There has been an extremely positive response and Community Village learners who are excited and engaging well.

We are noticing that learners are referring to the Community Village lessons they are engaging with.

Feedback from Community Village learners so far is that they are very excited and want to practice all the time.

The Community Village teachers see the lessons as a long term opportunity.

As a school, we have a high level of pupil mobility throughout the year, due to families being re-housed to different boroughs. Very often, we have new families/children that join our school/community from abroad as new arrivals to the country. Frequently, these families/children will start our school with either no spoken English or with very limited English. These families bring a wealth of diversity, but do struggle with life in a new country (socially) and find it challenging to communicate.

The biggest impact we notice was the parent’s confidence levels increasing and a willingness to engage with the school staff.

Each month the parents were invited to attend the school’s soft start Learning Village workshop for their child/children. We wanted parents to be able to observe the EAL support teacher teaching the programme to their children and to share ideas and strategies so the parents could continue to support their children at home using these techniques.

The post-questionnaire was completed by all parents and 100% of parents now feel confident speaking in basic English when needed to communicate with school staff, and have a better understanding of how to support their children at home.