Polish children at the international club

A steep learning curve

Translator badges and 'starter packs' - teachers at Bethany and St. Clement’s are going new ways to give Polish youngsters a good start.

Inclusion leader Emma Martin said the schools offered one-to-one support to its foreign children and teachers were given special 'starter packs': “Each teacher now has a file in their classroom of basic vocabulary like parts of the body, colours, numbers. So as soon as you accept a new child you don’t have to think ‘Oh my God, what am I gonna say, what am I gonna do?’”

Ms Martin said language wasn’t the only issue: “When the children come to the infant school quite often they’re six or seven and have not been to school at all in Poland. So we have the added problem of them not being used to the social setup of school.”

Playground rows called for new measures, said English teacher Andrea Gritt. She said bilingual children now wore translator badges: “If a child’s being bullied I can get a girl that’s really fluent in English and she’ll translate for the child. Then we can find out exactly what’s going on and what we can do about it.”

Head teacher Stephen Orman said he felt the strains on schools were mounting: “Locally and possibly nationally, schools don’t receive enough support and funding. We use what we have very creatively, but we are very restricted.”