British Council Africa Online recently met the project leader for Connecting Classrooms in sub-Saharan Africa, Jane Henry, to discuss the project and its successes.

Jane Henry joined Connecting Classrooms in its early stages in 2006. The project runs on relationships – clusters of three schools in a single country are formed and create partnerships with clusters from two other countries. Each partnership involves one cluster based in the United Kingdom (UK) and two clusters from different African countries.

Henry oversees all aspects of the programme, but the project has country-specific leaders too, who assist their local clusters and ensure that the real benefits are trickling down to the students.

“The purpose of the project is to encourage students’ understanding of other cultures, and to develop their appreciation for those cultures. It creates intercultural dialogue and gives students a broader view of the world,” said Henry.

She is quick to point out that African and UK schools should benefit equally, as the project is based on equity rather than the notion that one side of the equation is the teacher and the other the learner.

A representative from each cluster attends a conference where they represent their goals and choose the clusters with which they wish to be joined, based on principles and shared goals.

Unfortunately there are some challenges and potential mishaps that can affect the partnerships. “I think the biggest difficulty we face is communication. Many of the schools are quite remote and poorly resourced. We sometimes have a teacher contact us to say that they haven’t heard from a partner in a while, and it turns out the area’s phone lines are down, so we all have to keep believing that people want to communicate,” said Henry.

Some of the outcomes of the project have been very high profile. In November 2007, Queen Elizabeth II visited Kitante Primary School in central Kampala, Uganda. Kitante School belongs to a cluster comprising nine schools from Mozambique, the UK and Uganda.

During the visit, an exhibition was organised to showcase the curriculum activities that the students and teachers were engaged in, which included the use of information and communication technology in teaching and learning, and sharing of cultural values. Students also exhibited art work which was viewed by the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Minister of Education and Sports.

As part of the reciprocal visit, teachers from the UK and Mozambique discussed and compared teaching methodologies with their Ugandan counterparts, and identified curriculum areas where they could incorporate global issues.

Another success story is that of the musical evening arranged in Kumasi, Ghana. It was organised by the partners of “Amigos”, a partnership of clusters from Kenya, Ghana and the UK.

An exchange trip involving visiting teachers from Shetland, Scotland and Nairobi, Kenya, culminated in an event to celebrate the music and dance heritage of the three countries.

The teachers brought with them traditional instruments from their own countries, and taught the local students to do their traditional dances and sing their songs. As the music drifted out of the hall it was held in, more and more interested locals began to arrive, until there were too many people and the audience spilled out onto the pavement.

Another cluster compiled and published a cookery book from their pooled collection of traditional recipes. Each school tried out submitted recipes, photographed the results and then sent them to be collated and printed. “Some people even said that it bought back to mind local food and vegetables that had almost been forgotten,” said Henry.

“Teachers wrote to us saying that they had joined the programme thinking they could help, but ended up amazed at how good the schools in some countries already were,” said Henry. “We are sharing cultures and, in doing so, changing perceptions.”
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Connecting Classrooms is a British Council initiative that operates in Botswana, Cameroon, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the four countries of the UK.

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