WHEN five-year-old Polish youngster Dominic Krol arrived at his new school, he was assigned Aiden Knapper as his official buddy.

The pair play together at Wistaston Green Primary and Nursery School, in Wistaston, Crewe, and Aiden, who is also five, helps his classmate to learn English.

"I now have lots of friends here and good teachers," said Dominic, whose nine-year-old sister Daria also goes to the school.

In recent months, a growing number of pupils learning English as a second language have joined Wistaston Green. They are mainly from Poland, although some are Slovakian or Bengali.

Staff are keen to improve the way they support these youngsters and their families. So now they have turned to The Sentinel's and Barclays' Class Act competition for help.

If the school wins a £5,000 prize, it would enable a wide range of ideas to be put into action, including resources in dual languages, buying translation aids, and training staff in different support techniques.

There would also be family learning sessions, where parents and their children could work on topics together and improve their English. And teachers could learn Polish themselves.

Learning mentor Wendy Stones, who is also the school's EAL (English as an additional language) co-ordinator, said: "The children are learning English at school and are going home and speaking Polish. We want the parents to be able to help the children with their homework and also get more involved in school."

Other plans include drop-in sessions for parents so they could get support with filling in forms, and setting up a parents and tots group.

Although some of the new resources would be specifically geared up to helping Polish speakers, many items would be useful for children who speak other native tongues.

Wendy said: "We would like to have more picture-based resources. We could also have starter boxes for teachers to use when a child arrives."

The translation equipmentcould be used to help staff compose text messages to parents when they need to pass on important information. A text alert system is already used to let families know if a child hasn't turned up for lessons.

Although Crewe's biggest influx of Polish families was several years ago, Wistaston Green is now feeling the impact because parents are choosing the school. It currently has 10 Polish pupils.

Weronika Nowik, aged nine, was born in Poland and now lives in Crewe.

She said: "My mum had no money in Poland and so we moved here. My granny and grandad are also living here."

Weronika could speak English when she arrived because she had previously spent a spell living in Ireland.

"I have friends who help me at school," she said. "But it would also help if we had more pictures, with writing underneath in Polish and English."