Triumph of our 'refugee school'

Marsida and her friends arrive for morning school in a rainbow stream. Tiny Muslim girls march past in headscarves that cover them like lampshades. Little African girls dance in with heads full of beads and braids. They don't miss their new school in England if they can help it.

When 10-year-old Marsida went to school at home in Kosovo, she said: "It was really, really sad. There were soldiers at the door and, if you go out without your parents, they shoot you. They were taking men away and we didn't know where they went."

To escape from the soldiers, and the destruction of their village, Marsida and her mother walked for miles through the mountains into Albania.

They lived in a refugee camp before taking a boat and being smuggled onto a lorry. They arrived in Britain knowing nobody and with nowhere to live. They presented themselves at a police station and began the gruelling process of applying for refugee status.

Their lives are still desperately uncertain. They have been moved three times from different lodgings, and their application for refugee status has been turned down twice. But there is one place which offers them sanity, support and the hope of a better future - Star Primary School, an oasis of encouragement in the urban desert of Canning Town.

It is a microcosm of what Britain might become if we get it right. When David Blunkett talked of institutions being "swamped" by refugees, he could have meant this school.

But, as its headmistress Marion Rosen told the Standard's education correspondent last week, she feels that it's the refugees who bring energy and commitment to her school.

Marsida, who arrived speaking no English two years ago, is taking her SATS any minute, and everyone expects her to do very well.

As for her future, she said fiercely: "I am going to be a somebody, not a slave."

You can see the building of this self-esteem in all the school's activities.

In Monday morning's assembly, Class 18 got the week's star certificate for 95.7 per cent attendance and little arms went up in triumph. The sign on Class 18's door says proudly: "We speak Amharic, Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Bimi, English, French, Luganda, Portuguese, Somali, Swahili, Twi and Urdu."

Every classroom in the school has a similar sign celebrating the fact that, in this school, the 686 pupils - from 11 to nursery age - speak 42 different languages.

Most of all, they speak the language of tolerance and inclusion.

It's a place that has taken in children from every kind of poverty and trauma, and helped them to learn and thrive. They've experienced war, bereavement, displacement, illness, family breakdown, loss of home and country, refugee camps, unemployment and divorce. One in five of them comes from a family of refugees or asylum seekers, and many of those have fled difficulty and danger only to find that life in east London is as stressful, as uncertain and as traumatic as the life they left behind.

They spend their evenings and weekends in the cramped imprisonment of bed-and-breakfast accommodation - not knowing if they will be deported in the morning.

For their parents, the knowledge that their children are in a place that nurtures, loves and educates them - gives them the chance of a better life than they can provide - is the one steady, hopeful thing in their lives.

Cynics may say that these families are subsidised by the British taxpayer but they live lives of great hardship, which motivates the children to work hard and make a better world by their own efforts.

Two-and-a-half years ago, Star School was a very different place, just another island of chaos in a rough and overwhelming sea.

Marion Rosen, who became head teacher in 1999, describes it as "a revolving door for staff". Pupil behaviour was bad, results were worse. The school was a grim brick fortress in a moat of asphalt. Now you walk through the door into a warm cavern of red - the school colour. A big sign says Welcome to Star School.

Lights, plants and fabrics decorate a friendly shrine of photographs: of teachers; school council representatives; the faces of the peer mediators, specially trained children who patrol the playgrounds, ready to sort out their friends' problems.

In two-and-a-half years, Ms Rosen has turned the place around to earn a glowing Ofsted report.

The inspectors unequivocally say Star Primary is "a very good school".

Given the mix of pupils, you'd expect the school to be chaos - a cross between a Tower of Babel and a psychiatric unit. In fact, it is the quietest, most orderly, most purposeful school I've ever been in.

In a whole day I never heard a raised voice beyond the playground. In the classrooms, children sat peacefully listening.When they walked through the school they were in single file, not talking.

They gathered for assemblies without a word, each one knowing exactly how to behave and what to do.

The inspectors were especially impressed with the school's approach to pupil behaviour, and they commented on the strong moral code. You can't miss it because the walls are plastered with such positive affirmations as "I can because I think I can" and "Respect isn't a gift, you have to earn it".

Ms Rosen said: "Someone came into school and said 'You've got a lot of subliminal messages here'. I said 'Subliminal? It's in your face'. Success breeds success.

"People here want to learn and everyone has the right to learn. I have high expectations of the kids. I teach them that we're all individuals within a community within a society. We have individual behaviour plans for children, we teach them how to self-manage."

But, no matter how orderly the school, the first day at school for a refugee child with no English is absolutely terrifying.

The Government thinks refugee children should be educated separately until their English is good enough. If they came to Star Primary they might change their mind.

Arlind is eight years old and Kosovan. He arrived in Britain in a lorry from Albania - though he says, very sweetly, that he isn't allowed to tell me how he came. Like many of the children he spoke no English when he started at the school and was drawn gently into its language programme.

He said: "My first day here I met a girl who spoke Kosovan, and she is still my friend."

Arlind benefited from the school's buddy system. As Lucy Tingling, English coordinator, explained: "We'll find them a buddy who speaks the same language, and you can see the relief on their faces.

"Kids here are wonderful, so they take other children under their wings. There's very little bullying, the local children accept them, they're really caring."

Arlind's mother comes in to talk to us. Her husband was injured by a landmine in Kosovo and both parents are suffering from depression. They don't know if they will get refugee status and the uncertainty is making them ill.

Her face is haunted and she can't speak without crying. But, when the teacher goes to fetch Arlind from his class, she dries her tears. "He mustn't see me cry," she said. "Arlind loves me very much. We don't want to go back. My village is very poor, everything has been destroyed. It is very hard."

Arlind wants to grow up to be a pilot. Later, in the cosy community room, he sits doing life stories with a small group of children. Under the space on the paper headed "My Friends" he writes 12 names, most of them English.

For last year's National Refugee Week, the children wrote poems. Matteo, from Portugal, said: "I heard noisy, scary children. Now I hear noisy, friendly children."

Jumoke, from Nigeria, said: "I did not have any friends and I was scared that nobody would like me. My first friends were Farjana and Iram. They allowed me to play with their friends and soon I had many friends. I got certificates nearly every two weeks for good behaviour and hard work."

The certificates and encouragement help but the parents are desperate for their children to do well and fight to overcome the obstacles that keep them from school.

Up in the community room, Sara - the family co ordinator - rings the family of every child who hasn't turned up at school that day.

It could be illness but the family could have been suddenly moved - to Glasgow or Newcastle, or a more distant part of London. Parents who have struggled to bring their families from Nigeria or Turkey, Pakistan or Somalia are prepared to take two or three buses, starting at seven in the morning, to get their children to school. It is that important to them.

Ms Rosen said: "In some cases, we have been successful at preventing families being moved on or sent home. We do get involved in their lives. They think they're coming to a safe haven but it's hard not knowing the system. One child told me she goes home every day and prays for them to be allowed to stay.

"The fear makes them physically sick."

Marsida's mother is desperate that her daughter stay at the school. She sees her daughter doing well and she is terrified her future may be taken from her. She said: "People think you have a house, money. But it is not easy, it is difficult. I am pleased for Marsida but maybe she is going back to Kosovo. Every week 200 or 300 people are put on a plane for Pristina. The police come early in the morning or late at night. After 11 September it is worse."

The more I heard throughout the day, the more I saw Star Primary as a beacon of hope for children and families.

"There's only one culture in this school,' said Marion Rosen firmly, "Star Culture".

Star culture is a model for Britain. For many of its children, the school is an island of stability, reassurance, encouragement and hope.

All the children who go there - white, ethnic minority or refugee - learn to care for others, better, to empathise.

Star Primary School is a living example of why these children need not to be isolated, but come straight to a school like this where they can be welcomed directly into a community of children that is all the better, the richer, the more compassionate from welcoming them.