Effective work with minority ethnic communities that are represented in the school population can help staff understand and respond to pupils’ diverse needs and promote good race relations.

Working with community groups increases understanding of the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of pupils in the school, their previous experiences and their current situation. This can help schools plan more effectively to meet their pupils’ educational needs and build a culturally inclusive curriculum by:  

• enhancing pupils’ self-esteem and their respect for others
• providing a learning environment free from prejudice and discrimination
• ensuring all learners feel they belong to the learning environment and participate fully in activities
• increasing staff knowledge and ability to respond to the cultural and linguistic needs of pupils
• raising school and local community awareness, promoting racial harmony.

Key issues

The 'Who are international new arrivals?' area of this site gives information about the background experiences and identity of pupils newly arrived from overseas. Many will face challenging circumstances for some time, for example the family of a pupil might:

• share their identity and ethnicity with a community group new to the area
• have no one else in the area with whom they share their identity and ethnicity
• have experienced persecution because they belonged to a particular ethnic or social group
• be under intense pressure dealing with housing, immigration, health, welfare or other issues such as coping with culture change and family separation
• be anxious about their new environment
• be experiencing racism
• face uncertainty about the future, not knowing how long they will be here.

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Working with local communities: some suggestions

A school’s links with neighbourhood communities begins in the classroom. Where pupils and parents value the work and expertise of the school, attempts to work with minority ethnic communities are more likely to be successful.

You can establish good relations with local communities through direct work with parents, for example by:

• regularly informing parents of their children’s progress
• making all parents feel welcome and that they have a positive role to play
• demonstrating that parents’ concerns and opinions are listened to and acted upon
• demonstrating that parents’ linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds are valued.

You can further promote good relations with parents of new arrivals by:

• being aware of the languages they speak and developing accessible, translated welcome information
• making regular use of translation and interpretation services. The 'Interpreting and translation' area of the site gives further guidance on this
• providing welcoming displays in their languages
• informing them about local community networks and providing signposting to services
• consulting them, especially when planning to involve them
• developing a variety of ways of notifying them about events such as parents’ evenings
• recruiting staff who speak community languages as bilingual language assistants
• involving them and their experiences and expertise in curriculum projects, for example history, PSHE and citizenship
• encouraging their participation as governors
• dealing with bullying incidents effectively
• employing a school–home support worker.

Monitoring parental involvement by ethnicity in school events can help you identify if the school is succeeding.

You can further develop work with community groups to support the learning needs of newly arrived pupils by:

• liaising with community groups in the neighbourhood that parents belong to, including with those that run supplementary and community schools
• supporting community groups’ provision to teach their children’s first languages
• developing curriculum materials to support the positive identity of new communities
• being sensitive to differences between specific ethnic, political or religious groups
• adapting family learning programmes to the needs of new arrivals and their families
• collaborating with community groups and neighbouring schools to provide after-school activities and holiday schemes
• hosting social gatherings where local communities can meet.

Monitoring attendance at parents’ evenings and other school events may show that parents from some communities may be less likely to access school. Increasing the involvement of these communities can make a real difference, especially for groups of underachieving pupils and their families. 

Strategies to involve parents further will include finding ways of consulting them, such as:

• home visits
• joint planning and information sharing with agencies who work with these families in the area
• giving close attention to the level of social exclusion and poverty experienced by some families, and seeking ways of supporting them
• contributing to any initiatives to build the cohesion of the local community, including improving the welcome for newly arrived communities through active citizenship programmes.

Case study

Welcoming and supporting newly arrived communities

Sparkenhoe Community Primary School has developed a series of wide-ranging interventions underpinned by an ethos of ‘thinking globally’ and ‘acting locally’ to make a sustained impact within the local community. This case study describes some of these interventions.