School refusing to provide translator

[CapturedLeprechaun]

I'm on the Governing body for a school with a really high proportion of kids with English as a second language. It's over 80% of their pupils. Many of the parents speak little or no English at all. There are some families who have been here 5+ years where one or both parents speak no English at all still, and even a "your child has no PE kit, they need to wear their PE kit on Mondays and Wednesdays" wouldn't be understood.

The school always use translators for meetings with parents - either a staff member who speaks that language who is available, or else they have a telephone translator service that they pay for, so the phone is on loudspeaker and a translator translates the conversation.

This is done for all parents evenings/ attendance meetings/ SENCO meetings etc for parents who don't speak or understand English.

Important letters like school trips/consent forms are provided translated in the three most common languages spoken.

The school offers English classes to parents, one held in the school one morning a week in the hall, one held in the evening each week.

School has now said translators will only be provided to parents whose children have been at the school for less than a year. If your child has been at the school for more than a year and you are unable to understand English, no translator will be provided, due to staff shortages and costs, and you have to bring a friend/family member who can translate. Letters will only be provided in English, and parents can use the translate feature on google if they need to.

On the face of this, does this seem a reasonable decision? The head has announced this and I don't know why it doesn't sit right with me, and I can't really articulate why. It has a lot of support from the English speaking parents, but it feels... divisive, I guess? And most likely children who will suffer. Currently trying to weigh up whether this is something I should raise, or accept this is a reasonable step for the school to take.

The school doesn't have an intimate amount of money to keep paying for translation services. And it isn't a one size fits all, I imagine there are many many languages. So budget is getting consumed by this which is effecting the entire student body.

Personally if you move tona country you should learn the language so a bit of tough love might make some of these families buck up their ideas.

Having a meeting to exclude a child in a language that the mother isn't fluent in, especially when there are people on site who could translate, is just cruel. Frankly, I'm surprised it's legal

How is it exclusion? They are welcome to attend English lessons, lots of colleges have free English lessons, there will be other parents who speak the language and if asked by the parent would happily attend. This isn’t a school problem. This is a parent problem.

Schools can’t be everything to everyone. Nor can they afford to bear the brunt of the cost.

An IRP would overturn the exclusion if the parents effectively had no access to paperwork

If it is a choice between translation and staff or materials then I'd support a head who chose the latter to be honest. This is the world we are living in the education budgets leaving schools having to make such choices.

However I do think that accommodations need to be made for quasi-legal processes like exclusion and so a misjudgement has been made there.

I like how I can't even guess which one gives you sweats😂 Could go either way

The op mentioned that a meeting was held (in English) to exclude a child which the Polish speaking mother did not understand. The head refused to allow any staff member in to translate even though there were staff who could have done so.

They're getting free healthcare, dentists, schools, housing etc the least they can do is learn the language.

Maybe because he didn't want to put extra responsibility completely outside of their work description on them...
Tbh I am kind of with him. I would not be happy acting in that position. When something goes wrong after, I would get the blame.

People on this thread are showing their ignorance by applying their own western values about family and education to cultures that are very, very different. In some places parents are happy to sell their daughters to a man who gives them enough money. Do you really think these sort of parents care enough about their children to learn English for their education's sake? You have a better chance at integrating the children if they are properly supported via school.

Sorry, but the school is in England. Every letter should be in English.
I have zero sympathy for those who decided to move here and want everybody to pander to them because they won't assimilate or learn the language.
My son is in year two, several parents had just moved here when they started reception. They didn't speak much English but took it upon themselves to learn and now we chat together in the playground no problem. They never, ever put the onus on the school or made it anybody else's problem.

Another country simply wouldn't do it.

We're the only mugs who constantly bend over backwards to help people who don't/won't help themselves.

When in Rome, etc.

Yeah, good luck to them getting a dentist.
There was a dentist on the local news that night saying he'd just returned from a volunteer stint in a refugee camp in Jordan. He said the refugees there had better easier access to dental care than we do in the UK. His solution to improve access here was to throw all working age people off his list and open it up to new NHS patients but only if they were under 18 or over 80.

I've gotten to know a lot of Ukrainians here through one we had living with us. They go back to Ukraine for medical and dental treatment because they can't get it here.

It also suggests that the parents aren't working, either.

So, you're the one paying for this, OP!

I thought that's why migrants wanted to live in Britain, over other countries in Europe, because they can already speak some English?

Or was that bullshit?

Of course is BS.

If the parents had to put their hands in their own pockets to facilitate this, they would learn English a lot more quickly.

For the exclusion i would hope warning in the request for the meeting. So the person could bring interpreter.
But having a tricky child it generally doesnt come out of the blue. There will have been issues ongoing at school.
The need for translation in hospitals is different as language there complex and important. And often emergency. Letters home from school generally arent.
re inset days - i had never heard of them having gone private.
And often parents miss them here.
and often whatsapp is how they find out

But if my child was in that school where resources were scarce and there wasn't the budget for things that would benefit my child, I would be questioning why they were spending thousands of pounds on translation services for parents that had been in the country for years ...

And again why is it the school's responsibility? When do the parents have to take responsibility for their own lack of language and bring (or pay) for their own translator? Surely any good parent wants to do the best for their children so why would they not invest in their education by being proactive about ensuring they can ensure they understand the teachers in any meetings? Why is it just the school who has to work for the benefit of the child, why don't we put that expectation on their parents?

I have been that parent in a foreign country who didn't fully understand all the official meetings/paperwork but I did not expect the organisation in question to provide translators for me at their expense as the default. If they had them available then great but if not then I fully expected to have to provide my own translator whether that was a friend or paid professional.

I have also been the "unofficial English translator" at a Spanish school who had English children whose parents didn't speak a word of Spanish. It's not an easy job - firstly I'm not trained in translating so it's exhausting having to actively translate for an extended period of time - plus there is always situations where phrases/terms don't translate well so you have to think up a different way to phrase it without losing the context and underlying message. Then there's the fact I'm put in a situation of being the "messenger" for often difficult or awkward messages so anger/upset/ire was directed at me because I was the one to actually tell the parents that their child was XYZ that they didn't want to hear.

Plus then there's words/phrases that imply understanding of context - as someone said upthread the word "inset day" is just known to mean "your kids don't come to school today" but if you say that to someone from another country they may not know what the term itself means -so you also have to clarify that people understand the meaning of words or phrases without coming across as patronising, which can be difficult.

Then you have the fact that those meetings took me away from either my own classes, my planning/prep time or my own free time and I never got that time back, all to do a job I didn't sign up for but was voluntold to do purely because I could speak two languages.

@melj you've just written a post explaining why it is not as easy as people on this thread are making out to learn a language and use it in a foreign country.

It is the school's responsibility because educating the child is the school's responsibility. That means its parents knowing what is going on.

There was a famous (in translation circles[ case in the USA of a hospital using a Spanish-speaking staff member to interpret for a Cuban-American patient rather than calling a professional interpreter. They made a mistake, the patient ended up quadriplegic, and it ended up costing the hospital $73 million in damages.

Paying for interpreters costs money, but kids should not pay the price for their parents' shortcomings and in the end helping the kids integrate and enjoy successful school careers will save society money in the longer term.

The school has a responsibility to the child but what responsibility do the parents have?

No-one saying "the school has a responsibility to the child" seems to answer the question of "Why don't the parents have the same responsibility?"

Why is nobody expecting the parents to advocate for themselves and be responsible enough to know that if their English isn't good enough for a meeting/official discussion then the onus should be on the parent to source a translator, not the school? Why should the school have to be the default for the translation service provision?

Why are the parents just assuming the school will source a translator for them as the default rather than it being on them to find a translator and asking the school to provide one only if they can't? It doesn't seem like the parents are contacting the school to say "My sister normally translates but she is sick, do you have someone who can translate?" they're just rocking up and expecting a translator to be provided for them, free of charge.

It's a stance of entitlement - I would never have expected English translators as standard when I lived abroad but apparently I am the outlier because I think that if I live in another country them it's my responsibility to either learn the language or be the one to source translations if necessary rather than assuming it will be provided for me.

If you say it's not the school's responsibility and the parents don't magically learn English over the summer holidays and still can't understand the language, who suffers the direct consequences? Is it the parents or the child?

And if the child is not being educated properly when the school could do something about it, that is an abrogation of the school's responsibility. They can't control what the parent does about theirs.

It would have been interesting to having voting enabled on this.
Fwiw it seems that we are an outlier on this and other European countries don't provide translation services. But I'm happy to be proved wrong.
And, no, if you move to a country, you learn the language. Or provide your own translator and don't whinge if the State don't spend £££s for you to have one.

Completely agree that we shouldn't be pandering or enabling these parents with to speak their own language. Frankly, I think it's poor parenting to not learn the local language of your child. But, none of that is the child's fault. The child is already disadvantaged by (after 5+ years in the UK) 'can't be bothered' parents and unfortunately schools have to step into the parenting role in many, many other situations for the good of the child.

My main concern about all this translation, basically on demand, is that it ultimately might not be helping and might be actively making things worse overall by enabling not speaking English.

I wonder if the council (or whoever) could actually pay the parents money to attend English lessons or pass exams? I know this will be met with howls of 'tax payers money' and rightly so. But tax payers money is being spent on this already and paying the parents to learn English might ultimately be cheaper and the parents speaking English would absolutely definitely be better for the kid. Giving people money has been shown to work in all kinds of situations. It even improves breast feeding rates and stopping smoking.

The school is literally providing free English lessons…