Maindee Primary School, situated in a hugely multicultural area of Newport, has connected with a web of local partners to positively impact ethnically diverse children in their care.
Levelling the Playing Field specialist partners Newport Live and Community Youth Project are key members of a collaboration that also encompasses Newport City Council's Youth Justice Service, Family Support and Prevention teams, Gwent Education Minority Ethnic Service (GEMS), and the local police and fire service. Together, their aim is to support vulnerable young people and foster cohesion between the many different cultures and communities in the local area.
There are 42 different languages spoken by children at Maindee Primary and 92% of pupils speak English as an additional language. Maindee also suffers from acute poverty, with high levels of deprivation and all of its associated issues.
Head teacher Jo Cueto ensures this massive diversity is celebrated in school, which is “colourful, vibrant and busy where we’re all one big family where everyone is respectful”, but, she admits, “that is not always what happens outside the school gates.”
The school and Lucy Donovan from Newport Live put together an early intervention project with sport sessions and workshops targeting specific issues that had been flagged up within certain communities such as drug dealing, knife crime and racial tensions.
Crucially, parents were included in these activities so that positive messages were spread to key people from every aspect of children’s lives - their home, school and community. “We knew we wouldn’t make a long-term difference unless the parents got those messages as well,” explains Jo.
The school set up a choir, ‘The Gypsy Stars’ and Lucy from Newport Live arranged for local sports stars to come in and give talks, including Leon Brown and Ashton Hewitt from Dragons Rugby, ex-Wales international basketballer Asa Waite (who runs LtPF specialist partners Newport Aces) and players from local League Two club Newport County.
Maindee Primary staff member Martine Smith was instrumental in pulling together all the partners. She is currently undertaking Levelling the Playing Field’s mentoring training so she can complement the partnership work by supporting individual children on a one-to-one basis, starting next year.
Inspired by the work that LtPF specialist partners Community Youth Project were doing to unite the local population (which includes many Gypsy Roma Traveller families and Asian communities), Martine has continued to share strategies between school and the partnership, including a Peace Mala which united local religious leaders to celebrate peace, respect and the need to treat others how you wish to be treated yourself.
“It was very powerful,” said Jo. “We found the children were willing to have difficult conversations about their differences because it was about peace, not about what separated them.”
The partnership with the school has enabled Newport Live and Community Youth Project to engage with families who were previously not on their radar. The group regularly holds meetings about specific issues in the community. “So many people were passionate about the issues we face here, and this partnership has united them really well,” says Jo.
The Covid-19 lockdowns saw the group adapt by coordinating food parcels, delivering home learning packs and fundraising together. Like many other community partnerships, though, their impact was unavoidably damaged by the pandemic.
Sarah Miller from Community Youth Project says: “It felt like we took about 10 steps backwards because the Government guidelines literally told people, ‘Stick to your own’ and ‘Don’t mix with others’.
“The rules created a literal social distance between young people, so all these positive experiences they had two years ago; working closely together, playing sport, going on trips and building relationships; they’ve now been told to do the opposite for the past two years. We’ve got a lot of work to do now to get back to where we were.”
Jo and Martine have applied for funding from the Gwent Police and Crime Commissioner to expand the partnership post-Covid into local secondary schools, so the impetus and impact on children at primary-age is not lost when they move on.
Matthew Elliott from Newport Youth Justice Team has been heavily involved in the partnership. "The project has excelled all our expectations and targets," he says. "We have reached out and engaged with young people to empower them in their ability to safeguard themselves from exploitation and shared with them key skills that will hopefully prevent them from entering the Youth Justice arena in future."
Sarah from Community Youth Project says in terms of creating unity, cohesion and friendships between young people from different communities, sport remains the most powerful force - and one the partners will continue to use as a force for good.
“Sport is the thing that brings people together and stops young people being excluded in the way they have been,” she states. “We collaborate a lot with Positive Futures and if you come to any of our sessions and those at Maindee Primary School you will see young people playing together - which they may not do in any other aspect of their lives.”
One pupil's quote summed up the impact of the partnership's work. Speaking to a boy of different ethnicity who he used to bully, he said: "Get your mum to let you come to the same high school as me, then I can look after you."