FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL SERVICES ( FES )
Freeing students at risk of educational failure to learn:
the NWAR Family Literacy Programme  

by Nora Macelli, CEO
and Marthese Cini, Head of Programme (Nwar)
December 2005

The Foundation for Educational Services ( FES )

The FES is a public agency committed to the reduction of illiteracy within the compulsory education sector. Since its inception in late 2001, it has developed a multi-pronged strategy aimed at supporting stakeholders – children, parents, teachers, schools, groups of schools and local communities. The FES has introduced the practice of family literacy to Malta and trains teachers and parents for collaborative work. One of its key initiatives is the Nwar Programme – a secondary prevention family literacy programme aimed at students most at risk of educational failure and their families. The Nwar Programme uses Synthetic Phonics as a remediation tool and combines it with other teaching and learning tools. The Nwar Programme has exposed hundreds of teachers in Malta to the application of synthetic phonics in the early years of a child's educational journey. Synthetic Phonics is now being gradually disseminated within the state school system.

Purpose

The number of students in compulsory education who grapple with the acquisition of literacy skills is significant in Malta . A number of causal factors are systemic in nature and include the lack of differentiated teaching competencies of teachers and the tenuous links that exist between the school and home teaching and learning processes. The Nwar Programme attempts to redress some of these systemic and other factors by adopting a multi-pronged strategy:

  • supporting students at risk : supporting the basic literacy skills acquisition of students at risk of educational failure (secondary prevention measure) on an afterschool twice weekly basis for a semester;
  • supporting parents : actively involving and supporting parents in the on-going learning support process, thus positively influencing the informal curriculum of the home (primary and secondary prevention); and enabling the capacity building of parents;
  • supporting teachers : providing training opportunities at national and school levels to school teachers ; these include in-class demonstrations and the provision of on-going support in the application of the synthetic phonics methodology so as to create a multiplier effect within school communities (primary prevention measure);
  • supporting schools : providing technical assistance to a number of Colleges comprising a number of primary and secondary schools; these Colleges are being set up by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment as past of a national reform of the compulsory education sector (ages 5 to 16);
  • collaborating with other learning support providers ;
  • submitting recommendations to policy makers: making recommendations to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment and its Policy Unit on measures that would ensure basic skills acquisition by students at risk of educational failure.

The Nwar Programme has been included as one of the social exclusion prevention measures under the National Action Plan on Poverty and Social Inclusion of Malta. It offers literacy support in both the Maltese and English languages.

Achievements

The Nwar Programme was launched in February 2003 following a three-month pilot project targeting 22 students and their parents between October and December. Since its inception, 370 families have participated in the Programme. Through Nwar, referred students who, for years, have failed to learn how to read and write, have gained literacy skills in a very short time span. Factors contributing to the success of the approach are described in the next section. Parents who had never before considered accessing non-formal or/and formal adult education opportunities have, through the Nwar process, become interested in joining parent-focused courses offered by trained FES parent leaders and teachers. For many parents, such participation has led to reflection about their own learning needs and engagement in existing lifelong learning opportunities. The rapid learning gains of students in the Nwar programme is attributable both to the involvement of their parents in these processes so as to support their child's learning and growth and to the effective methodologies and approach used by the Nwar Tutors.

The Nwar Programme has been evaluated by an overseas external consultant from the School of Psychology at the University of East London who is an expert in the field of family literacy.

Description of the Programme and Approach

NWAR is a secondary prevention family literacy programme piloted in mid-2002 and now operational in six regional centres: five on mainland Malta and one on the island of Gozo . Another site will be launched in early 2006. Through the NWAR Programme, parents and their children with severe reading and writing difficulties go through a pre-service assessment process and subsequently participate in an intensive one-to-two literacy support programme over a period of one semester, with the possibility of extended service, if necessary. The service is national in scope and accepts referrals mainly from the Statementing Moderating Panel, various psycho-social services within the Education Division, schools, parents and the Ministry of Education. Individualised Learning Plans (ILPs) are prepared, implemented and reviewed with the parents of each referred child/ young person..

Eligibility

Students who are at serious risk of literacy failure are eligible for admission to the programme. More specifically, students who:

•  do not speak with confidence;
•  do not remember lengthy messages;
•  do not listen with confidence;
•  cannot blend sounds;
•  do not answer relevant questions;
•  do not read any given text;
•  cannot express an opinion about ideas and events;
•  do not attempt to read unfamiliar words;
•  do not understand what is being read and is not able to retell main points;
•  do not write legibly;
•  cannot compose a sentence;
•  never use punctuation marks;
•  cannot transcribe from a board or a book;
•  never use interesting vocabulary.

The above criteria are in some cases relaxed when young persons above the age of 13 apply. Acceptance in such cases is based on (a) evidence that the parents have tried all other avenues of literacy support without any success due to very late diagnosis or due to family problems that impede access to literacy support programmes; and (b) the young person risks reaching school leaving age without any literacy skills whatsoever.

Referrals

The main sources of referrals are psycho-social service practitioners at the Education Division (Social Workers and Psychologists), the Statementing Moderating Panel – the body that issues classroom support related recommendations in the field of learning difficulties, Heads of Schools and parents.

Process

  1. Referral : A Referral Form is sent to the referrer. The Form is filled by the school administration and the parents in order to establish the principle that Nwar processes are inextricably linked to the school curricular processes and that the school is not relinquishing its responsibilities for the child/ young person's attainment. Applications are acknowledged in writing followed by an invitation to an assessment session.

  2. Pre-service assessment : The assessment utilises a tool developed by FES personnel to determine the level of attainment in oracy, listening, comprehension and writing skills. Through an informal session, the Nwar Programme Co-ordinator and Nwar site Co-ordinators meet parents and their child to understand their perception of the learning impasse and learning support strategies used at home. Following this, realistic targets are identified and placed within the context of a draft Individualised Learning Plan (ILP). A detailed explanation is provided to parents regarding how the Nwar Tutor plans to work with the child. This would include a practical description of the multi-sensory approach, examples of exercises that would be used to enhance concentration, an explanation of auditory training (combining sounds to form words), decoding of sounds (identification of sounds in words), and a discussion of how the parents could use such learning-stimulating techniques at home. Moreover, parents are encouraged to make a commitment that they would actively participate in the learning process.
  3. Service : Implementation of the above-mentioned learning plan on a two-families-to-one Tutor basis, two hours a week for a semester. At the start of this stage, the actual Individualised Learning Plan (ILP) is developed between the Tutor and the referred child and their parents:
  4. Day School Contact : At a first contact meeting with the child's/young person's school, the school gets to know about the Nwar approach and discusses the ILP and its implication to day school teaching and learning processes. Session plans are moreover offered to the school for re-enforcement of the learning process as well as to familiarise teachers with the approach.
  5. Post-semester assessment : The same tool used for the pre-service assessment is used to compare levels of competencies, determine actual achievements, and to plan targets for the following semester – if so required.
  6. Review of the Individualised Learning Plan (ILP) and identification of learning targets for the following semester.
  7. Planned closure . Depending on the need, this stage may include admitting the child/young person into a programme for the second language.
  8. Integration of Nwar methodologies into day school processes : Heads of Schools and classroom teachers of each referred child are invited to visit their pupil at Nwar in order to familiarise themselves with the process being facilitated as well as to stimulate reflection about ways through which synthetic phonics can be applied in school.

Success factors

Some of the identified key success factors of the Nwar programme are:

  1. the rigorous selection process for part-time Nwar Tutors;
  2. the intensive induction and on-going training of Nwar Tutors;
  3. the fact that Nwar field teams are small learning communities that engage in twice weekly (one hour each time) training and planning sessions;
  4. the on-going follow-up and mentoring of Tutors by the Nwar Programme Co-ordinator;
  5. the on-going active participation of parents throughout the service provision period;
  6. the parent-empowering partnership that is established between Nwar Tutors and parents . For many parents, the Nwar process has demystified the professional role of teachers and relaxed their fear of engaging in dialogue with teachers regarding their child's learning and development potentials and difficulties. The Nwar process has also enabled many parents and schools to link up and maintain contact;
  7. the twice weekly circle time for participating families where they share the outcomes of their home-based efforts and the monthly meeting of parents where they discuss issues they themselves bring up;
  8. the fact that the programme does not directly target illiterate adults (parents) but that such parents become literate indirectly by their on-going presence and participation in the Programme; parents who are normally too shy to join basic adult literacy courses find themselves learning for the sake of their children and subsequently realise that learning is in fact fun and join adult learning opportunities;
  9. the multi-sensory methodology used within a family literacy context ;
  10. the one-Tutor-to-two-families ratio ;
  11. the multiplier effects of the Nwar Programme such as the following: (i) FES-trained part-time Tutors apply the Nwar methodology in their own classroom processes during their day school provision; (ii) FES offers practice-based training in the Nwar methodology to a wider group of teachers both during school hours (in-school professional development) as well as through short courses at national level by application; (iii) the technical assistance being offered to secondary schools through which small teams of teachers have been formed to develop and implement in-house literacy strategies and resources in support of struggling students; and (iv) the fact that many teachers have heard from colleagues about the success of the Nwar Programme and apply for a part-time position with FES in order to (a) gain/broaden and strengthen their differentiated teaching skills in mixed ability classroom settings, and (b) learn how to stimulate parental participation in curricular processes in school, and (iv) the in-built system of inviting Heads of Schools and classroom teachers to visit a site to determine ways of applying synthetic phonics in their school.

Students' and Parents' Voices

Students ' Voices:

•  I have learnt how to spell and sound when before I hardly knew anything and was always getting ‘0' in spelling tests at school.
•  I can understand better the English language programmes on T.V.
•  I can read better now because I use flashcards and now the teacher has shown me how to sound. I am also reading words in the newspaper.
•  When I used to see a lot of words, I used to panic but now I know how to block so I won't panic when I see a lot of words.
•  Mum is no longer helping me so much because I'm becoming independent.
•  I can now SMS my friends and daddy because I know how to spell.
•  I'm learning to write about any craft I do.
•  Mummy and I read together now. She prepares flashcards for me. Before Nwar, we never worked together as she was always getting angry because I did not know how to read and write.
•  Word building has made me spell better.
•  My mother is learning how to read as well so we are reading together. She is trying to help me write as well and my father enjoys listening to us.
•  I am not afraid of reading anymore. I cannot read everything and quickly, but now I am able to sound the words and say them. It takes me some time but I don't mind because I know I will improve.
•  I have started to understand when people talk in English. There is a girl in my class who speaks only in English and I am now staying with her because I understand her.
•  I am not afraid to read when my teacher asks me in class and the other students all told me that I am reading better. I can only read in Maltese but later I will also read in English.
•  My teacher is asking me to read during assembly. I am still a little shy but I am managing to do it.
•  I can now read the instructions on my ‘Play Station' games and so I don't need my sister to help me.
•  When I go shopping for my mum, I can read what she has written on the shopping list.
•  I am writing notes for my father because my mother cannot write.

Parents' Voices (Initials have been used to respect confidentiality)

  1. Mrs J.Z. (parent whose child had been diagnosed as suffering from ‘school phobia' who missed two years of primary school): “To all the Tarxien NWAR staff: from the bottom of my heart I thank you for the love and dedication with which you have always extended support to us. You have always listened to me when I needed to talk about my difficulties. Because of your support, my 10 year old son Charles has managed to learn how to read fluently in Maltese and is now learning to do the same in English. You and I had a common aim – that of seeing Charles returning to school. We all know how difficult it was to help him become convinced that he should return. But, thank God and thanks to you, we have made a step forward and Charles has started going back to school. I shall never forget all that you have done with my son and me”.
  2. Ms V.B.: “Eric has made good progress in the Maltese and English language. Now he is sounding the words and dividing them into syllables and has improved his handwriting. Due to the fact that he is sounding the words, he is feeling more confident when writing in English. I would like to thank Ms Sue for helping him in the English language and Ms Dimech who was very patient with Eric. I would like to encourage all those mothers who have children with difficulties in reading and writing to send them to Nwar where they are sure to find the necessary help.”
  3. Ms M.F.: “Jean Paul has learnt how to spell and therefore can now read the words and this has led him to read simple books and now slowly more complicated ones. He has now started working on his own in Maltese work.”
  4. Mrs R.Z.: “This programme has helped me a lot since I've been coming with my daughter Abigail who has started to read and write. I have learnt the alphabet with her and how to help her in her reading and writing. She has done good progress and has passed her Maltese exam. This is the first time she has done so. I hope that when she stops Nwar, I can continue helping her with the knowledge I have gained while attending these sessions.”
  5. Mrs C.Z.: “I think this programme is very good for the children. It really helps them as they become more confident and they learn a lot. It has helped Dwayne in his reading and I hope that he can continue to come for this programme as he is very happy. He has shown improvement and is doing well.”
  6. Mrs K.M.: “This programme has been great for my son. He has learnt the letters d and b. The alphabet helps him to read better. He could not read before and now he is learning slowly. He also learnt the ch, sh, etc. My son's problem is that he understands but when it comes to writing he finds it difficult. I have found great help from both his teachers. They are very patient with him and explain well.”

 

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Contact details:
Foundation for Educational Services ( FES )
P.O.Box 1, Rabat Malta RBT 02
Email: nwar.fes@gov.mt
Websites: www.fes.org.mt
www.pefalmalta.org.mt