BANBURY – A secondary school pupils in Banbury are invited by the Muslim community to get help with their GCSE revision at a newly created homework club at Banbury Madni Mosque, Banbury Guardian reported on March 4.
“Following the success of the community fridge which opened in October, we wanted to extend our offering to the wider community,” organizer Yasmin Kaduji said.
“We’re establishing connections with local schools to ensure this project is well-used and accessible to all.”
The club, set up in partnership with Sanctuary Housing, runs for two hours every Saturday at the Merton Street mosque. The project is partially funded by Sanctuary’s Community Investment Fund.
English and Mathematics tutoring will also take place during the Easter holidays and the children will be able to use laptops provided by Sanctuary Housing’s supplier OCM.
Interestingly, the same mosque is also home to the community fridge and food bank. It aims to raise aspirations among young local people and provide support to strengthen school learning.
Parents and carers are asked to contribute £10 a week to cover the cost of the teachers. This includes one hour of both Mathematics and English tutoring and can be paid a term in advance. That’s while tutoring at Easter costs £40 per week.
Charlie Heritage, Sanctuary’s neighborhood partnerships manager, said: “Finding adequate time and space to study at home can add to the pressures of family life. The club aims to alleviate some of those demands.”
“This new project supports our young residents in the city to thrive at school and secure a brighter future,” he expressed.
Banbury is a historic market town on the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, England. The town is situated 103 km northwest of London, 60 km southeast of Birmingham, 40 km south-by-southeast of Coventry and 35 km north-by-northwest of the county town of Oxford. It had a population of 46,853 at the 2011 census.
The estimates of 2009 suggested a total of about 2.4 million Muslims over all the UK. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the number of Muslims in Britain could now be around 3 million.
Between 2001 and 2009 the Muslim population increased roughly ten times faster than the rest of society. Most Muslim immigrants to Britain came from formerly occupied nations.
From the 1950s onwards, the growing Muslim population has led to a number of notable mosques being established, including the East London Mosque, London Central Mosque, Manchester Central Mosque, and London Markaz.
Reports assured that thousands of British people convert to Islam annually and there are approximately 100,000 converts to Islam in Britain, where they run two mosques.