Earlier this month, the halls of Thorns Collegiate Academy in Dudley were ringing with the sounds of Sri Lanka - but this was more than wishful thinking to escape the grim February weather in the UK. The event was the launch of the British Council’s Commonwealth Connections project.
The Dudley school has partnered with Kotagaloluwa sri Jinarathana Junior School in Sri Lanka for the programme and students from each met by video link for the first time at the launch, after undertaking research about their peers across the world.
Students on both sides of the world performed dances to celebrate the official opening of the project, which sees 60 schools across the West Midlands linked with counterparts in 10 Commonwealth countries, in preparation for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games later this year.
Through the partnerships, students will work on a variety of creative and sporting projects together, with a view to broadening their understanding of their international peers’ lives in school and beyond, and developing values such as teamwork and leadership.
International partnerships: the benefits for pupils
So what kind of impact can such partnerships have on young people?
The results can be inspiring, says Callum Schofield, learning manager at UTC Derby Pride Park. While Derby and Nabatieh High School in Lebanon may not initially appear to have a lot in common, students from the two cities have joined forces to explore the global issues that affect them both, and have found both common ground and passion as a result.
“COP26 was an initial driving force behind the project,” Schofield explains. “We run a global learning programme, with the sustainable development goals being incorporated into our tutor programme and wider learning lessons, and have done for the last couple of years, but the opportunity to do this alongside another school from a completely different part of the world has really brought this curriculum to life for our students. It has given them opportunities to learn not only about how global issues affect their own local area but also how they affect other people in other parts of the world.”
The schools were connected by the Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning programme (CCGL), which is funded by the British Council and UK aid. Staff have worked together to create a pilot project, linked to the sustainable development goals, and the CCGL programme has supported staff through webinars, free resources and advice to help them to develop their project.
“So far, students have met via video conference and begun learning about each other’s lives and local areas”, Schofield continues. “They are now working towards a project where they will jointly create proposals for green projects for both areas, which they will send to the COP26 committee and ask to be implemented”.
“We are in the early stages, but it has been really well received and has had really positive feedback from students,” he says. “Developing an understanding of different cultural needs is an important focus, and so is developing students’ employability skills such as teamwork, communication, time management, alongside cultural values such as diversity, respect and tolerance. The programme has also shown our students how fortunate we often are in this country, and taught them a valuable lesson in not taking things for granted.”
Nadine Saassouh leads the project at Hasbaya Public High School in Lebanon and says her students are benefitting enormously from the “authentic international dimension” that has been introduced to their classrooms.
“Students are enjoying what they are doing,” she says. “For the first time, they have an authentic audience other than me. They laugh and work in teams and have the opportunity to raise their cultural awareness.”
Through their first task, which was to make a video about their partner country, Saassouh says her students have discovered that they “love Derby and wish to visit it or study there one day”.
Moreover, she continues, the international links help students tackle complex global issues, such as environmental projects, in a collaborative way that pushes their thinking forward.
“They trust their ideas and are not worried about sharing them,” she says. “They are thinking critically, listening to different perspectives and weighing evidence. Their partner mates make them draw threads of connections that challenge them to explore their strengths. They feel, themselves, as leaders of the change that the whole world wants to see.”
Grainne Millar, a teacher at St Ronan’s College in Lurgan, County Armagh, also found that COP26 had an inspiring effect on her students, when four of her Year 13 class took part in a simulation, joining forces with other schools from across Northern Ireland.
“They absolutely loved it,” she recalls. “I can’t explain how amazed I was at how well they got into roles and how they really came together as groups to work with people that they had never met to really support each other.”
The experience gave them “a real insight into the discrepancies throughout the world and the challenges faced,” she says. “It’s given them a lot of confidence and enthusiasm to make changes in school but in their peer groups and families as well.”
Offers pupils a ‘different perspective’ on the world
Rebecca Bollands is deputy headteacher at Earlsdon Primary School in Coventry and has run several international partnerships from her school based around major sporting events - including a current project with a Zambian school in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games - and says that these have offered pupils a “different perspective” on the world and the way people live within it.
“We can all live in our own bubbles, particularly children,” she says. “They see: ‘This is the way we do it, so this must be the way that everybody around the world does it.’”
So, as well as taking part in shared sporting-themed events, such as their own mini Olympic Games to include sports from the different partner countries, the students get to explore the culture of their partners’ locations too (she gives the example of her students’ “shock” at talking to their Icelandic partners during 2012 and discovering that the country has 13 Father Christmases rather than one!).
Using the “hook” of major sporting events, she continues, enables them to explore wider cultural aspects in an “engaging, motivating way”.
“They want to be part of it and they can see that what they’re doing has got a purpose,” she says. “They know their work is going to be shared with children in different countries and children who they’ve met through video conference or in person on a visit.”
They were “really lucky”, says Bollands, to be able to take children to Japan before the pandemic started, to visit some of the Olympic and Paralympic venues and test events, and, crucially, form bonds with their international partners, which have had a lasting effect on them.
“That’s another really helpful aspect you can pull out of these big sporting events and partnerships,” she continues, “those universal values: respect, determination, inspiration. They give you a shared language.”
Help your school to take part in an international event in 2022 with our Commonwealth Games resource, which includes a variety of activities based around the theme of the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth Games, to promote thinking, leadership, communication, collaboration and creativity.
Download the Commonwealth Games 2022 Schools Resource
