Aqoon Schools Home Support Services

Aqoon School-Home Support Services was established to provide support service for black and minority ethnic (BME) parents, carers, children and young people and for schools, early years and educational support agencies.

We became a registered charity in September 2009 after successfully completing a one year pilot School Home Support project funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

Services provided by Aqoon:

• Complementary education programmes at Taylor Road Complementary School and Aqoon-Coleman Complementary School

• Home-school liaison for parents and schools

• Parent support services to all parents including those with SEN children, including attending annual review meetings, translation for the statement, helping visiting special or other schools and provide bilingual support during the school visit.

• Short breaks for disabled children

• Pastoral and mentoring support to pupils who are at risk of exclusion

• Specialist interpreting and translation for education related matters

Track record:

Aqoon enjoys great reputation after delivering very successful project such as complementary classes for disadvantaged pupils in the city and the model it used has been considered as best practice as it bring parents, schools and pupils together and this involvement has led to achieving positive outcome.

- Complements to 4: this is a bespoke programme aimed at pupils who are academically underachieving in Key Stage 2 who have the potential in achieving age appropriate attainment level, Level 4 by the end of Year 6. Aqoon is commissioned to deliver such programme in 2 primary school.

- Justice for All DVD: DVD on raising awareness for Somali parents about children with special needs. The Senior Project Manager (Abdish Tarah) facilitated a workshop at a conference on Diversity: Challenge and Opportunity in European schools in May. He also presented an article on Community based Education interventions: opportunities for European schools at Leicester University Psychology Department in April during a study trip of Swedish delegates. Aqoon took part in a European conference on Special Educational needs in Copenhagen in June 2012.

- Delivering Community Intervention Support Project (CISP) which was funded by Big Lottery Fund. The aim of the project was to provide preventative and early intervention support to black pupils at risk of exclusion in primary and secondary schools in Leicester by providing:

• pastoral and mentoring support during the school time
• out-of-school study support for pupils with learning difficulties due to their behaviour.
• workshops and training material for teachers and school staff about Somali aspirations and perceptions
• bilingual home-school liaison for parents including workshops

Project activities:

The project activities are;

- Providing mentoring, academic and pastoral support during school time delivered 2 bilingual mentors

- Organising out-of hours learning programme (Saturday sessions at Moat)

- Parents support workshop

- School staff training regarding Somali culture, role of parents in promoting education and its importance in the community

- Future Jobs Fund (FJF), this project has supported unemployed young people of age between 19-24. Twenty eight young people have benefited from this project and more than 14 of them have secured jobs within 12 months.

The project has supported over 470 pupils and students with majority of them successfully remained in the schools and no longer risk of school exclusion or underachievement. There has also been an improvement in home-school communication as a result of parents engaging their children schools better.

Partnership working:

Aqoon works in partnership with other organisations including schools , and educational support agencies such Learning Services, SNTS, Disabled Children Services and it is an active member of many networks and forums including Children and Young People’s Forum, CaSEDA ( Co-operative and Social Enterprise Development Agency)

Currently, Aqoon works in partnership with Abbey Primary, Shenton, Buswells Lodge and Coleman Primary School and it delivers Complements to 4 programme on Saturday mornings. Aqoon has also an excellent working relationship with many schools including secondary schools with number of projects such as home-school liaison service, and CISP (Community Intervention Support Project) and ISPP ( Inclusion Support Partnership Project).