Case Study: St Peter's Church of England Primary School

Leck via Carnforth, Lancashire

Global Teacher's placement and the Link Schools Programme

Sue Simpson is a planner with purpose. Yet despite her careful and well- documented schedules, her placement in Kabango Primary School in the north west Masindi district of Uganda in July 2002 may have had unforeseen consequences. Her three-year plan now looks as though it is turning into a life-changing experience with no neatly defined columns and action points. She would agree with Amanda (10) in Year 5 whose comments convey much of the essence of the Global Teachers Millennium Award scheme and the process of the Link Schools Programme.

".At the beginning I thought "Well, this is just something that we get to do, to talk about .", but then I got to realise that we're taking lots of things for granted and we're also taking the fact that we can communicate with Kabango for granted.so I think this is a chance of a lifetime!"

Sue Simpson is one those rare specialists, a teaching head of a small, rural primary school. Often described as 'idyllic', Leck Church of England Primary School nestles in the folds of the north Lancashire Fells between Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales, with sheep for neighbours and dry stone walls for school fences.

At Leck, the 40 pupils, aged between four and 11+, learn in two mixed-age classes and are taught by a team headed by Sue Simpson, including one other full-time teacher and two part-timers. Two student teachers from Lancaster University are currently doing their school practice there. Parents are mostly in a mixture of professional, farming and trading occupations and reasonably affluent.

This is a far cry from the pupil-teacher ratios at Kabango where there are around 1200 pupils aged between six and 18, 13 teachers, seven classrooms, only three of which have concrete floors. There is no furniture, no electricity and no water.

The learners at Kabango may have to walk up to five kilometres to get to school. Most of their families are involved in sugar production at Kinyara and currently there is a rich diversity of crops and domestic animals making up the largely agricultural communities of the district.

Sue returned from her placement in August 2002 and set up the link with Kabango almost immediately.

Activities and benefits

Perhaps it is because it is such a small community, but it is evident that ALL the children in the school feel personally involved in the link. Their comments and questions were wide-ranging and covered many aspects of what this opportunity means to them:

"We take listening to music for granted; they have to make their own music."

"How did they get so good at all those dance moves and the clapping rhythms?"

"It surprised me how many chores they have to do. They've got to walk really far to get their water."

"I didn't know that they could carry 20 litres of water on their heads."

"Would it hurt their feet on the floor when they carry the water, 'cos they don't have any shoes?"

"I'd like to find out more about their capital city; we've seen a lot of the small villages, now I want to see the big towns."

"It was amazing when I found out there were so many children squashed into such a little classroom."

When Sue considered what she wanted her children and the local community to gain from her Global Teacher Millennium Award she drafted a three-year plan. Prior to her placement she helped the children to prepare a photographic record of Leck CE Primary and to assemble an interest box that reflected aspects of their life and local culture. She also compiled a pack about the village community to take with her and "big books" made by the children.

Sue would say that already the children in her school have improved in their knowledge and understanding of another culture. They are studying a broader curriculum and their interest and enthusiasm are genuine. The children's comments corroborate this:

"We've been doing fun things and it feels as though we're also learning things."

"I liked tasting their food 'cos it was different to ours."

"I'd like to find out more about how they actually cooked the cassava and flour after they'd pounded it."

"We enjoyed making instruments out of sticks and bottle tops."

"My favourite activity was making Ugandan footballs out of plastic bags."

A particularly popular aspect of their African Week was the organisation of workshops in which the children had to show their parents and local visitors how to make models, do tie-dye and to play Oware. This African board game, which helps develop some sharp mathematical strategies, has been taken up by Link Community Development and they now run annual championships. Parents and governors of the school have been enthusiastic supporters of the school link from the very beginning.

Colleagues in this small school have also been closely involved in the planning and delivery of the changes brought about through the link.

Other benefits to the wider community have included Sue giving talks to the local church and the Women's Institute as well as writing articles in the community newsletter. In conjunction with the Lancaster Global Resources Centre she has also given an INSET on 'Small Schools and the Global Dimension' to her local cluster of schools and another day is planned for February 2004.

In the Masindi District of Uganda, Link Community Development staff are helping to facilitate the Kabango link (and the many other links) which allow the impact of the initial placement to 'continue'. The first benefits to Kabango were immediate and much appreciated. As well as the provision of resources and ideas to help deliver the Ugandan curriculum, Sue and her peers got to work straight away on some very practical improvements.

Seeing a pile of rusty metal poles and sheets in the corner of one very bare classroom, Sue declared it a health and safety hazard and asked for the pile to be cleared. Uncertain as to her reasoning and constant requests, the headteacher eventually agreed, saying "Yes, it is dangerous, because of the snakes!" As soon as she could get near the walls, Sue, armed with paint and brush, soon had the classroom looking very bright and cheerful with number lines and patterns all around. The teachers joined in.

From the money the Leck community had already collected, Sue was able to help Kabango buy some benches for two of the classrooms. This was probably the first time that many of the pupils had sat on anything other than the bare earth or concrete for their lessons!

Curriculum and citizenship

In this rural corner of the UK it is rare for the children or others in the community to meet anyone of a different ethnic origin to themselves.

Among her list of aims for the linking project, Sue has included:

• To increase children's awareness of global issues and
• To enable children to see themselves as global citizens.

This is a particular challenge for such schools. The Link Schools Programme offers real help and incentive in making this possible by facilitating contacts, especially through the good offices of the courier DHL. The children are able to exchange letters and postcards on a regular basis.

With this support, several more of the link's aims can be met:

• To enable our community to make links with an overseas community
• To foster friendship
• To promote better understanding of the lives and needs of one another
• To be able to compare and evaluate different lifestyles

As one of the children put it:

"We are getting to find out about different people who are a different colour to us and to find out what they're good at."

Before she left for her placement, Sue's three-year overview of the link included the aim of making it a part of their School Development Plan and of beginning to adjust the school's curriculum plans. On her return, Sue wrote in her newsletter to the parents:

"Our children will have an almost first hand experience of another culture and will learn much about their own role in society and their future contribution. There will be so much more to linking than just giving money.

Our children will be able to follow the work of the Link project in Uganda and learn more about this developing 'third world' country via the internet. We will be able to send emails to the Link representatives in Uganda too."

Now, one year on, she has produced a diagram that shows how the Uganda link has been incorporated into virtually every aspect of the curriculum and in the literacy activities for Key Stage 2 all the suggestions have been mapped to the requirements of the National Curriculum.

Additionally, Sue has prepared curriculum packs and a collection of artefacts for use by other schools. These resources reflect her strong belief that the global dimension "sits happily with a creative timetable. It offers lots of opportunities to develop thinking skills and creativity within a framework of 'philosophical enquiry'." For her own school she has increased the budget allocation in order to purchase quality resources to support this dimension of the curriculum.

Changes are also happening in the Masindi District: The Principal of Kabango, George Makuukusa, has been feeding the ideas that Sue suggested into their curriculum and particularly those concerned with lesson observation and making notes. They too are developing their School Development Plan and practising the techniques of evaluation that they learnt from Sue. There is a real recognition of the genuine interest of their link partners and the staff are encouraged by this to try out some new ideas which might otherwise have seemed rather daunting. It will be important to ensure that the School Governing Body remain involved and a proposed re-visit next summer will go a long way to revitalising this key group in the community. Derek Nkata, the Education Officer of the Masindi District Department visited Leck on Commonwealth Day 2003 and was welcomed by the Chair of Governors.

Connecting communities

Among a Global Teacher's most treasured memories and resources are the photographs they return from their placement with. Many of Sue's have been enlarged to A4 size and are used very effectively to promote an opportunity for the philosophical enquiry she seeks for her children. They are encouraged to ask questions about what they are looking at and to use their imaginations to try to empathise more fully with this very different culture. One such experience was expressed as a poem after Hanna (aged 10) had spent time considering a photo of two young Ugandan girls on a dirt track. She called it:

"Worried": The baby girl's face, Worried, scared. Clenching her sister. Tightly. Holding back, When she wants to walk on quickly. On the stroll, To school, A special school, To learn to be what she wants to be. Her neat school uniform, Shoes to match, Must have cost a lot for all that. The dusty ground. Hard, muddy. Dust will fly up, Making them sneeze.

Jan Stacey, Sue's 'right hand woman', is enthusiastic about the link:

"The children have been enabled to celebrate the similarities as well as the differences between our two cultures and to consider their own place as world citizens.

It has challenged some of my priorities. It has also inspired a purposeful response to teaching citizenship.as an implicit part of a much wider curriculum."

Their school advisor for Multi-cultural Diversity, Denise Dent, has been very encouraging and has helped to raise awareness of Leck's link and the work they are doing.

South Cumbria is well represented by Global Teachers and this strengthens the support they can give each other and to the various community groups that they interact with. Sue has contact with Mike Major, the Head of John Ruskin School in Coniston, and with Adrian Lett from the George Romney Junior School, Dalton-in-Furness. They had placements in the Eastern Cape in South Africa but many of the issues are similar whilst aspects of local culture may be very diverse - a wealth of learning for children in what is often perceived as a narrow, mono-ethnic community.

Sue has also shared her Ugandan experiences with other groups with global interests in her LEA, Galgate near Lancaster, through the Lancashire Professional Development Group. She also gave a presentation at the Global Links Conference in Rydal about her placement and another at the Millennium Funding Awards Ceremony in Manchester where she described the experience of being a Global Teacher. She has also given talks to the Lancaster Soroptimists and local W.I. as well as her own church.

Sustainability for the future

This wide ranging web of connections in the Lancashire district will help to underpin and foster the work started as a result of this particular five- week placement. The Global Resources Centre staff have already been involved with Sue's Africa Week and her training days. The broader involvement of the Lune Valley cluster of small schools, together with the church and the Diocese of Blackburn and other community groups, widens the pool of concerned individuals to ensure a lasting commitment to global issues, both related to Kabango and elsewhere in the developing world.

Looking ahead to the third year of implementation (2004 - 2005), sub-titled "Consolidation, Maintenance and Personal Development" there are four key aims:

• Ensure that our school link remains firmly established and that staff, parents and governors are committed to its maintenance.
• Update Global Awareness and Citizenship policies.
• Ensure that Global Awareness continues to be evaluated and planned for via the SDP.
• The last one is in the final paragraph of this case study ...

St Peter's, Leck, may only be a very small rural primary school, but it exemplifies the best practice of both the Global Teachers Programme and the Link Schools Programme. Out of a list of key points for sustaining change, Sue Simpson has included almost all of these in the 18 months since her placement:

• Pre-placement school self-evaluation baseline activity to identify needs and opportunities;
• Running INSETs for colleagues and through the LEA;
• Involving the whole school;
• Holding meetings/events with the PTA and with the Governing Body;
• Influencing school policy;
• Embedding follow-up work in the School Improvement Plan;
• Making the global dimension follow-up work visible in the school through displays;
• Keeping parents informed through the website and school newsletter;
• Broadening involvement to local community groups, MP, local businesses etc;
• Rewriting school's vision and mission statement.

At a recent Link Community Development conference held at the British Museum for schools from all over the UK, Sue was one of several Global Teachers who ran an interactive workshop. Hers focused on how the literacy component of her curriculum has been enhanced by the link with Kabango.

"Our school link with Kabango has provided us with a rich source of writing and related literacy activities. The children are motivated because of the relevance and we have been able to be more creative in our planning."

At large public INSET showcases such as this, the breadth and depth of the linking process can be seen very clearly. It shows how the systemic changes impact on the whole curriculum and teaching methodology, both in the UK and Africa, and beyond the school boundaries into the many communities in each district around the schools involved.

Colleague, Jan Stracey, accompanied Sue to the Link conference and is now keener than ever to visit Kabango herself next summer (2004), another way of sustaining and continuing the work in progress and "keeping the link alive". She feels strongly that the link has already had a significant impact on the school and she is helping Sue and her colleagues develop ways of assessing just how this impact has affected their children.

It is great that Millie (7) feels that "it's cool having friends across the world!" and evaluating the effectiveness of that enthusiasm is the next challenge for the staff at Leck.

So ... "a chance of a lifetime" - indeed. In an interview with the local 'Guardian' newspaper before she embarked on her placement Sue expressed her aspirations very clearly:

"Life in 21st Century Britain has become so dependent on material wealth that I really wanted to strip back my life to the basic essentials in order to readjust my perspective. It is rare to be afforded such an opportunity as this."

Two years later, as she nears the last section of her three-year plan, she can look with even more focus at the last item: "Prepare for a year's VSO to Africa on my retirement." Not long now, Sue!

Compiled by Frances Hillier, Education Advisor, Link Community Development UK, Nov 2003