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NAMCW - Family Development Studies

One of the very positive outcomes of the laptop initiative is the link that has been forged between NAMCW and Headstart. This is a project funded by the West Euston Single Regeneration Budget (SRB). It aims to enhance the educational attainment of disadvantaged groups in West Euston by establishing innovative school/parent partnerships. The project focuses on work with parents, parent education and parent-school partnerships.

The partnership has enabled NAMCW to develop a shared learning project at Netley School, a local primary school where the majority of parents are Bengali speaking. The school is situated in Camden, in the West Euston Ward. This is an inner city deprived area with a high unemployment rate. The academic achievement of parents is low.

NAMCW has been able to instigate informal shared learning sessions. The aim of these sessions is to give parents the confidence and knowledge to support their children’s early learning through play and pre-reading activities. This work, inevitably, supports the development of the parents own literacy skills. These sessions are regularly attended by up to 20 parents.

As a result of the success of this project, NAMCW has started a further group. This is more formal ESOL group. To date, 13 parents have enrolled for these sessions.

A very important partnership has been developed through these projects between NAMCW, West Euston, SRB, Headstart, Kingsway College, Camden Library Services and Netley School. Parents attending the sessions are from diverse backgrounds, Algerian, Bengali, Colombian and Syrian. It is hoped that by encouraging these parent s to work together within the groups that barriers will be crosses and the parents themselves will start to form friendship and network amongst themselves.

Parents have enrolled with the local library and regular visits have become part of the programme. Other laptops are available in Kingsway College and there are plans for the parents to access these.

The laptops have been used in a variety of ways, developing work sheets, forms and certificates, and accessing the internet for information on a variety of projects.

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