SPECIALIST training has been given to staff working in Madrassahs to help protect children and improve educational standards in Blackburn and Darwen.

The pioneering new initiative is the first of its kind in the county, and it is hoped the training programme will be expanded across Lancashire.

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The new training programme aims to safeguard children and improve educational standards in Islamic supplementary schools across Blackburn and Darwen, and to set a leading example, in the hope it will be replicated elsewhere in the country.

More than 300 male and female teaching staff from Blackburn’s supplementary schools attended a teacher training conference at the launch of the scheme, held at Ma’ida in central Blackburn, to celebrate some of their own good practice as well as to look at how standards of education and safeguarding in Madrassahs can be improved in the future.

A second session held last week at Blackburn’s Boulevard Centre was also very well attended.

The training will be followed up by mentoring for staff , to provide them with more tailored and individual support.

With support from Blackburn with Darwen Council, the training programme was the brainchild of Blackburn charity, Inter Madrassah Organisation (IMO), which works extensively with local young people in the fields of education, employability, health and sports.

Founder of (IMO)Inter Madrassah Organisation, Moulana Mohammed Tayyab Sidat, said: “The event was a great opportunity for local teaching practitioners in our Madrassahs to network and exchange good practice.

“We had a tremendous turn out for the event and hope that we can now build on this and support local Madrassahs in their efforts for development and continuing improvements in education and safeguarding in the future.

”We’re going to work with small focus groups, working with them on how to deal with young people, how to have good classroom practice, how to make lessons enjoyable, that’s the whole idea moving forward.

“It all feeds into safeguarding - to keep everybody aware of their responsibilities.”

Bastwell councillor Shaukat Hussain said: “It’s absolutely a good idea that we should we should be modernising and standardising, and having the same standard of education in all the Madrassahs.

“I’m really pleased that Blackburn is setting an example in this way.

“I’m glad that the council is supporting it, I think especially in relation to safeguarding it’s a good thing.”