Scottish secondary schools and their links with developing countries: study

1. Introduction

The Scottish Government’s International Development strategy takes a two pronged approach to “fight against global poverty, inequality, injustice and promote[s] sustainable development” by: 1) encouraging relationships to empower partner countries and; 2) engaging the people of Scotland to enhance Scotland’s position as a good global citizen (Scottish Government 2016, p.6). One key area where work has been undertaken to develop good global citizenship and raise awareness on global issues is through global learning in Scottish primary and secondary schools. In Scotland, this is embedded in the Learning for Sustainability (LfS) approach, which combines sustainable development, outdoor learning and global citizenship in Scotland’s education system.

Global citizenship education, or global learning, can be defined as “an approach to education that prioritises a global dimension” (Bentall et al 2014, p. 624). It aims to prepare (young) people to live in a globalised, interconnected world and enable them to respond to global challenges whilst advocating for social justice for all. This is done by connecting the local and the global and discussing global problems and connect this to the context of the learners. One of the ways of incorporating a global dimension in the curriculum is by establishing international links. International partnerships with developing countries have been promoted since the end of the 1990s by the UK government for example through the Global School Partnership programme which ran from 2003-2012 and the Connecting Classroom programme that ran from 2012 onwards (Bourn 2014). This led to several NGOs setting up linking programmes as well, fuelled by the then Secretary of State stating in 1999 that “she wanted to see every school in the UK have a link with a school in a developing country” (Bourn 2014, p. 4). The programmes were focused on establishing school links and integrating these with global learning throughout the curriculum. Although due to a change in funding the number of schools and NGOs that are engaged in partnerships has declined (Bourn et al 2017), the connecting classrooms programme is still running and promoting the creation of school partnerships. In Scotland the Scotland-Malawi Partnership is an important and influential supporter of school links between these two countries.

According to Leonard (2014) we can view the different kind of initiatives schools develop on a continuum from “link” to “partnership”, where links are often short term and not embedded in the wider curriculum of a school, and partnerships are longer term and integrated across staff, pupils and different subjects. Partnerships, or links, can be made with any school in any country but the key focus of this report are links made with developing countries as they have been promoted in the past, and can have – as we will see in the next chapters – an important impact on thinking about global issues. One specific type of link, or activity within a partnership, can be organising pupil visits to the partner country. These visits can be either organised by the Scottish school themselves, or by a volunteer organisation that enables school groups to participate as a volunteer in specific projects. The experience pupils have on these visits can be an important starting point for learning but can also have impact – both positively and negatively – on the communities they visit.

Although we know that some Scottish schools have established long-term partnerships and other schools participate in short term projects, there is little know about the actual number of schools involved, the kind of activities that are undertaken and the schools’ motivation for supporting these activities. This report provides a first exploration of school partnerships, in a secondary school context, with the aim to understand what kind of activities Scottish schools and young people are engaged in when it comes to partnering with a school and/or visiting a developing country. The overall purpose of this report is to support discussions on global learning, international development, school partnerships and volunteering.

The research explores five research questions:

1. What potential benefits and disadvantages are linked to school partnerships and pupils visits according to current academic literature?;

2. Which organisations and resources do Scottish secondary schools have available to them when linking to a developing country, and what kind of activities are they promoting?;

3. What activities do Scottish secondary schools undertake when partnering with a school in a developing country?;

4. What is the motivation for these activities?, and;

5. What narratives of development aid and global learning are involved?

The first question is addressed in chapter 2, which provides a review of the relevant literature on school partnerships and volunteer visits and known benefit and challenges with such activities. Chapter 3 addresses question two and gives an overview of relevant organisations and (online) resources that support school partnerships and interactions. Questions three, four and five are discussed in chapter 4, which looks at primary data gathered from meeting with organisations and conducting interviews to understand the kind of school activities and interactions with the partnership institutions involved. Chapter 5 introduces the results of an exploratory survey to understand the perspective of Malawian partner schools. The report ends with a conclusion and recommendations, drawn from the literature review and data analysis to improve the sustainability of school links as well as to improve their connection to global learning.