International conference puts schools on the frontline in the fight to improve community cohesion

The Connecting Classrooms School Leadership Conference will bring together head teachers, ministers and education specialists from the UK, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan to look at school leadership in the community and explore how cultural identity can be shared and celebrated. The conference aims to spearhead the debate around the positive impact that teachers and pupils make when they become actively involved in community projects through international school links.

Chairman of the British Council, Neil Kinnock, will open the two-day conference in Nottingham on 5th March, 2009, followed by a keynote address from Bengali Nobel Prize-winner and author of Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, Professor Amartya Sen.

The conference will see the highest level delegation of education ministers from Pakistan in recent years including Pakistan’s Provincial Minister for Education, Mr. Pir Mazhar Ul Haq. The delegates will take part in a series of workshops covering themes such as faith, identity, school leadership, community cohesion and global citizenship. Other speakers include Adrian Gray, Head of Institutional Inspections and Frameworks OfSTED, who will lead a session on School Leadership for Community Cohesion.

Many schools are already using school links to support community initiatives. Two primary schools and once secondary school in Glasgow have recently worked together on a successful cultural identity project involving a festival of traditional Scottish music and dance with five schools in rural Islamabad, Pakistan. Projects such as these help schools in the UK meet the goals of the Every Child Matters agenda and deliver the education curricula, as well as enabling teachers and pupils to champion social inclusion between different communities and within their own.

British Council Director Schools, Olga Stanojlovic, said: `In an increasingly interconnected world, the need for greater levels of trust and understanding in our communities is more relevant than ever. It cannot be underestimated what a central role schools play in driving community cohesion and developing young people as active global citizens who feel a responsibility for their communities. Building on the success of the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms programme, this international conference aims to lay the foundations for greater levels of exchange, increased dialogue, and understanding with our partners to improve community cohesion in the UK and countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.’

Connecting Classrooms enables pupils and teachers to engage with the wider world, helping them to become global citizens, equipped with the skills and understanding to live and work in a global society. Through school links, pupils and teachers are able to challenge stereotypes, to understand one another better, value diversity and explore each other’s culture through community action work based in the classroom.

The programme, which launches globally this year, already links hundreds of school in the UK with their counterparts in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The British Council aims to link with 30,000 schools and two million young people worldwide by 2013, and many thousands more through its online offer.

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For further information, please contact Antony Watson, Press Officer, on +44 (0) 207 389 4872 or e-mail antony.watson@britishcouncil.org

Notes to Editor

The Connecting Classrooms School Leadership Conference is run in partnership with the Institute for Community Cohesion (iCoCo) and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Connecting Classrooms builds lasting partnerships between schools in the UK and others around the world. Through these partnerships, the programme develops trust and understanding between young people in different societies, creating a safer and more connected world for the future. For more information, please visit: www.britishcouncil.org/learning-connecting-classrooms

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We work in more than 100 countries worldwide to build engagement and trust for the UK through the exchange of knowledge and ideas between people. We work in the arts, education, science, sport and governance and last year we reached over 128 million people. Our total turnover in 2007/8 was £565m, of which our grant-in-aid from the British government was £197m. For more information, please go to www.britishcouncil.org

The British Council is marking 75 years of cultural relations this year. For more information, please visit: www.britishcouncil.org/new/about-us/75th-anniversary