A slide comparing a photo of Portsmouth Grammar school and Kikaaya college school
Portsmouth Grammar School and Kikaaya College School are partners in learning ©

Portsmouth Grammar School

Portsmouth Grammar School has been working with Kikaaya College School in Uganda as Partners in Learning for more than 15 years. We spoke to the lead teachers at the two schools to find out what they do together and why the partnership works.

My name is Fiona Titheridge. I'm a teacher of geography at the Portsmouth Grammar School in the UK. I set up the link with Kikaaya [pronounced Chikaya] College School through the British Council back in 2007. 

Hello, I'm Mubiru Charles. Previously I was the Headmaster of Kikaaya College School and currently I'm the Director of the school. 

How did you your partnership start? 

Fiona Titheridge: I did a volunteer program through the United Nations International Youth Service back in my very early 20s. And I absolutely loved that experience. I found myself getting a completely different experience to one that I would have had if I'd simply been a tourist somewhere when I visited it. I worked with the local people, worked with other people from around the world and the richness of experience that I had was beyond anything I'd ever experienced before. 

This gave me the desire to teach my pupils about geography and about the world. It gave me the desire to provide the opportunities for them to create meaningful relationships with people in other places and to have the opportunity to work together, to truly be partners in learning. It's had a profound effect on me and my life and I was convinced it would do the same for many others.

We wanted to link with a school in Uganda because it was going to be interesting culturally but we knew we had the uniting language of English to help us to communicate effectively. And we felt it was a more unusual African country to link with at that time. 

I got a raft of letters from Uganda, replying to my request through signing up to the British Council's database. And as soon as I read the letter from Mr. Mubiru, I knew we had our school. It was completely clear that this was the person and this was the institution we wanted to link with and it proved to be the right decision.

Mr Mubiru: Our school profile was on the British Council portal. I went through a number of profiles for those who had written. When I read through what Mrs. Fiona had written, it caught my attention because I wanted something special and unique for my students. I wanted them to know other students, to know the experiences which other students go through, to get friends, to help them to know what other students are studying and also to get an opportunity for my students to share their experiences with the students from UK. Portsmouth Grammar School seemed to be having what my students had wanted. 

Later on, I found out that Madame Fiona was good in responding. She was a good leader and she could respond within time. So, gradually that's how we built it.

The activities for the last 17 years have been so captivating on part of my students. They liked what was coming from Portsmouth, the variety of subjects, because it could cut across all the subjects. Really, it has been a rich experience over the years. We are partners in learning across the entire curriculum and we pray that it continues for the next 50 years. 

Students in local dress dance to greet their visitors
A welcome from Kikkaya school ©

Portsmouth Grammar School

What projects have you worked on? 

Fiona Titheridge: We have always found that we stimulate each other to take on practical work. 

So for example, clearing up our local environments, we've literally done litter picking at the same time so that we've cleared areas and it's motivated us to get out there and do it. We've taken photographs before and after. 

It's motivated us to do planting of trees and plants. We've been very impressed by Kikaaya’s gardens where they grow lots of vegetables and they even keep chickens. We'd love to keep chickens, but I don't know how well that would go down in central Portsmouth. 

We've challenged perceptions and misconceptions through exchanges of work. So we've had a lot of rich experiences.

What we found which might be helpful for other schools, is that if we've tapped into co-curriculum clubs to do work, that can be a very helpful way of getting things done quite effectively. 

The students will tend to be in a year group, say, six classes. So if you're trying to roll something out across a whole year group that's more live and interactive, that can be impractical at times. But if a club is meeting at a certain time, it's much more logistically feasible to link and invite other clubs to your club. We linked our wildlife club, our eco council and our Pupils Uganda Group with the junior school gardening club all together to create the green wall. And that's what gave us the person power and time to actually complete the project.

The longevity of our link is because Kikaaya continually produce the goods. They are always open to trying things. The quality of work they produce, whether it's sending over some of their artwork, whether it's making bracelets and sending them over so that we can sell them to earn more money to support things. Whether it's preparing for us a piece of music, a dance routine that we can then teach and learn from. We've had whole year groups dancing, Ugandan dance, because they've prepared it in a way that has been accessible to us. Constantly the quality of the work we receive from them inspires us because it's excellent. 

Our students have been amazed at how many similarities there are between us, as well as being fascinated by the differences and diversity.

There are similarities in terms of some of the daily routines, some of the passions in music and film and books that they read, the love of sport. All of these things have been a very strong connection.

 

You can read more about the partnership and how they are looking to the future in chapter 2.