Turkish school, who is also a teacher, wants hard cash. He says LEAs bask in the exam results glory of supplementary schools, while also making money out of school premises. It is a struggle, he says, to find the £17,000 a year needed to rent the hall, the classrooms, computers and printing materials, and the additional hours for the school caretaker.
He puts his hand out, palm up. "We are always begging for donations - our work goes into providing good Ofsted reports for their schools, so we must have something back from local authorities."
His local MP, Joan Ryan, has launched a campaign to raise awareness among ministers of these schools' achievements and their financial struggles. She has sent Adonis and the Treasury a dossier highlighting the struggle of Enfield and other supplementary schools that both improve educational achievement and promote social cohesion.
It's break time in the main hall at Albany school, where the Turkish school has set up a large gilded bust of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. All around, a blur of children in scarlet sweatshirts are running, gossiping and playing. As well as the pupils and teachers, there are dozens of parents and helpers, some serving food, others collecting fees.
Soydag is at pains to emphasise that the school opens its doors to Kurdish families - some of the most marginalised groups within an already marginalised community. And he stresses: "When we study Turkish history, we refer to 'the enemy', we never say it was the Greeks, English, Armenians. "
Ryan explains that another benefit of supplementary schools is social inclusion for parents. "Lots of Turkish people feel isolated, but coming here brings them into contact with the school. A study in Birmingham showed that involvement in supplementary schools increased parental involvement in mainstream school from 17% to 93%."
Ryan wants to pull together academic and other evidence from supplementary schools across the country to support the case for more national funding.
Soydag is more bullish. He says pupils are taught national curriculum subjects and he is not afraid to open his doors to Ofsted.
Hatice, aged 14, has been coming to the school for three years. She is learning Turkish for GCSE and hopes to go on to A-level. "Its good to have a second or third language when you're looking for a job."
Enfield council and Albany school, which set the rental prices, say they are doing all they can to help. The LEA has already subsidised the Turkish school to the tune of £6,242. In a joint statement, they say: "The Turkish school gets the most favourable rates of any group that hires Albany school. The normal cost of hire for the school would be £38,000, but this has been reduced to £17,000. The school makes no money out of this hire. If the rate was reduced further the school would be out of pocket, which would be unacceptable."
Mario Kosnirak, a science teacher at a school in Solihull, is part of the management team of Coventry Ukrainian school, which has been running for 51 years. He welcomes the new national resource centre, and says the school struggles to get by on donations and volunteer teachers, paid £3 an hour.
The school runs for three hours on Saturday mornings, teaching history, literature, geography and language out of the Ukrainian community hall, but brings in children from Northampton, Leicester and Wolverhampton. It charges parents £3 a week. There are currently 35 pupils, aged from three to 18, but the roll has been as high as 70. In the past it taught Ukrainian up to GCSE, but since the exam has been dropped by UK examining boards, it offers a certificate of attainment.
The Turkish and Turkish Cypriot governments send teachers to supplementary schools in the UK, but, Kosnirak says, there is just token support from the Ukraine.
"We are ambassadors for the Ukraine in this country and we have visited the places our families come from, and we send support to some of the areas of worst poverty. The Ukrainian ambassador has visited us and told us he is very impressed, but all we have had is a few language books so far."
Angela Knight is the coordinator of the Community Learning and Support school which, for the past 24 years, has run Saturday classes for Caribbean and mixed-race children in Coventry. She feels both government and local authorities need to do more. "We are supplementing what they do in mainstream schools. Our teachers are all full-time teachers giving up their Saturdays for free, and we don't charge parents."
The school has 28 pupils, aged from nine to 13, on its books, but, Knight says, the number goes up closer to exam time when pupils doing GCSEs "want a little more help" - another reason she cites for more support from mainstream education. "Coventry has been slow in helping. Schools in Bristol, Leicester and Birmingham have had a lot more support." (Mark Gould)
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