School refusing to provide translator

Eh? You can turn up in construction and work just fine in the language of the team? You can shop in shops you know. There are whole huge systems in place to support this in some industries!
I’m not talking about indefinite leave or citizenship. Huge numbers are here, from fruit picking to building projects, working at any one time. The system enables it to happen.

That is a lot of money being spent every year when school budgets are tight. I can understand why they are making cuts. Surely it’s a priority to learn the language in the country you’re living to integrate.

100% agree with the schools decision here. After a year of living in a country the parents should have made the effort to learn enough of the language to navigate basic life. How are the kids supposed to learn English.

if I moved to say France I’d have to learn the language in this situation, I doubt they would provide a translator.

School funding has been cut to the bone, why should they have to spend money on translators because the parents cabt be arsed.,how are they working?

We need to be insist that people@ living in this country for extended periods know the language and culture well before they apply for citizenship.

I can imagine most of the parents will know at least one person who can speak English plus their language and can translate for them. It will be more effort on their part to get it organised, but you can’t expect the school to keep funding this.

I live abroad, and the local language isn’t even on google translate. All school documents are in this language. There are many parents who didn’t understand this language when they moved here, and they had to learn it or ask someone to help them.

Someone mentioned enabling, and I definitely agree

I think this is a sensible limit to introduce if the parents were given plenty of notice. Even if they were told at the end of the summer term they would have had time over the summer to e.g sign up for Duolingo and make enough progress for basic communication. Learning the local language is important.

However this kind of situation is directly parallel to something I have observed in british ex-pat communities around the world - that is, people who have been living in that country for 5 years or more but can't do anything more complex than make a shop purchase with someone who doesn't speak english, and expecting all formal communication to be in english. Consider the difference between these two mini descriptions "Yes I am living in Egypt now but I am at the heart of a British community here and most of the shops and businesses I interact with all speak English, all my work is done in English and if anything official is happening its provided in English, there's not much need for me to learn the language" vs "yes there's a lot of us from England here but our task during the first year here is to start being able to operate fully in the local language. There's a lot of support for new arrivals who haven't had time to learn yet but we knew from the start that we'd be expected to cope without translators once we'd been here a while so language learning has been a top priority"

Learning a new language isn't easy and relocating to a new country is overwhelming. I am not surprised that these parents have deprioritised English lessons if they got the impression that the school was happy to operare bi-lingually as far as possible and if they were otherwise managing to function with access to work, food etc all with people of their own language.

So if this decision has been introduced with no notice then I'm not surprised if people are aggrieved.

If I was considering this I’d be interested to hear how other schools in your local area deal with this and also similar schools in other areas of the country. What does the statutory guidance say about access for non-English speakers?

I think there’s a wider consideration around the messaging re. community integration and prioritising education.

Not sure if you’re a trustee or maintained school governor, so your board’s core responsibilities may vary slightly, but I’d expect any change as significant as this to be part of a wider school improvement plan and be backed up with a clear rationale than sets out the key considerations. A governing body usually has the right to seek external professional advice to help inform any major decision.

Has this year’s budget factored in this change, and has the budget been approved by the board?

It shouldn't be on the school to teach them thoigh unless they get funding specifically for 19+esol courses. Assuming the area has high level of ESL people, there will be lessons in college and often by council and local charities.
Considering achool budgets, I think help for 1 year and 1 free lesson to help people started is more than fair. Actually above anything people should realistically expect from school.

This.

I doubt if the school wants to do this or is trying to exclude people. They are probably trying to judge how best to juggle their resources. Like the NHS or the police service: when there are massive funding shortfalls - and remember the Government are not fully funding recent wage increases, thus cutting budgets for other things even further - then tough decisions need to be made.

I would say that written materials are actually easier to get done - it's a much bigger deal to have a live interpreter than to have someone do a letter which they can translate at any time and which doesn't require the same level of training as live interpretation.

And the time limit is very rigid, you won't achieve B1-B2 fluency that quickly except through full immersion, which most people aren't doing. Even then, it can take longer for an adult. A child will take a year of being in school to be fluent in a new language.

The 6 month limit and the 1 lesson a week don't dovetail. One lesson a week isn't enough to become proficient.

I missed this and agree.

Having lived in Norway for most of my children’s schooling, I can confirm. I know my children missed out on some stuff and we got things wrong sometimes, but that was on me and I don’t not blame the school.

It’s all very well saying we should provide translation because there can be multiple reasons parents might not have learned the language, but where do you draw the line? If in a school with 4000 pupils, you have one Russian family, one Chinese, one from Sudan and six other families with six other mother tongues, none of whom has very good English, all for good reasons, do you spend money translating for all of them, or do you spend it on improving things for all the children?

If it’s something very sensitive, then maybe it can be necessary, on occasion, but even then, to an extent it’s on the family.

And the school providing lessons for parents sounds like an excellent idea. I went to Norwegian lessons and sat in a classroom with people from all round the world. You didn’t need to be able to read or write. It certainly helped, but they had drawings and taught from those verbally. The entire lesson was in Norwegian, not English, and most of us learned to communicate at a basic level fairly quickly.

There are British ex-pats who don’t bother to learn. They’re lucky that it’s quite possible to exist very comfortably in a bubble, but that doesn’t really make it okay.

Well this is very interesting. I'm on the other side of this as I live abroad and I agree that if you live somewhere you need to learn the language. Unfortunately I'm one of a handful of tens of thousands of Brits living here who thinks that! The British community expects teachers, doctors, dentists, government workers, nurses etc to all speak to them in English. Despite this many even consider themselves integrated!

The 6 month limit and the 1 lesson a week don't dovetail. One lesson a week isn't enough to become proficient.

Either increase the translation to a year, or increase the lessons to at least two a week.

You can look at the European language framework which details language levels (A1 being beginner, C2 being university educated mother tongue) and how long it takes to reach the levels. To understand school communication would be about B1, possibly B2 if it's longer, and definitely B3 for parents' evenings.

Well I think in some circumstances it’s fine, but if someone’s an asylum seeker and they aren’t allowed to work when waiting on a decision, who is going to fund this? I’m not sure if asylum seekers are directed to English lessons. Many applicants coming on visas do need to pass an English language test, but this probably isn’t all visa routes and might just be permanent residence. I guess they will have to bring a friend along. Schools don’t have endless pots of funding so tough decisions need to be made and I guess this one isn’t too controversial. Maybe there can be some exceptional cases where funding is provided?

It does sound like there’s an element of creating a hostile environment especially if the head has made a decision to withhold translated documentation from some families. Perhaps one extreme to the other.

To all those posters saying they’d make an effort … really? If your life was stressful, unsupported by wider family, low paid, etc would you make the effort to learn another language if it didn’t even use the Roman alphabet?

Could you tip off the local paper, maybe?

Can't blame them.
My native country as far as I know doesn't provide interpreters even in gov offices. Bring your own.

School budgets are being cut and this must cause incredible amount of resources in money and time. Letters can absolutely be translated at home. Speech might be harder, but schools really can do only so much.

It's also "enabling". I knew few people who never learned English because they simply did not have to. Worked with their own, shopped in their shops, translator provided where needed.

Oh and I’ve lived in a few countries abroad. Far easier for me to learn though. I was already very fluent in one of the languages and am degree educated. By the end of 4 years in another I was pretty fluent but had spent many mornings in language classes (the pace was painfully slow as some people had very little education so it was geared for this).

In a third, I spent 18 months and didn’t learn much tbh. My mind was on other things - rather like a lot of economic migrants and refugees - and I already could speak the official language of the country, just not the one in my immediate vicinity. I could get by just fine.

I can totally understand people not learning and had I lived in the last country longer, I possibly still wouldn’t have done so. Once you have kids, there isn’t so much time etc.

I disagree with the majority here, I don’t think that this is reasonable.

And although so many people here are saying they would learn the language, the world is full of brits who don’t speak the language of the country they live in. It’s just we call them expats instead of immigrants, and local people do speak English to them.

I think that it is reasonable to send the letters only in English. It’s easier to translate slowly when something is written, easier to work out mistakes in translation apps, and most households will have a child who reads English and speaks the home language fluently.

I think that the school should still have a translation option for in person meetings for non English speakers. My suggestion would be to move away from in person translation and just use the phone line option which will be cheaper. I do think that there is a safeguarding concern having child translators translating at their own parents evenings etc which is what will end up happening.

If I was the head I would also be trying to ensure that a decent proportion of my staff came from the surrounding community- especially receptionists etc - so that there was someone around who could provide ad hoc language support.

We moved to another country a few years ago. The language was a 'hard' one (a dialect version of a language already thought to be difficult to learn). After a year I could basically greet people and do some shopping. I couldn't really read it at all. Learning to a level of fluency you could deal with school etc would take a lot longer than that. And not one evening class a week! Which is great to have but takes a long time.

As a pp said, if this is where I think it is in London then there's a bilingual culture anyway. Kids of parents who don't speak English are disadvantaged in loads of ways already, not least by having to deal with more adult topics than they are ready for. I take it it's a maintained school OP? If so then a Structured conversation needs to happen with the LA on provision for the parents. What do other schools do in the area? How will they make sure parents understand key info?

I think some sort of middle ground- e.g. translation of the handbook, those standard issue attendance letters and probably the curriculum evenings, plus community support for key meetings would be ok, but the answer shouldn't just be 'the kids will do it'. It's not the kids' fault.

Attendance is likely to be a DFE thing. Is the absence rate high due to extended holidays back home? They could consider a different term structure (longer easter and shorter summer works well if it's the community I'm thinking of) to help with this.

I live in France and can confirm I've never been offered a translation service for anything at school. Many people I know have moved here with little or no French (we're all ex-pat through work) and I've often had to translate things for them, and offered to attend meetings to translate.

after 1yr you will not be given a translated letter, you will need to do it yourself

This, I would absolutely be challenging, especially as letters will (or at least should) be standardised and thus just a case of attaching the translated version along with the written English one.

The head is being incredibly arrogant to not allow this. Having written English skills is vastly different from expecting parents to get by face to face after a year… which in itself is not long.

Sounds like the school are already making the effort. The parents need to do their bit as well. I support the school on this.

I work in a secondary in Ireland and we don't do any translation. The assumption is that parents will take responsibility for translation/learning the language.

If the school has translated letters in one language then should send them to anyone who needs them regardless of time spent at the school. It would seem a waste of money in a way as once it’s been translated - they are just sending copies?

Wow, absolutely disgusting that people move to a country and accept free education and healthcare and presumably other benefits and don't learn the language.

The UK is absolutely mad to pay for this.

What a ridiculous waste of money when there is no money to waste.

I feel for the kids but learning the language if the country you are living in should really be a personal priority, not a state one.