Education Services

 

Children at classes

 

The centre also specializes in providing educational services to the  Turkish and Kurdish Community in the form of co-educators provided to a number of secondary and primary schools in the borough in order to improve the level of achievement amongst Turkish speaking pupils. This work is largely funded by Hackney Learning Trust and has been running for a number of years and is currently provided to four secondary schools. The education service is closely linked in with the centre’s advice, women’s, youth and cultural services, contributing to the effort of providing a holistic service with a client group with multiple needs ranging from immigration, to employment, to housing and welfare issues. For the last two years, supplementary schools sessions have began to be provided in the centre, adding to the diversity of educational services. As a result of the liaison with the cultural activities, folk dance, drama and art workshops began run in schools were co-educators work. While the funding from the Hackney College to run literacy classes for Turkish women came to an end due to changing education priorities of the college, ESOL classes began to be provided from the centre, although funding for these classes is also yet be secured for the future.

 

DayMer Co-Educators Projects

 

Co-educators project is one of the important and longest projects in Day-Mer. The project has been going on since 2002 in primary and secondary schools in Hackney. Day-Mer provided co-educators in one nursery, 5 primary and 6 secondary schools before. Because of funding issues the project has been providing and coordinates co-educators in 4 secondary schools in Hackney for last four years. Day-Mer provides co-educators in Haggerston, Homerton, Moussbourne, and Stoke Newington Secondary School for last four years. The Day-Mer has been working in these schools in partnership with The Learning Trust and EMAG via NRF project. Through Day-Mer co-educator project, we have also been working with 150 pupils in Hackney schools.

 

The Day-Mer co-educators project aims to improve the performance of Turkish, Kurdish and Turkish Cypriots secondary school children especially in SATs and GCSE exams in the targeted schools in Hackney. It provides a gateway to training for refugee parents who have lack of knowledge about the UK education system, how to help their children lesson, the understanding of their children whose in between clash of different culture and language. It also aims to enable the parents of Turkish, Kurdish and Turkish Cypriots children to engage with the community centre and access services that will improve their quality of life and increase opportunities for them. Through the Turkish speaking co-educators project, Day-Mer has been providing and will continue to provide inside and outside classroom support to pupils, meeting with parents at schools, home visits at parents home, mother tongue resources for the parents and cares and access to a community centre where there is a wide range of services to improve the lives of the community.

 

Because of the underachievement of Turkish speaking children in the education system, and the success of the project, we hope that the necessary fund will be continue to provide by The Learning Trust and other funders. It would also be useful if other boroughs with large numbers of Turkish, Kurdish, and Turkish Cypriot pupils took up this model of support.

 

Supplementary School

 

Another successful project in education field is Day-Mer Supplementary School project. Day-Mer have started Supplementary School in weekdays since April 2004 in Literacy, Numeracy and Turkish lessons for primary pupils and for secondary pupils for Maths, Science and English lessons in Day-Mer as well as in primary and secondary school in Hackney.

 

Our aim is to help primary and secondary school pupils especially their Literacy, Numeracy, Maths, Science, and English lessons as well as their SATs and GCSE exams. Day-Mer has experience teachers, co-educators, and teacher assistant for its supplementary school classes and teaches in line of curriculum. Because we already have connection with primary and secondary schools, we can get student for our class through our co-educators as well as teacher members of Day-Mer in Hackney Schools. Also through our advice service, many parents especially mothers hear about our supplementary school and bring their children. The success of supplementary school can be heard by word of mouth which also attracts many parents to our Supplementary School.

 

Through Supplementary School we aimed to work 50 pupils in 2005-06 academic years. We exceeded the number and we had 65 students in our classes in 2005-06. In the supplementary school we aim to work with 75 students next academic year.

 

The project has been running in partnership with The Learning Trust Supplementary School Project. Day-Mer is also part of Supplementary School Forum in Hackney.