School refusing to provide translator

Funding has been cut in all sectors of education. This means a lot of ESOL classes have also been cut meaning there is little or no provision for English classes for adults.
Many immigrants and especially refugees may also be illiterate in their own language, or have others barriers to learning (disrupted education due to war/civil conflict/ cultural expectations etc) which prevents them from making progress in English.
Apps can help but do not capture the nuances of language often seen in official communication. What a native English speaker can understand, a non native often has difficulties with, eg...PE Kit...what is PE? What is 'kit'?

The solution would be to do what a lot of government agencies do and have the most important information available in the main languages needed in that area, a translator available for parent teacher meetings (often there are voluntary organisations/ community groups that could do this, and actually use the parents and children that do have a decent grasp of English to help.

But it shouldn’t easily be done on a work visa as work visas require assessment of reading, writing, understanding & speaking, and partner/ILR visas require a test of understanding and speaking. Only refugees should arrive with no working English.

There is however a whole other issue of English test fraud in a number of countries.

I can see why it might be on the list of options until you get to the part where the school is given extra money to cope with the difficulties of such issues. They are literally given the money to pay for this.

Realistically, I just don't think it is going to be workable. There is a risk here surely. What about emergency situations? There needs to be a probe all through of scenarios to check this.

Ultimately the children will suffer, eg their attendance to school trips, parents attending parties evening etc

I’ve not read very page, but one thing to be clear for people- in London (I presume I have an idea in which bit the school is) there is basically a functioning non english community. Street signs in two languages, all NHS, shops and markets not in English or an English style of goods even. Council letters in two languages, posts usually held by community language speakers. Many family members arrive at marriage age without English. Females largely to stay at home and mix with others in the community. Men often can work in businesses.
It’s not like moving to middle England and not learning the language, it’s the dominant language and community in a part of London.
Whilst I’m not the same community, nor one as big, I have family members here 10-15 and who don’t speak English. They thought I must admit keep the dream of going home and building there. They work in jobs with whole teams speaking the language, socialise well speaking the language, have churches etc. It’s easily done in London on a work visa!

It will be very expensive (or demanding on the teachers/staff”s time) if all letters are translated and translaters present at all meetings. Providing the service to those in their first year in the country seems very good to me, more than most schools would do. In my daughter’s school where there are always some newcomers with limited English emphasid is put on giving instructions to the children on things like PE kit and school trips so they are also aware of what is required. That wont work so well in reception but by about year 2 many children can start to take in and remember these intructions (and pass them on to parents). I think your school is doing a lot to help newcomers adjust to the language and providing translation services plus language lessons for the first year is still generous. The parents need to make an effort instead of draining the resources meant for their childrens” education.

I guess given the UK's colonial past it's not surprising that we are more accommodating to people not knowing the language of the country than e.g. Germany, where I live. I've read that we have 2m refugees here. I don't think I've ever seen mention of a translation service for anything, school, doctor, nothing. There is a Ukrainian kid in my kids' class at school, IDK if he's a Russian speaker or if he just knows some Russian but how he got his translation in the early days was, they sat a Russian speaking kid next to him. He has AFAIK a couple of hours of German a week along with a bunch of other kids - my own kids, for whom German is most definitely the second language, have had zero extra tuition in school, which is the case for most kids here with "immigration background". They just make them get on with it.

I like to flip things the other way.

If I was living in a country that didn't speak English, I wouldn't expect school to provide an interpreter for my children.

It's good that they are still providing one for the first year.

I would say letters must be translated at a minimum.

I agree with you OP that some of the decisions here seem a bit punitive (ie the letters) rather than genuine cost-cutting measures. I also live in an area, not UK, with a lot of non-English speakers moving in and it is to everyone's benefit that they get as much support as they need. With budgets being stretched I understand it can't be infinite, but surely they can stretch to two years instead of one.

@TrudyProud Terrible example considering Singapore has 4 offical languages and English is one of them. Very judgemental of you.

I am not English but lived here a long time. I think this is the right move. Giving support initially.

I want to live in another country in the next few years so am slowly learning it.

I really dislike when people say ‘the interests of the child should be put first’ as the reason schools should continue to fund something or take the responsibility for something AND absolve the parents of the responsibility.

If it’s better for the children to speak the language of the country they are in and they won’t learn it, we should be asking why they won’t act in the best interests of their child. If they prevent the other parent learning, we should be questioning why they don’t act in the best interests of their child.

I don’t get the thinking that excuses parents from putting their kids needs first.

and yes, I think the same of people who speak English, move abroad and don’t learn the language at the detriment of their children.

The people who have sustain for English people who go abroad and don’t learn the language, but have ever excuse for people moving to English speaking countries and not learning the language make no sense. Why the distain for one group and not another?

How many countries provide long term translators for English people who don’t speak a local language?

In your situation, I would being this up as an EDI issue. Whatever the ins and outs of speaking English in certain households may be, this action isn't aiding in any of the areas this covers and possibly disadvantaging children who are already likely to be disadvantaged in other ways (if they are receiving pupil premium, FSM etc, it is likely that they may be experiencing poverty related issues at home, e.g. overcrowding etc).

I would learn the language of any country I move too but isn't English an official language in Singapore?

Sending letters out in a few main languages doesn’t sound hard or expensive so I think I would say not doing that is a bit unreasonable. I take the point that all the other stuff is expensive but in reality, who suffers if it stops? It’s always the kids and it’s not their fault. Out of interest dues the government provide extra funding on the basis of the % of kids with English as a 2nd language?

I think this is a terrible mistake @CapturedLeprechaun . People on this thread ignorantly say live in England- speak English.

Does this rational extend to the white immigrants expats living in Spain or around the world?
I used to live in Singapore and not a single solitary white (UK mainly) immigrant expat spoke Singaporean mandarin, Malay, Tamil or Cantonese. The country adapts to that.
The kids learn the languages of the nation they school in and the parents make friends with other immigrants so that in their local communities they only have to speak English.

Removing the translation services are just another example of creating a hostile environment for non English speakers.

Before anyone asks - I don't know what I'd cut in response. I would speak to the parents to understand what the school could do differently to support their needs and I'd inform LA of the challenge. For me supporting families to integrate into school communities has the same importance as offering a PP or SEND provision. These are all things that ultimately benefit the children and society as a whole because they lead to developing individuals who can wholly contribute to society.

I can see both sides.

Translators / interpreters can be expensive.

But it is possible to live and work in some parts of the UK with little to no English (Wesh, Gaelic or Irish).

I think standard letters should be available for things like parents' evenings, if they are on file and you can just add a date and print then that's fairly easy to do.

It isn't always easy for people to learn a language, the school are offering lessons but can a parent bring their younger child(ren)? Do they have a babysitter for the evening class?

ESOL teaching has been cut to the bone.

I worked in a college in Staffordshire, I didn't work in the ESOL department but the ESOL classes were mainly attended by the wives of Gurkhas.

They didn't have a lot of resources outside the classroom or class outings because they lived in the same place (married quarters) as other Nepali speakers.

These women were highly motivated to learn

Indeed; the ignorance and racism on this thread is shocking. The kids will be worse off / disadvantaged further.

Yes, budgets are under pressure. But as a PP says everyone ends up losing when schools don't provide translation services. There are reasons people don't learn English -- often they are too busy working to learn. I understand the budget issue (try moving to America where schools have a legal obligation to provide translation services, though not for every meeting: my district's website is in 7 languages including Amharic!) but people are very dismissive of the need for translation a priori.

In my district we've had an influx of Central American parents who not only do not speak English, they don't speak Spanish well. They primarily speak Mayan languages and don't have high levels of literacy. It's very hard for them, and it's not easy to find translators either.

It's hard on children when they're forced to interpret for parents. it puts them in awkward situations and there's the potential for kids to lie.

I agree that any immigrant should make an effort to learn the local language, especially if their children attend school there.

However, I find it hard to get over the immense irony of a bunch of British people berating immigrants for not learning the local language, really. I have lived in 5 countries and spent time in a dozen others, and the one and only nationality I always see refusing to learn the local language when they emigrate are... you have one guess... yep, British. They often spend decades in another country and are often unable to mutter a simple basic word in the local language, and on top of that, often complain that the locals don't speak English to them!. They spend their lives making friends with the group of English-speaking expats, send their kids to English schools, look for businesses that speak English, refuse to even try the local food and look for fish and chips instead... Come on guys, have a bit of self-awareness.

Some of the refugee families I work with find learning English excruciatingly difficult. Someone mentioned in this thread that "English is one of the easiest languages to learn"... That's ludicrous. English is one of the hardest languages to learn as an adult - save for Asian languages, due mainly to the different writing -without a basic knowledge of it: it is written in a completely non-phonetic way, its grammar rules are broken more times than kept, and the variety of strong, thick accents even within the realms of a single city in the UK make it really hard for someone to understand or to try to start a conversation. In other countries, English movies are often dubbed to the local language so no, most people around the world don't watch English TV series and movies... what an ignorant, preposterous assumption to make! On top of that, the British in general are not the most sociable or easy bunch to approach I have to say, nor the easiest to befriend. Just look at how many members here even refuse to answer the door when you knock, or start a conversation with a stranger... imagine a friendly refugee neighbour trying to socialise?

So yes, "people in the UK should learn to speak English", but please make an effort to empathise and be kind, because your country is far from the best model on "expats who learn the local language".

Could it also be an attempt to further encourage parents to learn English? Surely this would benefit the pupils as well as the community as a whole?

I think it’s more than reasonable , it’s not a bottomless pit .

I think it is fine, I used to organise a parents evening BSL interpreter for a parent whose first language was BSL, because it was always hard for her to make contact and build rapport with staff, but other parents were expected to organise translators for themselves, which was something that was easy for them to do by using friends or family members. We simply couldn’t afford it. I did also use to help with form filling eg FSM applications and secondary transfers for those who wanted me to because I felt that that was part of my job.

@Roja7 India has about 24 official languages (not dialects but languages), so learning Hindi or a Urdu would only serve you in the North, generally speaking. Hindi is not actually the national language.
That said, I take your larger point.

I've lived abroad, as a child and an adult. Was at school in a different language all the same.

I knew English ex-pats who didn't learn the language in 3-5 years. But I was semi-fluent in 6 months, had friends who could translate, so did my parents. They weren't fluent but could get by. By one year in, we could all deal with this kind of thing.

However:

It was a Latin alphabet
My father worked outside the home
My mother had decent money and was allowed hobbies, friends, an outside life
We had access to language classes
There were no education or other barriers
We're all extroverts who chose to be there. Not trauma-impacted, introverted refugees

A year seems very little. Typically refuges take a coupe of years to move from subsistence level lives and that's often about language. Two years is probably more realistic. Sex and sexism are really important. Are women being offered women-only classes, at convenient times, with childcare for younger children? This was very helpful when I did education classes for Somali immigrants. I did them at the school after drop off so it was so convenient. With snacks and childcare and so accessible you'd fall over it. Teach the women and the whole community benefits. Everyone learns. Teach the men and you'll help them work outside the home.

I had to laugh at the irony here.