British Council Regional Project in Education

Connecting Classrooms

Changing the Life of School Leaders in Cuba

The School Leadership and New Tools for Learning (SLANT) Latin America and Caribbean regional project, is providing awareness of good practice in UK Education and what it means to be a school leader. Cuban teachers are also proposing solutions to the challenges facing UK education.

LAC regional project SLANT has been incorporated into global project Connecting Classrooms. Connecting Classrooms is a partnership programme for linking schools in the UK and across the world and has three core components:

• professional development for internationalising education (this is the area in which SLANT has been focused)
• collaborative curriculum projects (projects with global dimension which give learners access to other cultures and languages)
• international school award (to be piloted in LAC by Brazil and Mexico)

Next steps of the project in Cuba:

We are expecting the return visit of Gary Phillips, Head Teacher of Liliam Bayliss School in London and UK Representative of the project for Cuba. Gary will be visiting the 5 Cuban schools involved in the project involved in the project and will be working with the head teachers and MINED officials for a week. Leadership in schools will be the main focus of this visit.

Cuban Schools involved in the project:

1. "República Popular de Angola" Primary School
2. "Jesús Suárez Gayol" Urban Secondary School
3. "Angel Ameijeiras" Secondary School (boarding school)
4. "Vladimir I. Lenin" Preuniversity Vocational Trainning School
5. "Anhelos de Celia" Primary Special School

UK Schools (Lambeth area, London)

1. Liliam Bayliss Secondary Technical School
2. Turney Special School
3. Lambeth College
4. Allen Edwards Primary School
5. OLIVE Centre

Through Connecting Classrooms these schools will establish links for working together onl eadership issues and school management. We hope the project will help these links to develop and work for the benefit of the head teachers, teachers and children. This will be held this year by the visit of the 5 UK head teachers to Cuba.

Moving Young Minds

The Cuban Vice Minister of Education, Mrs Margarita McPherson, is due to attend the Moving Young Minds 2009 Conference, The World Seminar for Education Ministers in London on technology on Education with the support of the British Council. The Moving Young Minds Seminar 2009 will take place from 12 to 14 January 2009.

If you would like to know more about our Education projects, please contact Laura Pérez