International partnerships make a huge difference closer to home

There’s more to linking with schools overseas than offering aid; they can help students become global citizens too

Walking through our halls you can see noticeboards full of children’s work that has a distinctly multicultural feel. The chatter of pupils reciting Hindi words back to their teacher echoes down the corridor. And a photo of shoes stimulates conversation and discussion amongst teachers and Year 6 children – I’ll explain why later.

Despite a diverse periphery, Lowestoft itself is predominantly white British. East Anglia in general has some quite isolated communities, and bad press on immigration (such as the recent events in Calais) can really limit the way children view the world. By using labels such as ‘immigrant’ we are effectively dehumanising whole groups of people, deliberately or otherwise, discouraging empathy and encouraging segregation.

Partnering with schools in other, often developing, countries is largely seen as a benefit to them, since the partnership can involve financial aid or simple gestures that go a long way, such as sending over toys and classroom materials. But the benefits to our own pupils here in the UK should not be overlooked.

With this in mind, last year at Pakefield Primary School we engaged in two projects that involved outreach work with schools in Africa and India – the aim being to open up the world to our pupils, encouraging them to see themselves as global citizens. Through these experiences, and maintaining the links with these schools, our pupils not only increased their knowledge and understanding, but made friends in some very far flung places.

Our project with the Eden School (located in the mountains of the Lake Bunyoni region in Uganda) involved working with a local photographer, Julian Claxton. Julian conceived the project after he organised a charity bike ride from Beccles to Uganda, in which a variety of local people took part. He fell in love with the country and the Ugandan people, and decided to find new ways of engaging with them.

Picture this

From here, the ‘Give a child a camera’ initiative was set up. Julian donated second-hand digital cameras to the pupils at Eden School, with the idea that they would photograph their school day. We bought our own pupils disposable cameras to encourage them to do the same. This would inspire cultural exchange and the opportunity to learn from one another.

Like us, the school in Uganda is also in a somewhat isolated region, so the head was very keen to get involved and have a link with another country. What has been really interesting is the similarities that have arisen between our two communities, which, on the face of it, couldn’t be more different.

Our children have been fascinated that the Ugandan children have similar interests to them. And they are also intrigued by the differences, such as the fact that some of the Ugandan pupils don’t have shoes. This inspired a series of photos from our pupils of their footwear! This really summed up the project for me; by creating this link our pupils are not only learning about a different culture and country, but also developing empathy and understanding. I never thought I would be moved by a picture of some trainers.

These photos show that this project was the children’s project, not their parents’. It was crucial to us that the children were photographing and sharing what was important to them, not what they thought they should photograph, or what their parents thought might be interesting or unusual. As a result, we got a lot of photos of dinners, family members and work in PSHE classes. The photos we sent over provided a touching and realistic portrait of not only our pupils’ lives, but British life in general, just as the photos we received gave us a real sense of what it was like to learn at Eden School, and what it was like to be Ugandan.

As the KS2 geography curriculum doesn’t include learning about continents such as Africa or countries like India, this project, alongside our partnership with Sir Padampat Singhania Education Centre in Kampur City, India, has also enhanced our pupils’ geographical knowledge.

Life lessons

Our pupils also keep in touch with children in India who attend the Sir Padampat school. They swap letters, photographs and comic strips depicting their day-to-day lives, so the two cultures can be compared and contrasted. This partnership was originally formed by Pakefield High School as part of a student exchange programme, which means that pupils who go on to study at this local secondary will have the opportunity to visit Sir Padampat and meet their new friends in person when they are older.

It’s really rewarding to see how inspired the pupils have become in such a short space of time. We now have our Year 6s Bollywood dancing down the corridors (they learnt their moves from Harpreet and Bhawna, teachers from Sir Padampat), learning how to write their names in Hindi and spending time designing intricate mehndi patterns for their hands.

I think of this enthusiastic energy as the excitement of embracing difference, and at Pakefield you can now see multiculturalism wherever you look. Julian’s visits, videos, photobooks and displays that we have created, as well as the links with the schools themselves, mean that diversity is just part of the norm. Effectively, we’ve transformed something ‘different’ and ‘strange’ into part of the everyday.

Our next steps are focused on outreach activities we can carry out within the British Isles. We are keen to explore a partnership with a school in a diverse area very different to Lowestoft, such as Birmingham or London. We’d also like to do more with industry. Unemployment is high in Lowestoft, and we want to develop aspirations within our pupils that they previously may not have considered.

Our experiences so far have demonstrated that the benefits from outreach activities don’t just extend to schools in far-flung corners of the globe, but also our own classrooms and schools. With this in mind, and in the interest of broadening our partnerships, please do get in touch if you also want to benefit from the unique opportunities these projects have offered our students. What have you got to lose?

Well I never…

Five surprising facts our pupils have discovered so far.
• Children in Uganda can make their own bikes! Our pupils were fascinated by the Ugandan children riding homemade wooden bikes down dirt tracks.
• We learnt the reasons Hindu people wear bindis – it is to represent divine sight and shows that one is a Hindu.
• What do you do if you want to play ball games, but don’t have a ball? The Ugandan pupils showed our children that a ball of dried wild grass is the perfect substitute.
• If you want to say ‘bye bye’ in Hindi, you won’t have to think too hard for the translation. ‘Ta-ta’ means the same there as it does here.
• Indian children at Sir Padampat are multilingual, speaking English and learning French at school, as well as speaking their mother tongues of Punjabi and / or Hindi at home.

About the author

Helen Phillips is a reception teacher at Pakefield Primary School, part of the Active Learning Trust. She has been teaching for 20 years, is a mother of three, and sits on a fostering panel.