SUPPLEMENTARY BENEFITS
Mark Gould

The Guardian
Tuesday April 3, 2007

Ministers have praised part-time extra schools … but praise doesn’t
pay the bills, say their organisers

It’s a bright Sunday morning in Enfield, north London, and the choir,
whose average age is about eight, is practising Canak-kale, 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
vo lunteers 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."

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