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Relevance: that’s the classroom mantra. Want to get students excited about maths? French? History? Then you have to make it seem relevant to their lives.
That’s where developing a global dimension in the school curriculum gets off to a flying start. Human rights, crime, politics… you name it, all life forms are here.
Yet all too often schools focus their lessons on subject knowledge and understanding, rather than looking to relate issues to pupils’ attitudes, values and personal development.
says Helen Young, Schools Programme Manager for the Development Education Association (DEA).
‘It’s really about giving young people the opportunity to examine their own values and attitudes, understand the global context of their local lives, and develop skills to enable them to combat prejudice and discrimination – including tools such as critical thinking. And the exciting thing is that this approach can be applied to any subject.’
At Penrice Community College in St Austell, Cornwall, staff have found that a link with a Kenyan school – set up through the DFID (Department for International Development) Global School Partnerships scheme – is reaping benefits.
‘Take science, for a start,’ says Jacquie Ashton, Penrice’s International Coordinator. ‘We’ve just done a project on energy, comparing what’s available here and in western Kenya, home to our partner school, the Chemelil Sugar Academy.
Our students were particularly interested in renewable energy sources, such as wind power, but it turned out their Kenyan counterparts looked more favourably on nuclear power. That enabled us to broaden our discussions to include all sorts of ideas to do with environmental responsibility, and to examine our cultural differences and needs.’
Jacquie also sees the partnership as playing a key part in the Cornish students’ education on topics such as diversity and human rights:
‘Cornwall’s got plenty of isolated communities and not much of an ethnic mix, so racism can be a problem. This link’s been a really useful way of raising awareness of each other’s cultures, trying to understand where we’re all coming from, and discussing what social responsibility really means in this context.’
School link-ups, then, can be a particularly useful way of broadening subject areas in order to incorporate a wider global perspective. Nick Maurice, director of UK One World Linking Association (UKOWLA), agrees:
‘Well-planned school partnerships can expose young people to a very different learning context and help them achieve a broader vision of what the world is all about.'
'They can also provide teachers with a basis for helping students recognise their responsibilities as citizens of this global community – that solutions to many global problems, from climate change to inequality, are more likely to be realised through an understanding of our mutual interdependence than anything else.’
That’s certainly been the strategy at Heathfield Community School, a comprehensive school near Taunton:
‘We have a DFID Global School Partnership agreement with Lucet College in Lima, Peru, which we drew up two years ago,’ explains art teacher Natasha Rand.
‘We subsequently embarked on a number of projects together as part of the art curriculum, including comparing information on such things as locally-made textiles and traditional weaving techniques. We successfully linked these into citizenship teaching by looking at, for example, fair trade issues.’
‘Well, take a photography project we did in conjunction with GLADE, a centre for global and development education here in Somerset,’ says Natasha.
‘The children swapped photographs with counterparts in Peru and discovered, somewhat to their surprise perhaps, just how many similar things were important to them – from their families and their friends to playing football.'
'It was a great way of making them aware that there’s a wider world out there, one in which it is possible to build real friendships across national boundaries and differing cultural backgrounds.’
One resource for teachers in establishing and maintaining a partnership link is the Global Educators’ Register, an online resource developed by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). Leena Vadher, VSO’s DFID Global School Partnerships Coordinator, explains:
‘Global educators are returned volunteers who have a wealth of knowledge and experience related to global education, and are well-placed to raise awareness of global development issues.'
'Many also have experience with making partnership links work, so they can help teachers set them up and champion their value in the school curriculum.’
Hendon School, a mixed comprehensive in Barnet, London, recently visited Kathmandu as part of a DFID Global School Cluster Partnership involving three schools in north-west London and three in Nepal.
‘Two teachers and two students from each UK school went out for a week in February this year, following a visit from the Nepalese schools in June last year,’ explains Surinder Thethy, Hendon’s Cluster Partnership Coordinator.
‘Our main project with the link schools is on creating a sustainable environment, so we were there to study how the Nepalese are tackling issues of reducing waste.’
The Hendon team put on a play about developing a conscience when it comes to protecting the environment, as well as a fashion show using recyclable materials.
‘It was an amazing experience for our children to see a different culture first-hand – they learned so much in such a short time,’ says Surinder.
‘They also came up with a great new idea for a project – we brought back loads of environmentally-friendly jute bags from Nepal, which we’ll decorate in our art classes then sell to fellow pupils for £2 each as an alternative to using plastic bags.
The money will go back to Kathmandu for our cash-strapped partner schools to use on their own projects. Now if that isn’t global citizenship in action, I don’t know what is!’
DFID Global School Partnerships programme promotes partnerships between schools in the UK and schools in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. For further information, visit their website.
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