Case Study: Wistow Parochial CE Primary School

Selby

Background

Located a few miles outside the town of Selby, Wistow Parochial CE Primary School is a village school with global connections. There are about 120 children each year, aged 4 to 11 in five mixed aged classes. There are no children from ethnic minority backgrounds. The school is very much part of the village community and yet the mission statement reflects its global outlook: “A happy, learning community providing a high quality holistic education with a global perspective in a caring, safe, Christian environment”.

“We try to make children aware of their places in the world, their rights and responsibilities, to respect and value diversity, challenge unfairness, intolerance and ignorance. We want to give them the tools to do this, to have a willingness to act to make the world a more equitable place.”

Kathryn Tissiman, Head Teacher

Objectives

The school sees global education not just as a subject in its own right but a way of teaching the existing curriculum which promotes social justice and equity.

In an independent rapidly changing world, learners will need to be flexible and adaptable and they have to be taught how to do this. Really, the overall aim is to produce true global citizens.

How to do it?

The school’s global education journey began with setting up a link with a rural school in the Upper East Region of Ghana, Tampola Primary School, through Link Community Development (LCD). It was a steep learning curve from the beginning. The partnership with Tampola Primary opened up all sorts of opportunities to explore global education and global citizenship but it does not in itself provide all the answers. There’s lots of work to be done to embrace all the concepts of global education in the wider sense.

Wistow Parochial CE Primary reached out into the wider community to make friends and welcome visitors to talk about their experiences and to hold workshops around the global education/citizenship theme. As well as working alongside Link Community Development, the school established close relationships with the Centre for Global Education in York, with the Local Authority and with the Yorkshire and Humber Global Schools Association (YHGSA). The school managed to get two small grants from the YHGSA via the Local Authority which helped develop the work, although most of the funding has come out of the school’s budget.

Partnership with Tampola Primary School, Ghana

Like many school partnerships, Wistow began writing letters to their link school: each class wrote to a partner class and the head teachers also exchanged letters. The correspondence between the schools has continued throughout but with variations on the letter-writing theme. At one stage, the learners at Wistow sewed resources for Tampola Primary, wall hangings and Maths games, because they learnt that paper disintegrates over time in the hotter Ghanaian climate! The school also got into the habit of including a blank piece of paper with each letter, for return letters from their partner school.

Since these early days, the school has run all sorts of different activities that have developed their global education work and used their school partnership to inform and inspire along the way.

In-school activities

Sports day with an African theme
Fair Trade presentations at the Harvest Festival
School Council runs a Fair Trade stall after school once a week
International policy with a coordinating staff member
Large and ever-evolving school display on the Global Dimension
A Human Rights trail of York
Send My Friend to School campaign

Working with the community

Taking the global citizenship ethos of “thinking globally, acting locally” to heart, Wistow Parochial has done all it can to reach out to the local community. As soon as the project had started, the school told everyone in the village about it through an article in the village newsletter. Soon it was apparent that there were all sorts of international, including Ghanaian, links throughout the village which were able to support the school with information and resources.

Presentation to parents about Global Citizenship

Success and future plans

Wistow Parochial CE Primary School received an “outstanding” grade in every category of its recent Ofsted report. Ofsted were particularly impressed by the school’s emphasis on global education, through its links with schools in other countries and its work on issues like fair trade, recycling and sustainability.

“The school’s outstanding global education programme successfully helps pupils understand that decisions and actions may have negative as well as positive implications.”

Ofsted Inspection Report, 2007

The head teacher, Kathryn Tissiman, feels that the project has been such a success thanks to the enthusiasm and team work or all the staff and children, the contacts they have made and the partnerships entered into. She also adds that “it fits with all the aims of Primary Education, and covers Every Child Matters and the current schools’ agendas”.

The school is now in the process of working towards the Eco Schools Award, the Rights Respecting Schools Award and the Fair Trade Schools Mark. Two members of staff are currently engaged in a TIPD visit with other cluster schools and this will continue to provide fresh enthusiasm for the global education project.

Recent Year 6 leavers said that their best memories centred around all the work they had done on Global Education and what they had learnt. It must be worthwhile.