About Us
Welcome to the Educators Forum
We have set up the Educators Forum to be able to provide voluntary information and assistance on education to the Turkish, Kurdish and Cypriot Turkish communities who live in the UK.
We believe that our children do not perform very well academically. This has significant social and economical consequences in some boroughs in London where Turkish and Kurdish are two of the most spoken languages.
The low level of achievement of the Turkish, Kurdish and Cypriot Turkish youth is widely known, however, the fact that not much progress has been made is a cause for concern.
The underlying causes of underachievement in deprived communities need to be investigated by all parties involved. The first step is to address the academic acheivement problem from the ground up. We believe that there are alternative ways forward, such as enhancing the relations between institutions, families, students and teachers, in order to increase cooperation and make it possible for them to benefit from each other’s resources and experiences.
Educators Forum is a registered charity operating since May 2006 to promote the inclusion and integration of the Turkish and Kurdish speaking community by improving their education levels. Educators Forum is currently delivering services in and around the London Borough of Hackney and Islington with a focus on rolling it out across the whole of London.
The Forum is managed by a Management Committee of seven educators and run by volunteers who are dedicated and experienced professionals in education working as lecturers, teaching assistants, parent governors, mentors, ethnic minority achievement coordinators, education consultants and adult education teachers, all working altruistically.
Charity Number: 1124910
We aim to:
develop confident families who enjoy learning together with visible outcomes in improved educational attainment, increased self esteem and better family, school and community relationships
promote family learning by empowering and supporting parents to take an active role in their children’s learning as well as to develop their own knowledge and skills
offer high quality educational resources through various channels such as producing and publishing bi-lingual learning materials and e-learning on our website ( www.edforum.org.uk )
organize cultural events in order to educate, entertain and also to improve relations between communities, thus promoting racial harmony by advocating equality and diversity
point out the underlying causes of under-achievement in deprived communities and demonstrate that there are alternative ways for progression
support educators in their profession to obtain equal rights as their host counterparts and give guidance for the new educators coming into the teaching profession
enhance relations with other institutions in order to co-operate and benefit from each other’s resources and experiences
lead and/or contribute to local and national networks, and work in partnerships with statutory and voluntary organisations in order to promote learning and employment
Our current activities:
We currently deliver the following projects :
Family Learning Numeracy – This project takes place at Daubeney Primary School (funded by the Learning Trust).
GCSE Maths Course with Turkish Support for Adults in partnership with City & Islington College- Adults from our communities attend this year-long course at the college in Finsbury Park twice a week. Resources, venue and facilities donated by the college.
The Bookworm Project – This is an activity to get young TKSC children into story reading and writing by raising their interest through stimulating activities that are fun (funded by The Learning Trust).
Family Learning Book Club – At Burbage Primary Schools (funded by The Learning Trust). This also encourages parents/carers to become involved in their children’s reading both at school and home.
Islington Info Pack Project- After the success of our Hackney Info Pack, we are now in the process of preparing a very similar information package for Islington.
From GCSE and A-Level to A University Place – A committee is being set up to create an information pack for parents and students.
Educational Adviser- One to one advice and information sessions delivered to parents and children by the forum members on a volunteer basis to provide guidance and advice. We need to appoint at least one full time education and employment advice worker to work at the Teachers Centre.
Our recent achievements:
Our Bookworm (Kitap kurdu) project was first carried out at Princess May Primary School. As it was a successful project the second one was took place in another primary school in Hackney - Morningside School. We published a story book (WISH TREE) in Turkish, Kurdish and English at the end of this project.
We published the first Turkish GCSE supplementary book. The book can be found at most secondary schools and Libraries in Hackney and Islington.
We are working on the Turkish A Level Supplementary Book
We established our Turkish, Kurdish and English website: www.edforum.org.uk Our efforts to improve the website is continuing.
Parenting classes and family learning courses in various centres and primary schools in North London have been taking place.
An 18 week project to help overseas trained TKSC teachers and university graduates in finding routes into teaching in UK was carried out.
Good relationships were established with TKSC community organisations as well as with the HCVS, Hackney Refugee Forum, The Learning Trust, and schools and colleges mainly in Hackney and Islington.
After School Maths and English Support Classes for Year 1 and Year 2 children took place again at Grazebrook Primary School in Hackney.
We have managed to secure a premise for the group, “Teachers Centre” at the end of 2008.
CHAIR’S SPEECH
First of all, we would like to thank everyone who has regularly attended the weekly meetings on Fridays (the Friday Group), enabling the Educators Forum to become an influential group in London.
By believing in the importance of education, a small group of teachers have been working regularly and on a volunteer basis in order to transform the Educators Forum into an important organisation. Although it has been a difficult task, we can look back on the many achievements we have had in the past year. We are proud to have succeeded in areas where organisations with far greater resources have found it difficult to achieve in.
One of our most important contributions has been the opening of the first Teachers Centre in London. At the same time, the publication of the Hackney Info Pack has been a turning point in the short history of the Educators Forum. Furthermore, we believe that our other projects have made a small but important contribution to the education of Turkish-speaking parents and teachers. These include the Family Numeracy Courses, the Bookworm Project and the Book Club. We believe that the GCSE course we have arranged in partnership with the City and Islington College will come to a successful conclusion in June 2009.
We will present each one of our activities in the last year in order to show how we have made these achievements.
THE OPENING OF THE TEACHERS CENTRE:
With the efforts of the Friday Group over many months the TKSC teachers in London finally have a home. The Teachers Centre is an ideal place to coordinate our efforts. The restoration and decoration of the building took much of our time and resources. Our effort to create a high-quality environment is still continuing.
The opening of the Teachers Centre helped our cause greatly. Teachers and representatives from a wide variety of community centres came to the opening with great excitement. The event was covered by reporters from both the local and national press. We will aim higher to repay the faith that they have put in us. Our launch proved once more that our community stands firm with organisations with good intentions.
THE HACKNEY INFO PACK:
The launch of the Hackney Info Pack and the opening of the Teachers Centre were made on the same day at the beginning of 2009. The aim of the info pack is to help our community to achieve access to the education services. The Info Pack includes both the successes and the failures of our community. Using analytical and empirical methods, we sought to explain various problems in education in order to make families more aware of these issues. There is information and advice on choosing secondary schools; academic life in secondary schools; understanding the school league tables; effective learning and studying methods; using libraries; useful education contacts; understanding and tackling bullying; concentration issues in the classroom; the negative effects of blaming and smacking children; supplementary schools; multiculturalism; grammar and selective schools; getting ready for exams and places to visit with children in Hackney. The feedback from parents, teachers and children living in Hackney has been very positive and we have received large numbers of requests from other areas in North London to produce Info Packs for their boroughs.
PROJECTS RUNNING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SCHOOLS:
Family Numeracy Course
The aims of this course coincide with some of the most important aims of the Educators Forum. These include increasing the quality of life of parents, increasing people’s chances of finding better employment and increasing parents’ ability to contribute to their children’s homework. Teaching takes place twice a week and parents will receive national accreditation thorough portfolio building. The duration of the course is 15 weeks, after which we aim to progress parents into either further education or employment.
The Bookworm Project
The aim of this project is to encourage children to read, to facilitate them to understand what they read and to enable them to explain what they have read to others. Overall, we hope that this project will increase children’s confidence and self-esteem. Children will be rewarded by multilingual books. At the end of the project the Group will produce a book. This is the second time that we are running this project and it is continuing to be successful.
The Book Club
This project seeks to encourage parents and children to learn together. Other aims include encouraging parents to provide more support to their children, showing parents how helpful they can be in this role, giving parents the confidence that they can continue to learn in later life and creating new opportunities for learning.
GCSE Maths with Turkish Support
Due to a governmental decision taken in recent years, all teachers and classroom assistants must have GCSE certificates. In order to help teachers to gain these qualifications, the Educators Forum has been working in partnership with the City and Islington College to provide this GCSE Maths course. The registration and retention of the course and the standard of quality has been approved by the College. Three of our members work in this course – two of them are volunteers. This project has shown that we can successfully run a year-long course.
ESOL NETWORK
Our ESOL campaign initially focussed on addressing the educational problems of the TKSC. However, we later decided to create an informative network for everyone in Hackney with ESOL needs. This project is at a very early stage but is progressing in two ways. Firstly, we are creating a path for Turkish, Kurdish and Cypriot community centres to move forwards together during the economic crisis. Secondly, we are aiming to provide an information centre for all organisations in Hackney that provide ESOL courses. We are continuing to discuss the direction of this project. If we are able to start this project, we are confident that it will improve education and life standards of the members of ethnic minorities, who experience a language barrier in Hackney.
Without doubt, there is still much work to be done to improve and increase the scope of the ESOL Network. Without focussing solely on the needs of the Turkish and Kurdish speaking community, we hope that we can increase our role to be London-wide in providing a centre for information and advice in all ESOL educational matters.
INVESTING IN VOLUNTEERS
We have been successful in our application to Hackney Voluntary Action for ‘Investing in Volunteers’. We are starting to work towards this very soon. As our work is predominantly carried out by volunteers, it will have a big impact on the quality of what we do.
EDUCATORS FORUM IN THE LOCAL MEDIA
The views of Educators Forum on various subjects such as the results of A-level exams, International Teachers’ Day and the role of supplementary schools and our activities were widely covered in the London based Turkish media. This included the Acik Gazete, a Turkish internet newspaper, as well as Turkish national and local TV and radio programmes. By using the media, we will continue to inform our community on their rights and opportunities in education as well as our projects and activities to promote education.
ISSUES THAT WE NEED TO TACKLE:
Although we are happy with our achievements so far, we would like to express that we expect to get more support from the education authorities, educators and members of our community in order to build on our work.
We need your support:
to keep the Teachers Centre open every day
to increase the activities carried out in the centre to meet its full potential
- to make the Teachers Centre a welcoming place for educators to share their experience, exchange information, prepare materials and use internet facilities
Please show your support:
by attending various relevant meetings for us in and around Hackney and providing feedback
by making suggestions to promote the aims and contribute the activities of the Forum
by sharing your ideas and experience with us