This year’s summer school took place for four weeks, from 1-26 July. This was the biggest summer school we have ever run, and by the end of the programme, a total of 59 students had attended classes, a 9% increase on last year’s Summer School (54).
Registration was closed shortly before the start of the summer school owing to limits on class sizes and venue capacity. The context in which the summer school took place was similar to the two previous years. We are still dealing with the after-effects of Brexit and the war in Afghanistan and Ukraine. 46 (80%) of students attending the Summer School were refugees. Refugees and asylum seekers made up 88% of the students. There were 15 nationalities represented.
We organised classes at four levels: Starters, for those for whom Summer School was their first contact with English teaching; Basic, for the early learners; Medium, for the intermediate users, and Highers for the advanced students.The Basic class was the largest, with 20 students, although the most attending on any one day was 12, while all other classes had 13 students each.
The teaching programme for each class was prepared by our lead tutor, Marta Fernandez-Borrego. Tutors were given the freedom to cover the curriculum according to their own teaching styles, and the wants, needs and interests of their students. The tutors were also encouraged to take their students out and about around the city centre to take teaching and learning outside the classroom and into real, everyday situations. In the morning (10-12:30) there were two English classes and afternoons consisted of conversations (1:30-2:20pm) and workshops (2:30-3:30pm). Classes used a different theme each week as the context for learning: Scotland and me, healthy living, working world, sky is the limit.
There were also special afternoon sessions based on the theme of the week of the summer school and delivered by volunteers with specialist interests: beekeeping, growing fruit and vegetables, holidays in Scotland, driving, creative writing, pronunciation, healthcare, hill safety. We also had a session with the Fire Brigade, Police and a curling Olympian from Active Stirling. An end-of-school party was held on the final afternoon, with students, tutors and the crèche team bringing in food from their own countries.
The main frustrations during the summer school were attendance and timekeeping. There were various reasons for non-attendance, most commonly GP, dentist, hospital or job centre appointments. Some students took time off for the festival of Eid al- Adha and many Muslims attended only the first session on Friday mornings as they wanted to go to mosque at noon. Many of the older Afghan women felt tired after the morning block of classes and often didn’t stay for the afternoon sessions. Regular feedback was gathered to ensure the content of lessons was in line with students’ expectations and met their needs. ‘Exit tickets’ were used at various times for formative assessment, with students noting one thing they learned from the lesson. This helped them to reflect on what they did during the class, and allowed the tutors to see which parts of the lesson were of most value to the students.
Fourteen volunteer tutors and five tutor assistants were involved over the four weeks in the morning and afternoon conversation classes. 29 volunteers were involved in workshops, excursions and 6 in creche. The 55 volunteers were very positive about their experience at the summer school.
Quotes from volunteer tutors ‘’Marta provided all necessary information as regards timetabling, recording work, attendance and feedback, as well as making sure that tutors had access to text books and other material in order to plan lessons.” ‘’It makes me feel extremely happy to be of use; I love interacting with the very diverse people I have met: tutors and students; I have also been able to develop my teaching skills and learned a lot about particular aspects of the learning and teaching of English, in particular about pronunciation and the difficulties peculiar to students with various different mother tongues.‘’
The summer creche run alongside classes and had 27 children, aged between 11months and 13 years, included 18 girls and 9 boys from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Sudan, and Spain, the highest number the school has had so far. Six volunteers (including postgraduate students from the University of Stirling on work placement) worked alongside a creche coordinator to prepare activities tailored to different age groups. For toddlers, activities, included reading books, colouring, singing rhymes, and free play. The older group enjoyed crafts with weekly themes like recycling, weather, natural environment, and paper, as well as games such as football, volleyball, dodgeball, basketball, musical chairs, passing the ball, free play and mental games like quizzes and numerical questions. The average attendance was 45%, with a minimum of 15 children present each day.
We would like to thank our excellent team of volunteers for their hard work and dedication over the four weeks; the funding bodies for their financial assistance: Stirlingshire Educational Trust, the Souter Charitable Trust, Baillie Gifford Community, administered by Foundation Scotland; Stirling Baptist Church; as well as summer school staff and volunteers: workshop organizer Elaine Law, Senior Tutor Marta Fernandez-Borrego, Creche Coordinator Riveka Dhar; and the board of the Stirling School of English for their support throughout.
