The Connecting Classrooms Programme offers two types of trainings for the staff of the schools involved:

• Teachers’ training
• Head teachers’ training

Teachers’ training:

Teachers’ training focuses on teacher-to-teacher dialogue on teaching approaches and learning styles through the design and planning of collaborative projects, internationalism, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education. In Pakistan, areas of teacher development will relate specifically to the white paper published by the Ministry of Education in December 2006.

The British Council has trained 520 teachers till date in teaching practices, school leadership, student voice in learning and ICT.

Head teachers’ training:

These trainings give head teachers an opportunity to enhance their leadership, ICT and English Language skills as well as their classroom teaching techniques. This also gives them a chance to get their research published in university journals through activities such as head teacher shadowing programmes and programmes linked with universities.

We have trained 130 Head Teachers across Pakistan so far. More Head Teacher trainings are planned towards the end of this year.

Contact seminars for teachers:

Some teachers from each cluster are invited to a contact seminar in the United Kingdom where they meet and begin to work with their partner schools. Some aspects of using ICT for communication are covered during this visit, including the use of e-languages tool. In preparation for this international meeting, clusters in each country come together for a pre-contact seminar meeting to discuss the priorities of the programme, how to build sustainable international school partnerships based on learning and how to work in a cluster.