Links with Turkey and South Africa have brought London communities together and can help children stay in touch with their roots, says Bhavani Sharma

The London Borough of Haringey has an estimated 196 languages among our young people and we think we are the most diverse place on the planet! The whole sense of living in a global village is very real for our young people – within minutes of being at school they can be mixing with children from all over the world.

Our vision, as outlined in our Children and Young People’s Plan 2006-9, is to “ensure that children and young people living in Haringey are given wider opportunities to broaden their experiences and equip them to live in a global society”. International projects can help us to achieve this ambitious aim, and we want every school in Haringey to register for the DCSF International School Award by 2010, formalising our commitment to the international dimension in education.

Developing an existing relationship with South Africa

It all began in 2006 when we set up a link with Gauteng Province in South Africa. We chose South Africa because Oliver Tambo, the former President of the African National Congress, lived in Haringey with his family during the apartheid years, creating a strong historical connection between the two places. Before this, a few schools in the borough had been involved in international partnerships, but this link really put international education on the map.

Sharon Shoesmith, the Director of the Children and Young People’s Service at Haringey, visited South Africa with staff from Alexandra Park School for the formal linking of Alexandra Park and Ephes Mamkeli Secondary School. They were accompanied by pupils from the borough, including the two winners of the Oliver Tambo Awards – a scheme set up by Haringey to encourage achievement in Science and to commemorate and celebrate Tambo’s life. During the visit, the group went to see schools in the area and began to explore the feasibility of new partnerships between the South African schools visited and those back in Haringey.

In February 2007 we explained the partnership to other schools at a reception held by the British Council. More schools became interested in linking with South Africa and, after a successful bid to the British Council for funding, four secondary Headteachers accompanied Sharon Shoesmith on a second visit to Gauteng Province in October 2007.

The heads worked in their partner schools for a week and began to establish their links. The next step is to expand these links with primary schools in both areas.

“The visit [to South Africa] was a great success,” says Dr Colm Hickey, Headteacher of St Thomas More RC School in Haringey. “The video was shown at our school’s speech night in November 2007, as the first step of raising awareness among the school community. We expect to develop links in a range of activities during the coming months to our mutual benefit. Each school has areas of expertise and each can learn from the good practice of the other. I am confident that we will be able to embed this exchange into the structure of each school.”

Extending partnerships across the world – and the curriculum

We have focused on global priorities and getting clusters of schools working together – which has had a tremendous impact on our partnerships. We are now linked with China, France, Ghana, Holland, India, Senegal, Spain, Tobago and Uganda, as well as Durban and Gauteng Province in South Africa. Partnerships concentrate on language, environment, Science, special educational needs, Literacy, teaching and learning methodologies, transition, Millennium Development Goals, cultural heritage, Maths and Music.

The partnerships have challenged the participants’ values and broadened their horizons, changing the way they see the world. Haringey, with its rich diversity, is home to 35 supplementary schools and 700 community and voluntary sector organisations. Our global partnerships are bringing our diverse communities together by deepening our understanding of our cultural heritage.

Fortismere School has developed links with Mackay School in Kampala, Uganda. Thepartnership is themed around culture, arts and heritage, and the environment. Following the initial visit, whole-school and community support has further developed the link. Around 60 students have been recruited to act as ‘ambassadors’, supporting and directing the process on behalf of the student body. Parents and local communities have been fundraising to sponsor students from Uganda to come to the UK and vice versa, and will then host students and staff. This whole-school and community approach on mutually beneficial themes is helping to integrate the international dimension and preparing our young people to become global citizens.

Pilot projects promote cohesion and reach out to the Turkish community

We have secured funding for two pilot projects on the theme of community cohesion. The aim of these projects is to enable mainstream and supplementary schools to work collaboratively with a partner school in another country in order to develop joint curricular activity aroundcommunity languages and to support the global dimension in education.

One of the projects involves South HarringayJunior School, a two-form entry school which caters for pupils aged seven to 11. The school serves a multi-ethnic community, and the majority of its children live in the local area. Performance data shows that many Turkish-speaking pupils are underachieving, so the school has linked up with Axis Shine, a supplementary Saturday school which supports the Turkish community. The two schools have recently joined with a mainstream school in Istanbul to see how they can support each other.

The project aims to raise attainment at school among the Turkish-speaking community in Haringey, by using the partnership to share expertise among the three schools. All schools in the project will develop and share resources and eventually disseminate these to other schools in the network learning community.

Working with parents to build a global society

Axis Shine will run workshops for our Turkish-speaking parents, introducing and explaining the UK education system. It will also support the children and parents in completing and understanding homework. Senior staff from all three schools will have an opportunity to meet to share skills, understanding and knowledge to raise attainment among Turkish pupils. The project will also set up internet and video links, whereby children and staff from the two countries can work on joint projects to produce bilingual resources and give shared lessons to the two groups of children.

The international dimension in education across Haringey schools is developing from a dialogue with parents, governors and local community organisations. This has brought about real ownership because it is being developed around an agenda that is relevant to the whole community and links to their roots. We will continue to support our schools in every way that we can to equip our children to be citizens of a global society.

Bhavani Sharma is International Links Officer at the London Borough of Haringey

Local authorities can apply for funding to visit partners in any other country to develop an area link.
Find out more at www.britishcouncil.org/schoolpartnerships-what-you-do-develop-an-area-link

If you are interested in developing an international link that supports community cohesion,
e-mail world.links@britishcouncil.org or visit www.globalgateway.org/communitycohesion

Funding is available for schools to visit partners in any country to set up a joint curriculum project.
For more information, visit www.britishcouncil.org/schoolpartnerships-study-visit-funding

The Regional Network for International Learning supports local authorities and schools with international work. Find your nearest representative at www.globalgateway.org/regionalsupport