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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm sure that's true. But you seem to be under the impression that most of us would see that as reasonable that way round. I certainly wouldn't. I can't bear the little Englanders who live in their enclaves overseas and expect everyone to pander to them.

The reason it might be easier to offer them a translator is just luck though. They happen to speak a language which is many people's second language. I doubt if those schools and hospitals could magic up a Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Serbo Croat or Welsh speaking translator as easily.

It may be difficult for people to learn English themselves to a fluency level after six months but many people would have access to other friends and family who could help. Personally I would rather the budget went on feeding and teaching the pupils themselves rather than translating for their parents.

The school cannot afford to keep doing this. How much does translation cost? Consider actual fees plus the cost of any staff members spending time doing this. The parents need to be accessing English lessons so they can fully participate or they need to use apps or friends to help them.

Also, if you moved to my family country or a neighbouring one to any reasonable sized town you could easily exist in English. Every ATM or ticket machine would translate, most shops you’d have English offered, libraries would have English books and providing you were worth it it would be tolerated at work. You’d have schools with English offered with some state support, or completely private schools. You could claim all official documents in English as the state recognises it as one of the official options.

It’s not a one way road for a lot of the world that just England translates, for all those who are saying they’ve never seen it.

I was agreeing with the general consensus until i read your post. After seeing you put the costs in context, it does seem unreasonable. All children in the school often benefit from extra funding. It seems like The Head is not considering the potential impact, fully.

Many children of immigrants have been forced to translate for their parents for a long time. It should not be the case. There are instances where discussions are better held between the adults but can’t happen if the child is the translator.

Many parents might be able to use Google translate but there are others who will struggle due to being illiterate or have a learning difficulty, etc etc. Hopefully, they can make exceptions for these parents

I think it’s reasonable.
we live abroad, it’s all in local language. Very little English locally as we aren’t in a city.
At anything we go to it’s always in local language and governmental actually aren’t allowed to use English officially even if they speak it. We have to either translate ourselves or bring another person with us to translate if needed.
At parents evening we just don’t understand 100% but get 80%, and then everyone gets print out or email again with info ( in local language), so I can double check at home with more time or translate myself anything I don’t understand.

Has the school received extra finding in order to keep the service and now they want to use money elsewhere? Or do they just have a basic schooling budget like everyone else?

If funds are limited this does seem a reasonable place to start. English lessons are provided and to have not even attempted to make some sort of start with the basics after 1 year shows lack of willing on the parents part. Will some of the (older) children be able to read the notes perhaps?

Sorry B2 for parents' evenings. Typo (there is no B3!).

Maybe the school should do things on a case by case basis. If a family says I can't get this translated or I don't understand this they could help but not as an expected every document service.

My family moved overseas and I went to the local school, fair enough a lot of people spoke English but we wouldn't have expected them to pay for a translator, it was my parents decision to move there after all, we all learned the language.