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St Joseph's Catholic Primary School - Case StudyIntroductionSt Joseph’s Catholic Primary School serves a wide catchment area in
Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. It is a successful one form entry school with
consistently high standards and a consistently high number of pupils on roll.
The proportion of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds is significantly
above average and is steadily increasing each year, with the proportion
learning English as an additional language also being higher than average. St.
Joseph’s currently has 261 children on roll, with approximately a third of the
pupils being of ‘White British’ heritage, with other pupils from each of 13
ethnic backgrounds. A relatively high proportion of pupils (approximately
20%) are at an early stage of learning English. The majority of pupils
(136/211) have English as a first language, with 18 other languages spoken as
a first language, the majority of these being Polish (34/261 – 13%). The ProblemDue to our changing demographic we care finding it very difficult to communicate with certain groups of parents due to language difficulties. Whilst these families are very supportive, it can sometimes be difficult to communicate as effectively as we would like on a regular basis. Our school website is constantly updated and ParentMail is used but many parents find it difficult to access the information due to a language barrier. What We DidOn visiting the BETT show last year, I was discussing with Darren how effective our App
was in providing parents with updates concerning various events taking place in school
on a daily basis. I had received many very positive comments concerning the
functionality of the App and the instant access to information ‘on the go’. Darren then
informed me that they were currently working on a ‘translation tool’ which would
translate all messages/updates into a wide variety of languages. We subsequently bought
the translation tool and have been using it for the last 12 months with messages being
translated into 17 different languages. Benefits and ResultsParents of all nationalities are now able to access all news/calendar updates in their preferred language and we have received excellent feedback from parents who have limited English commenting on how easy it is to use the App and also, of course, the benefits of the translation tool. TakeawaysWe now realise that our App is the prime communication tool for those parents who have limited English. Through ensuring that the App is constantly updated with news/calendar reminders, we are confident that the vast majority of parents are able to access the required information. Many thanks to Jigsaw for creating such a user-friendly and highly functional App!!
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