HSBC sponsors family learning initiatives

The HSBC Cares for Children Fund is sponsoring two major family learning initiatives run by the Foundation for Educational Services of the Education Ministry.

The HSBC Group has presented a £30,000 donation to the foundation, following a grant of Lm12,000 in 2001 when the FES was set up to cater for children with learning problems, re-introduce them into mainstream education and help them cope with their school programme.

Three family learning programmes that the foundation offers at a number of state schools around Malta and Gozo could be expanded to two more sites through HSBC support, said FES chairman Prof. Kenneth Wain, highlighting the importance of the family-focused educational work that the foundation carries out after school hours in sites hosted by heads of state primary schools.

Among the programmes are parent-to-parent courses, developed jointly by parents and trained parent-support teachers and centred on themes identified by parents whose children attend the school hosting an FES Parents-in-Education initiative.

A Nwar Programme, running twice weekly, provides learning support within a family literacy context to children aged between eight and 13, who grapple with literacy skills, and their parents. Intensively trained and mentored teachers tutor two children at a time in the presence of their parents, resulting in capacity-building of all the family members present.

Prof. Wain stressed the success of the Nwar Programme as a secondary prevention literacy support initiative, which is having a ripple effect in schools through the practice-based training of teachers in a range of differentiated teaching methodologies.

The programme offers children and young persons, referred by student support services and the Statementing Moderating Panel, one-to-two support for an hour twice a week for a semester on the basis of an individual learning plan. Parents are trained to re-enforce the support by home practice.

In many cases, these sessions also help parents to learn new skills they may not have mastered in their school days. The programme is designed to last one semester.

Both in Birkirkara and Hamrun, the programme is currently catering for 50 families, while a Hilti Club is also running at these two sites. A primary prevention after-school family literacy programme, the Hilti Club was one of the first initiatives introduced in Malta by the foundation. It is open twice weekly and is aimed at both students and their parents in a mixed ability setting.

It is through the process of participation in a Hilti Club that many parents have reconnected to the learner within themselves and moved on to access other non-formal, or formal learning opportunities offered around Malta, Prof. Wain said.

Ongoing reviews have revealed that parents who had taken part in a Klabb Hilti wanted to keep on meeting to discuss their children's and their own educational concerns and development.

Dame Mary Richardson, chief executive officer of the HSBC Education Trust in the UK, who is on her second visit to Malta, following the presentation of the first grant, said she was truly impressed by how well Maltese schools were serving their students.

The programme involved the deployment of HSBC staff in Hilti Clubs as volunteer tutor assistants; the development and dissemination of two bilingual reading packs for six to seven and seven to eight age groups; the promotion of vernacular literature through the development of much needed new children's books; and the translation and publication of the first Big Book in Maltese into other European languages.

Having followed closely the development of the foundation's programmes, Dame Richardson was impressed with the progress being made in the fight against illiteracy.

Education, Youth and Employment Minister Louis Galea said the plan was to launch a national debate on the way forward for the education sector and its restructuring.

By next year, he augured that the government would have "a clearer idea of the way forward to take the necessary policy decisions and incorporate them into a legal framework to provide a solid basis for the future".

Around 140 state schoolteachers have been intensively trained and mentored to work in the important field of family literacy, Dr Galea said.

The FES provided ongoing training and support to its cadre of family literacy and family learning support workers, who have become an important resource in their own schools and are being involved in the training and support of other teachers, he continued.

Dr Galea thanked Dame Richardson, other HSBC officials and HSBC Cares for Children Fund chairman Catherine Gonzi, present at the event, for their unstinting efforts to forge and sustain the partnership between the bank and the FES since its inception