The school known as the African Community School (ACS) is being run by a group Zimbabwean professionals who include volunteer qualified teachers and social workers in Milton Keynes about 30 miles outside the British capital, London.

ACS chairman, Stanley Matawa

In an interview with the ZimDiaspora, ACS founder-member Mr Stanley Matawa, said the school is specialising in teaching young Zimbabwean children born in the United Kingdom language and culture.

He said language and cultural depredation was a major concern among Zimbabwean children born and bred in the diaspora.

“Our children are struggling to communicate and understand their own language and culture precisely because of the strong British culture we live in. We formed African Community School in recognition of this problem in our communities in Britain,” said Mr Matawa.

He added: “We will teach students up to grade 5 and we will also be specialising in English, Maths and science. The English we will be teaching will be focusing on those who are struggling, who have just arrived from home”.

Mr Matawa said the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education has been quite helpful in terms of providing the syllabus for ACS.

“The ministry of education has supplied us with all the syllabuses and standards of education we need to maintain at a specific level,” he said.

The Zimbabwe African Community School is also registered in England and Wales as a supplementary school and starts its class from foundation thus, grade 0.

In its website, the African Community schools says one of its driving forces is the fact that in Britain, African and African-Caribbean students traditionally under achieve compared to other ethnic groups

Many of the barriers to learning preventing young Africans from making a success of their lives in Britain have been identified, including:

• the culture gap between the British raised young people and their African parents, and between the  home and school

• institutional racism in the educational system – low teacher expectations, stereotyping, peer pressure, paucity of Africans teachers even in schools with large African populations, syllabi that do not resonate with ethnic minority students

• lack of a clear sense of cultural identity and consequent low self esteem

• lack of culturally and racially appropriate role models

African Community School encourages young Africans to be confident in their African identity and develop a clear sense of purpose. Our dedicated team of qualified, experienced African teachers provide role models for the young people and work hard to inspire them to take responsibility for their own learning.

ACS students are self-disciplined and organised. Although ACS focuses on just three core National Curriculum subjects, the ACS approach has a positive effect on students’ other subjects and general attitude in school.

By Special correspondent