Case Study: Ken Stimpson Community School

Werrington, Peterborough

Global Teacher placement and the Link Schools Programme

Liz Bartley was a Round 2 Global Teacher in the Eastern Cape, South Africa in 2002. The impact of that experience prompted her to apply to go out again as a member of the Global Teacher Support Team (GTST) in 2003. She is now deeply involved in a community project which, by its very nature, will ensure that she makes several more visits to Upper Culunca Senior Secondary School.

Liz teaches sociology in a large community school on the outskirts of Peterborough where there are about 900 students in Years 7 - 13. There is also a separate post-16 centre. The students are of very mixed ethnic backgrounds and come from all over the world. Iranians, Turks, Italians and Bulgarians study alongside South Americans and a large group of Asian girls who have transferred from the old county grammar school.

Upper Culunca is a relatively small and very remote rural secondary school about three hours drive from the nearest town of Umtata. The whole infrastructure of the area is very poor: no electricity, no water supply and dirt roads which are impassable at certain times of the year. Unemployment runs at about 70% and those who are able to get a job leave the community for the larger towns and cities. Upper Culunca has three classrooms, as many toilets, a staff-room and is fenced. This last fact is one of particular significance for the Farming Project that Liz has helped set up and will be described in the last section of this report.

Upper Culunca has had three Global Teachers, Liz being the second. The school is not renowned for its speedy reactions to change initiatives, but the Principal, Mrs Malindi, is very aware that many benefits have occurred as the result of working with Link Community Development.

Activities and Benefits

Amongst those directly arising from the Global Teachers Programme, Mrs Malindi lists:

• the textbooks and novels sent out from the UK;
• the sharing of ideas on teaching methodology, especially through observing Global Teachers' lessons;
• help in rewriting the School Development Plan and identifying the challenges year on year.

Several other benefits are part of the ongoing relationship with Link in South Africa whereby regular training sessions are organised for school governance, financial management and the involvement of the parents on the School Governing Body.

Perhaps the most significant comment listed was one that is least available to evaluation strategies or techniques:

"The placement of the Global Teachers in our school (white people from the UK) has given the pupils the feeling that their school is recognised by first world countries."

This is echoed in some of the comments by students (18 and 19 year-olds) when asked what they had learnt from being linked. They were surprised to find that they "could be helped by outsiders".

They have noticed that since the link there have been some significant changes in their school:

"There's been an improvement in the infrastructure of our school. The teachers use a variety of teaching methods and they are using