School children across Keighley are being offered the chance to learn first hand what it is like to feel culturally excluded.

Yasmien Rahman runs Amaali classes across Yorkshire to give young children an authentic, hard-hitting insight into what it is like to live and be educated in a for-eign country.

Her aim is to enhance cultural cohesion and teach citizenship in a real and effective way.

Ms Rahman said: "If a class is predominantly English I will go in speaking Punjabi and the children will not expect it. When they say they don't understand, I say 'this is what it would feel like to enter a foreign country where you don't speak the language'.

"I will then ask them what they would do if they came from a foreign country and when they say something positive, I would come back with something negative.

"They would say things like 'we would buy a house and get a job when we go to a new country' but I would say 'but we don't want to employ you or have you on our street' and eventually the children say 'well we would all stick together' which is what Asian and Eastern European communities end up doing.

"It is a fabulously rewarding experience to have a child walking into class saying 'I don't want to be here it stinks' to when he leaves saying 'thank you I really enjoyed that'."

Ms Rahman also does henna painting and cooks curry dishes during the classes to give children a rounded cultural experience.

She is also part of the Our Space Project, which pupils from St Andrew's CE Primary School in Keighley will be taking part in next month .

The project involves getting two schools with pupils from different cultural backgrounds and encouraging them to work together cooking different foods and doing different activities.

To contact Ms Rahman, phone 07906 294476, visit amaali.co.uk or email info@amaali.co.uk.