LEARNING EXPERIENCE:Six per cent of the inhabitants of Balbriggan in north Co Dublin are African. This a proud, strong community that came to national attention when many of its school-age children were refused places in Catholic schools. Now African children make up the majority of students at Bracken Educate Together school - but teachers there want more white children to join, writes Susan McKay
ON THE BIG lawn sparkling with daisies, a circle of excited children is shaking out a multi-coloured parachute in the sunshine. When they get it fully spread out, they throw it in the air and themselves to the ground and it wafts down over them. The delighted children who burrow out from under it, squealing and laughing, are all the colours of the human rainbow, every shade of brown, black and white. There is a lot of fun at Bracken Educate Together school in Balbriggan, in north Co Dublin.
Most of the children are African. The school was set up as an emergency measure last September because overcrowded local national schools were turning non-Catholics away and they had nowhere to go.
Tesbo Nkadimeng, who is from South Africa and has a five-year-old daughter, describes the typical experience. "We went to the national schools and they said they were Catholic and demanded a baptismal certificate," he says. "But Tatiana is not a Catholic. She is a born-again Pentecostal Christian. She was placed on a waiting list, but we were told that Catholics would come first."
It is a crisis that has been building for years. Balbriggan is one of the fastest growing towns in the State, but the developers of its vast new estates have not been obliged to provide schools, creches or any other amenities for its new citizens, and the Government ignored for too long the inevitable consequences.
Some 15 per cent of the town's population is non-ethnic Irish, while six per cent is African. The figures are above the national average - the former Mosney holiday camp nearby was used as a reception centre for thousands of asylum seekers, and many of those who got citizenship settled in Balbriggan.
Other Africans moved to the town because it already had an African community, and because it was more affordable than Dublin, where many of them work. Some have bought houses, others live in rented accommodation in high density estates that stretch out in all directions around the town's ramshackle main street. Balbriggan, once a fishing village, has its share of unemployment and social problems.
Nkadimeng was recruited in Africa for his job as a chef in Dublin. He met and fell in love with a South African woman who works as a catering assistant in Dublin Airport and they married. "We love Balbriggan and we'd like to settle here," he says. "Ireland is so different from South Africa, which still has a long way to go to overcome racism. We were oppressed there. The Irish are a different white species. They are kind."
Still, with another baby on the way, the Nkadimengs worry about their new child's education. "Please God we will get a place," says Nkadimeng.
Marian Griffin, from Kerry, is the principal of Bracken school. She recalls that as long ago as 2002, when she was deputy head of another school in the town, she had to turn away 14 immigrant families seeking school places for their children. Five years later, in the summer of 2007, up to 100 children had no place to go, and the Department of Education approached the multi-denominational Educate Together body.
It rose to the occasion, renting Sunshine House, a holiday home for disadvantaged children owned by the Society of St Vincent de Paul, turning dormitories into classrooms, and recruiting teachers, all in a matter of weeks. Later this month, the school will have to decamp to new temporary premises at north Co Dublin Cricket Club, and in September it will open again in a purpose-built school.
There are 83 pupils, many of them Irish-born, with parents from China, Slovakia, Portugal, Poland, Eritrea, Somalia, Malawi, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Angola, India, Sri Lanka, Congo, Mauritius, Russia, Zimbabwe . . . "Oh, and Ireland," adds Griffin, who is passionate about her school. She hopes that the small number of white Irish children will increase, and points out that their families report a highly positive experience. "Educate Together's motto is 'learn together to live together', " Griffin says.
Some of the African families still have children at home without places because classes for their age group are full. There will be more room in the new building in September, but there is already a long waiting list. Griffin hopes that in the meantime the school will be approved for the additional resources it so obviously needs.
"We have great ambitions for these children - they have great potential and they are bright as buttons," she says. "A lot of them are very creative and artistic and we have a few excellent mathematicians. Some speak several languages and are learning Arabic at weekends. Irish is no problem to them."
However, Griffin adds that a lot of the children do need extra support. "Of course there are language problems. Some of the children start school with no English. Some of their parents have no English," she says. Some families have been through huge upheavals which have resulted in children not getting to school at all in their own country. Some are refugees from war zones. "We have children coming here who have never held a pencil," says Griffin.
She points out one boy who is smiling proudly as he reads aloud to his teacher. "He was silent for months and now he is just beginning to open up," she says. "It is a wonderful thing to see."
There are now several Africans on the board of the school and parents are getting used to the idea of partnership which is integral to the Educate Together approach. The children learn about society, human rights and the environment and there are a lot of extra-curricular activities, including golf and cricket. There are flags from many countries in the corridors and a poster that says: "A smile is the same in any language."
There is a palpable love of learning in these bright rooms. Kathy O'Hagan, from Co Derry, got her first full-time teaching job with the junior infants at Bracken, and describes a steep learning curve. "We go on courses all the time and we do a lot of preparation. It was totally different from everything I'd experienced while subbing," she says. "I have a language support teacher, and I had to adapt my teaching. It is a performance really - you use drama, pictures and puppets a lot. It is great. I love it. The children are so eager to learn."
Grace O'Donnell, another of the several young Northern Irish teachers, jokes that the children are learning to speak English with a Northern Irish accent. Some of the children want to tell us about other schools they've been to. Saifullah,from Afghanistan, went to Pakistan for a while. "If you are five minutes late they get a stick and hit you," he says. The class is wide-eyed. "Do you think I should start doing that?" says O'Donnell. The children bounce up and down in a chorus of indignation and laughter: "Nooooooo!"
Among the parents collecting the children outside, there is respect for the school and its staff, but also a lingering anger about the circumstances that gave rise to it. Honey Emmanuel, a Pentecostal pastor, says he came to Ireland because of religious persecution in Nigeria, including the murder of a close colleague. He was deeply upset when his Irish-born child was turned away from local schools.
"If they were Christian, baptism shouldn't be an issue," he says. "If you call this 'educate together', why is it all African?" Emmanuel says he is troubled by the lack of respect for Christianity in Ireland and is working to change the situation. "Most missionaries in Africa came from Ireland," he says. "But youth here do not go to church. These are the leaders of tomorrow. We need to get them back, to renew their faith."
Maria, a charming woman with a big laugh, says she is worried because her youngest child will soon be four and she has been unable to get a school place for her. "I can't afford another year in creche for her," she says. "It is not fair." But although she feels it is getting too crowded, she loves Balbriggan, with its churches, its African foodstores, its Nigerian restaurant and its lively African community.
Some of the parents say that the most friendly of the Irish are those who have themselves lived outside of their own country. "They are more open," says one. Maria believes that much depends on the approach Africans adopt. "Irish people are lovely," she says. "We Africans can be very rude sometimes. I am from a small traditional village. I was taught to treat people with respect. City people are lousy, they don't say please or thank-you." She laughs. "My husband is from the city, but he is trying," she says.
Economically and politically, Ireland is a good place to be, she says. "People here have rights. In Africa poor people are treated like they don't exist. You have to be rich to get anywhere. In our life here, my daughter will matter. She won't have to take a back seat. Please don't use my second name. Some of us are hiding from people. But Balbriggan is home now. Definitely."