Our Work
We provide free tutoring and activities for children and young people in Bristol and Oxford who use English as an additional language. Learn more about our vision, values, activities and the wonderful young people we support.
Jacari's vision is a society where children and young people from all backgrounds have the confidence and language skills to fulfil their potential.
Equality: We recognise that people are different and unique, with diverse talents which should be celebrated and shared. We are driven by the belief that everyone should have equality of opportunity to achieve their full potential.
Aspiration: We believe that everyone can achieve highly with the right support. We aim to inspire confidence and encourage an ambitious mindset in every young person we work with.
Love of Learning: We recognise that engaging young people in their learning is best done through showing that learning can be fun, enjoyable and enriching. All staff and volunteers model this value and are committed to lifelong learning.
Community: We work to create connections and foster solidarity between diverse communities in society through collaboration and volunteering.
Jacari provides a range of bespoke English language learning opportunities for young people, delivered by our volunteers. We match volunteers to a pupil who has English as an additional language (EAL) who they support weekly during term-time, helping them improve their English language skills and increasing their confidence.
Our volunteers are mostly university and sixth-form students and provide their pupil with a mentor who makes education fun, and inspires a love of learning in their pupils. We provide all our volunteers with comprehensive training, learning resources and support throughout the year.
All of our work is delivered in close collaboration with our school partners. We only accept referrals for tutoring from schools we already work with.
Our home tutoring programme is something we’ve been doing for over 60 years and core to our work. Volunteers visit their pupil’s home every week, which gives them a space outside of the school environment to develop their English language skills. Home tutoring also offers a way for their parents to engage in their learning and gives volunteers a unique opportunity to form a relationship with their pupil’s family, helping create connections and foster solidarity between diverse communities.
We run after school sessions at many of our partner schools, where a group of volunteers support EAL pupils, who we’ve matched them to, at a set time each week. These sessions are a great way for the EAL pupils in the school to come together in an after-school club, forming friendships and supporting each other. There is always a lively atmosphere and lots of fun learning - especially at the start of sessions when all the pupils come together to do a group activity. Volunteers enjoy the mutual support they can give each other and opportunity to meet teachers and EAL support staff in the schools.
Our newest programme, which we launched in 2022, involves sixth form students peer tutoring younger EAL pupils in their school. We deliver this programme in partnership with specific schools. We provide sixth form peer tutors with training, lesson plans and learning resources and support them with English language tutoring. Our peer tutors act as both a tutor and mentor for the younger pupils, many of whom have recently arrived in the UK and are new to English, helping them to feel welcomed in the school. This programme also has substantial benefits for the sixth form peer tutors, who gain valuable life skills, including communication, organisation and mentoring.
We organise regular trips and events so the children and young people we support can enjoy a enriching outing or activity together. We invite families and volunteers to join these trips so there’s a real sense of community. We often visit local attractions that the families may not otherwise have access to due to the cost and it’s a brilliant way for them to experience other parts of their city and feel welcomed. Many of the attractions offer reduced entry or free annual passes to Jacari families so they can return another time.
We support children and young people from refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant communities in Bristol and Oxford. The children and young people we support are a wonderfully diverse group, representing many different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The thing they have in common is that they speak English as an additional language and their school teachers know that they would benefit from the extra support we offer - perhaps because they lack confidence, are struggling at school, or have just arrived in the UK and are new to English.
We work closely with our partner schools to identify which pupils need our support, prioritising children who have recently arrived in the UK, who are in the early stages of acquisition of English language, as well as identifying those who qualify for free school meals.
Over one in five children in state-funded schools in England speak English as an Additional Language (EAL) – 1.77 million pupils. This number is increasing, and has more than trebled since 2000. Multilingual classrooms are now the norm in most schools.
Across all the schools we partner with, an average of 43% of pupils use English as an additional language, but for some schools it's over 80%.
Despite this, the majority of dedicated expertise and support for EAL pupils has disappeared from the education system, with funding no longer ring-fenced, meaning schools are unable to provide the extra support many EAL pupils require to develop English and access an education.
Research by The Bell Foundation shows that EAL pupils who are at the earlier stages of developing English language competence are more likely to underachieve at school, especially those living in deprived areas.
Tutoring can be a powerful educational tool which, when made accessible to the most disadvantaged young people, can help to reduce the attainment gap and level the educational playing field. For EAL pupils, tutoring helps with all aspects of their journey towards developing English proficiency. It provides a safe, supportive space for pupils to learn, where tutors can respond to them as an individual, tailoring their sessions to the pupil’s own needs and preferences. Once they’ve started to develop those essential language skills, they can begin to access the curriculum and realise their academic potential and feel confident within their school and other social settings. We know that having a Jacari tutor can play a central role in this journey.