Scottish secondary schools and their links with developing countries: study

3. Partnership Programmes and Resources

Understanding the Scottish context of school and volunteering projects /exchanges requires having insight into the organisations and programmes that schools can use to access such links and partnerships. The two larger organisations that support partnerships in Scotland are the British Council and the Scotland-Malawi Partnership (SMP). The “Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning” programme from the British Council provides support and funding to schools who want to link to another country focused on providing funding for reciprocal teacher visits. The SMP, together with their Malawian counterpart (the Malawi-Scotland partnership), supports Scottish schools who have or want to establish a link with a school in Malawi. The SMP does not provide funding, but if desirable, directs schools to the Connecting Classrooms programme, to initiate teacher visits.

Aside from these organisations there are several other organisation who: support partnerships (e.g. Malawi Leaders for Learning and the Twende Pamoja Trust); supporting teachers development of global education (e.g. Wood foundation and the Development Education Centres); supporting trips to developing countries (e.g. VineTrust and Classrooms for Malawi, supported by Orbis); or providing funding for teacher or pupil trips (e.g. Livingstone Volunteer programme from the McConnell International Foundation). A more detailed overview of these organisations can be found in Appendix I.

These organisations and programmes also provide resources for teachers to help them include global learning into their curriculum. An overview of these classroom materials are available in Appendix II. These materials, aimed at teachers, includes lesson plans, materials about specific topics and more strategic guidance on how to include global learning in wider school curriculum. Although it is beyond the scope of this report to look into the content of all these resources, we can make a couple of general observations based on their websites:

• There are a lot of resources available, although it is not always clear how up to date the material is.
• There is a diverse range of lesson materials, sometimes which focus on specific subjects other that promotes cross-curricular activities. Often the materials have an ‘action’ component, to let pupils reflect on what they can do.
• All organisations concerned with global learning, highlight that it is as much about promoting critical thinking and reflection as it is about gaining knowledge on specific topics. The focus lies on understanding interconnectivity (local-global links) and issues of social justice and human rights.

Next to these specific lesson materials some of these organisations provide guidance documents on how to build and sustain a positive partnership. To better understand what kind of partnerships and activities are promoted, these guidelines have been reviewed below and then compared to the key recommendations from the academic literature made above. .

3.1 Education Scotland – National Improvement Hub

On the website of education Scotland there is a page dedicated to international partnerships^[1]. This site provides information for schools on how to develop and embed international activities in their curriculum. A short explanation the aim of international activities is provided along with a range of links. Main aims are:

• to improve knowledge and skills across curriculum areas;
• to challenge stereotypes and prejudices;
• to make learners aware of the possibilities that exist for learning and work outside Scotland.

One document on the portal provides tips on how to develop international activities (Education Scotland 2019b). These include joining the Connecting Classroom programme, encourage writing/communication or share a project with students in the partnership country. The webpage does not give more specific information on how to set up these activities, but instead provides links to organisations and resources teachers and schools can use, such as the British Council website, the Development Education Centre’s, Oxfam, the Wood Foundation and the Vinetrust (Education Scotland 2019c).

3.2 Connecting Classrooms

The Connecting Classrooms (CC) programme in Scotland provides a Teacher Handbook that includes information on the programme as well as information on Learning for Sustainability (LfS). The programme has the aim to “raise awareness of global issues amongst young people by supporting collaboration with their international peers” (British Council 2019c, p.1). The handbook embeds this approach in LfS as a part of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.

The CC programme aims to provide a way to “effectively plan for and implement LfS approaches in your school and wider community in ways that will significantly enhance the educational experience of all learners” (British Council 2019c, p.2). The handbook introduces the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals as a core theme that underpins the programme. The handbook refers to the classroom materials, available on the British Council website, and provides ideas and lesson planning on global issues.

The chapter on partnerships introduced the aim of these school links: “to fully engage with learning through joint learning activities focusing on global themes. They also offer teachers the chance to share experiences and learn new thinking, ideas and practices from colleagues in other countries” (British Council 2019c, p.6). To help schools reach this aim the CC programme supports reciprocal teacher visits, setting up virtual partnerships and collaborative pupil projects. The handbook itself does not provide any more information on how a partnership (should) work in practice, but they do refer to an evaluation tool that helps guide the management of partnerships and to including LfS into a “whole school approach”.

This evaluation tool not only focuses on development education and partnerships, but on LfS as a whole, and asks the school to consider how LfS is integrated in the curriculum, specifically how the SDGs are part of the schools learning and whether both local and global connections are made. The tool suggests that a school has an advanced level of LfS when the school and teachers “actively work towards achieving the SDGs on a local and global scale” and learners “regularly have the opportunity to take effective and responsible action on local and global issues to promote social justice and sustainability within our school and into our wider community” (British Council 2019d). Partnerships with schools internationally can be supported to reach this level of learning.

The CC programme provides a second handbook, aimed at the co-ordinator of a cluster partnership. This type of partnership is made by a cluster of schools in Scotland and overseas. This handbook mentions that a partnership (within a cluster) is not without its challenges and the advice of CC is to make sure not just one teacher but a number of staff are involved from each school (British Council 2019e). This encourages to improve long-term sustainability as well as shares the workload.

When it comes to establishing and maintaining the international partnership, the handbook mentions that equality and reciprocity are important, although it doesn’t specify further on this. The handbook does reference additional information in a latter part of the handbook, which is supplied when a school enters the programme. This second handbook provides more specific information on what activities can be delivered and how within a cluster, as well as reflecting on different ways of working within a school cluster.

3.3 Scotland-Malawi Partnership – A Practical Guide to School Partnerships

The SMP has produced “A practical guide to school partnerships” (SMP 2019). This guidance provides advice on how to setup a partnership, which includes:

• Do background research
• Appoint a coordinator and include teachers and school leaders, parents and/or pupils to ensure long-term sustainability. Think about how the group will work together and how you will work with the partner school.
• Apply the ‘Partnership Principles’ as guidance. SMP provide a Partnership Principles worksheet that teachers can use.
• Broker a partnership by either becoming a member of the SMP (or MaSP if a Malawian school) and contact the SMP schools’ coordinator, or by signing up for Connecting Classrooms Programme
• Set up a partnership agreement, which includes the objectives of the partnership. These should be discussed openly beforehand. The agreement should furthermore include the activities both schools will undertake, a timescale, means of communication and roles and responsibilities

Once initial contact is made the SMP guidance also provides some thoughts on how to proceed. They highlight that there should be open communication from both sides on what each school wants to get out of the partnership. The documents make clear that it is not uncommon for Scottish schools to receive request from their Malawian partner school to support the school with material resources. SMP point out that providing material support can be a helpful exchange but they advocate that it should not be the sole purpose of the partnership, and that there should be an educational component embedded. Moreover, they point out that it is important to consider the educational impact of fundraisers events have in the wider (school) community.

The final section of the SMP handbook focuses on factors to consider once the partnership is established. These include: setting up good communication structures; sharing curriculums by setting up joint projects; tying fundraising to learning outcome; finding funding if visits to partner schools will be made, and; involving the wider community. For SMP focusing on educational benefits of the partnership makes “the relationship between schools more egalitarian and therefore more likely to endure” (SMP 2019 p.6). They suggest schools to look at the Connecting Classrooms programme for funding visits.

When it comes to visits the SMP guidelines suggest reflecting on the cost-benefit of a visit, and whether fundraising for the partner school in the developing country might not benefit the school more than a visit. They go on to say that reciprocal visits can greatly strengthen the partnership as well as personal development of teachers and pupils. They suggest schools will consider the impact, cost and planning of the visit and if going ahead to make sure learners are involved.

3.4 Twende Pamoja Trust – Developing Partnerships

On the website of the Twende Pamoja Trust the organisation provides a “guide to developing partnerships between schools in Tanzania and Scotland” (Twende Pamoja 2019b). Apart from breaking down the aim of building a partnership – understanding other cultures, respecting diversity, challenging injustice and understanding local-global interconnectedness – the guide breaks down the steps schools will have to undertake to build a partnership.

When starting a school partnership, the guide points out it should be a partnership for the whole school, not between individuals. It therefore states that it is important to embed the links into the school’s plan, because it can take some time to develop a sustainable relationship with a partner school. If a link is made, both schools will need to find out whether they have similar aims. The most successful partnerships, the guide claims, are those where staff are clear about what they expect from the partnerships and regularly review what they are doing and achieving.

The greatest benefit from a partnership according to this guidance comes from joint curricular activities and to take schools “beyond superficial comparisons, and [place] children’s learning at the centre of the partnership” (Twende Pamoja 2019b). The guide recommends to start small, with short topics, linked to global issues of sustainability, such as water, food, transport or recycling. These issues are often of shared interest and experience between the two schools. In time, these topics can become more complex and talks progress to more challenging issues such as equality, citizenship and democracy. There are many ways of sharing activities on these topics, but the guide suggests that through expressive art or as a shared enterprise activity can be particularly effective.

There is a short section on school visits. The main conclusion is the “key to their success is that the outcomes from the exchange benefit the whole school community – not just those participating” (Twende Pamoja 2019b). Moreover, they advocate that visits should take place once the “groundwork” of establishing the partnership has been achieved and the working relationship is strong.

3.5 Oxfam – Building Successful School Partnerships

Oxfam provides several guides on their website on global learning in general, on fundraising and on partnerships. The latter, their guidance on partnerships is referenced by several other organisations. The “Building Successful School Partnerships” guide (Oxfam 2007) aims to help schools avoid pitfalls by understanding the essential elements of a partnership and exploring how a partnership can contribute to global learning. The guide states that: a good partnership can motivate learners; increase their understanding of how local and global are connected; appreciate diversity, and; inspire a desire for positive change or to fight injustice (Oxfam 2007). However, the guide is clear that there is risks that these goals are not met and points out that some partnership might even undermine these goals and close minds instead of opening them. The guidance details some of the risk of focusing on differences and promoting pity, which might actually reinforce stereotypes, cultivate paternalistic attitudes and eventually fail to examine global issues of injustice and inequality (Oxfam 2007). With this in mind this Oxfam guidance provides four elements that are important to ensure a partnership builds global citizenship (Oxfam 2007, p.4):

• Commitment to an equal partnership with educational aims;
• Commitment to partnership learning through the curriculum;
• Effective communications;
• Good whole-school practice in Education for Global Citizenship.

To reach an equal partnership the guide points to ongoing dialogue, where imbalances and objectives are acknowledged. Moreover, understanding that equal does not mean the same, as each school will have different educational priorities, structures and curricula that have to be taken into account. The guide asks teachers to consider their own and the partner school’s motivation for establishing the partnership and examine these motivations openly and critically. Throughout the Oxfam guide reflective questions are raised, to help teachers think critically about their partnerships.

To make sure partnerships lead to good educational outcomes, Oxfam states that learning needs, need to be embedded through the curriculum and global citizenship included in the school’s mission. However, they advocate for starting small, with a couple of curriculum areas to ensure quality, and ensure that there is strong professional development support for teachers before expanding further.

The guide then goes on to provide suggestions for building teaching that enhances global learning. Six building blocks are given: exploring global interdependence; exploring our own identities; exploring and challenging perceptions; developing media literacy; thinking critically about poverty and; exploring rights. Overall, the guide states that there should be a willingness to tackle sensitive and controversial issues. The guide points out that even if the partnership has an educational aim, the question of financial aid will probably come up. Oxfam’s advice is to reject charitable aims, but instead ask the question ‘how can we support each other?’. Moreover, they point out that schools can think about fundraising to support the partnership itself.

The Oxfam guide is focused on the general structure, goals and motivations for a partnership, and says less about teacher and student exchanges. However, it does ask teachers to reflect on the following questions when it comes to making visits: Are exchange visits genuinely reciprocal and mutually beneficial? What is their impact on each partner – in economic, social, cultural, political and environmental terms? (Oxfam 2007, p.5)

3.6 Build – Partnership Toolkit

Build is a network of organisations that promotes the creation of partnership. They describe their goal as “bring these partnerships into the mainstream in the UK to the point that no one can escape life without at some time being touched by an international, cross-cultural partnership …” (Build n.d. a). Even though it is unclear from their website whether the network is still active, they have a lot of resources on partnerships on their website that can be valuable for teachers when thinking about setting up a partnership. The website provides a “toolkit for linking”, which is broken down in several leaflets.

A partnership is described in this toolkit as mutually sportive and built on fairness, support and trust. It “should not be about charity and should not be dominated by one partner” (Build n.d b). The leaflet states that to build a real partnership out of a link is requires time, commitment, openness and honesty and people will have to have a willingness to share and learn from each other. It provides a list of questions and issues partners should consider when forming a partnership, such as roles and responsibilities, values, accountability and evaluation.

There is a specific leaflet in the toolkit that focuses on school linking (Build n.d. c). The guide points out that school links can enable students and teachers to share learning as well as provide an opportunity to reflect on their attitudes and increase understanding of different perspectives and challenge stereotypes. However, the guide also acknowledges that establishing a partnership can be challenging, therefore, to make sure the partnership is sustainable the guide suggest that a school must make sure to have at least: 1) senior management involvement; 2) a link management committee; 3) include the link in the school development plan; 4) have plans for sustainability and continuity; 4) makes sure there is teacher training on global dimension, and; 5) make sure resources (time, energy and money) are available. If a school cannot provide these 5 things, the guide suggests not to start a partnership.

The guide follows with a couple more lists of aspects schools should be aware about. It makes a distinction between resource rich and resource poor countries, where resource rich countries will have to engage with global issues and interdependence, acknowledge the legacy of colonial relationships, take care not to lead the agenda, avoid representations of partner as poor and avoid engagement of pupils on fundraising for ‘poor’ partners. Resource poor countries, should amongst others create opportunities to reciprocate, recognise what they can offer the partnership and explore perceptions of what the relationship means to each partner.

Another leaflet focused on visits and exchanges (Build n.d. d). This leaflet recognises the benefits visits can give, especially in establishing and sustaining a strong partnership relations. Yet, it also recognizes that visits may reinforce stereotypes, or show an imbalance when visits are not reciprocal. To avoid this, the leaflet advocates careful planning which includes a pre-visit programme. It also suggests that both partners reflect on their own reasons, but also those of their partner, for organising a visit and make sure they both share the same objectives of the visit. The leaflet then goes through all the steps of organising a visit.

3.7 FORUM – The Global Standard for Volunteer Development

Forum is a network for volunteering organisations. This year they published “The Global Standard for Volunteer Development” (Forum 2019). The Standard is voluntary, but agreed upon by stakeholders all over the world “with the aim of improving the outcomes of volunteering for development activities, ensuring organisations that work through and with volunteers are both impactful and responsible in their practice” (Forum 2019, p.4). While this Standard is not focused on school links or exchanges, part of Volunteer Development is global citizenship development by volunteers and some of the projects and activities these organisations offer, are similar to the activities schools undertake when visiting a developing country. The Standard is therefore included in this overview.

The Standard wants to make sure volunteering is impactful and responsible. Impactful means it “delivers measurable and sustainable improvements for poor and marginalised communities”; responsible refers to the fact that “volunteering activities are locally-identified and designed to respond to the needs of communities as defined by those communities” (Forum 2019, p.4). These aims are explored in four themes “designing and delivering projects”, “duty of care”, “managing volunteers” and “measuring impact”. In each of these themes key actions and indicators are described. The Standards are extensive and for individual linkages, where schools visit a developing country through organisations such as ‘Classrooms for Malawi’ or ‘Vinetrust’, are likely to be over-burdensome. However, these Standards are useful for schools to check whether the organisation through which they liaise, follows the standards. Moreover, there are a couple of actions and indicators which are relevant for a school to think about, especially when it comes to establishing more expansive partnerships.

The most important action or commitment that the Standard advocates is to ensure that communities, organisations and volunteers collaboratively design a project which responds to community needs. The Standard also states it should be effectively delivered, with impact and sustainable outcomes. This commitment is broken down to key actions and indicators that include: building strong relationships; ensure continued input from community; design volunteer roles that meet the identified needs but do not take away from local employment, and; ensuring the project delivers development impact, long-term sustainability and environmental protection. It also put emphasis on the need to evaluate the project and learn from outcomes.

Part of the Standard focuses on safeguarding and duty of care. It is interesting to note here that the actions include that “organisations do not work with companies that have orphanages and other residential care centres incorporated (or with the possibility to incorporate) in tourism programmes or packages”, or “do not allow or facilitate one-off and short-term visits to orphanages or residential care facilities for children” (Forum 2019, p.16). Looking through blogs and pictures on pupil visits of Scottish schools there have been schools that have visited care centres. Wilson’s (2019) also included an example of a group visiting an orphanage, which reinforced stereotypical images of poverty and development needs. It would be good to understand more both on the motivation of schools to visit care centres as well as the reasoning behind the Standards guideline to not allow one-off or short-term visits and make schools aware of them.

3.8 NHS Scotland Global Citizenship– Doing it Well

The NHS Global Citizenship guidance provides advice about “how to get involved in Global Citizenship” (Scottish Government 2019, p.4) for NHS staff. The guidance also discusses health partnership stressing that these partnerships are based “on ideas of co-development between people and institutions from different countries” (Scottish Government 2019, p.16). While the NHS global citizenship guide obviously covers a different sector than secondary school education, their guidance on partnerships and volunteering has relevance. This guidance advocates the collaborative working model of the Tropical Health and Education Trust (THET) principles of Partnership. These included: making sure it is strategic, with a shared vision and long-term aims that are jointly agreed; partnerships should be harmonised and aligned, consistent with local and national plans; partnerships should be effective and sustainable, achieving long-term results; partnerships should be respectful and reciprocal; organised and accountable; responsible; flexible and innovative, and; lastly there should be a commitment to joint learning.

The guide states that when volunteering with a charity or organisation (rather than a partnership), it is good practise to research the organisation beforehand to make sure that the organisation “have processes and support in place for collaborative partnership working, and ethical volunteering” (Scottish Government 2019, p.21). The guide includes a list of questions such as “Is the work community led?” and “Is the organisation’s vision based on social justice?” when considering a project or organisation to volunteer with.

3.9 Comparing the Guides

3.9.1 Developing a Good Partnership

The different partnership and volunteering guides discussed above show a large overlap in the proposals they make for good partnership working. These are also largely in line with the recommendations from the literature. The recommendations from the guides can be broadly categorised under four themes: reciprocal and equal relations; joint educational projects; sustainability; and fundraising. The next section will discuss each theme.

Reciprocal and Equal Relations - Advice in this category includes:

• Co-develop activities, make sure decisions and projects are mutually agreed and beneficial for both parties;
• Discuss expectations, aims, objectives and activities;
• Promote open communication and ongoing dialogue on expectations, needs and objectives;
• Acknowledge imbalances and the legacy of colonial relation.

All guides agree on the importance of making sure the voices of both partner schools are heard and included in the projects. The Oxfam and Build guide add that as equality is important in the partnership, it is also important to acknowledge power imbalances that exist between the global north and global south.

Joint Educational Projects - All guides agree on the main aim for the partnership, to set up joint educational projects. These educational projects should include:

• Exploring global interdependence and identities; challenging perceptions and thinking critically about poverty and injustice
• Working on topics of shared interest (e.g. global issues like climate change). Start small with a project on specific topic such as water, recycling and then start building it out: projects throughout curriculum and working on bigger themes such as equality
• Do not be afraid to tackling sensitive issues, and;
• Support teacher training on the global dimension of topics.

The Oxfam guide is most specific about advice on educational projects offering several building blocks teachers can use to develop activities, projects and modules. The Build toolkit specifically mentions the importance of professional development for teachers to be able to incorporate themes of global interdependence, poverty and injustice. This is also endorsed by the Connecting Classrooms programme, which offers professional learning.

The FORUM volunteering standard is an exception to the focus on educational projects, due to the organisations not exclusively focusing on school pupils. However, it is interesting to acknowledge that their main focus is delivering “measurable and sustainable improvements” while the academic literature questions whether (young) volunteers on short-term projects should aim for any development impact at all and a focus on intercultural learning would be more fitting.

Sustainability - An element that all guides mention is the need to make sure the partnership is sustainable, this includes:

• Time, commitment, and having available resources;
• Establish long-term aims;
• Having a whole school approach and including that in the school plan. The responsibility for this plan should be shared across the school(s), and not by one teacher who ends up managing the partnership;
• Involve the wider community.

The whole school approach is emphasised in all guides. The involvement of the wider community is only specifically mentioned in the SMP’s guide, although suggested activities in other guides also include reaching out into the school’s local community. The literature review showed that sustainability is actually often quite difficult for schools and is something reiterated by teachers when discussing some of the challenges they face with their partnership (see chapter 5).

Fundraising - The main advice on fundraising is to avoid it with some guides being more explicit than others. The Oxfam and Build guide both advise not to undertake charitable activities, although Oxfam’s guide also mentioned that fundraising for the sustainability of the partnership is an option. Other guides advise not to focus on fundraising as the main activity - which should be the educational projects - but if fundraising is included schools, should think about the educational impact.

This advice very much repeated in the academic literature, which is critical of the impact fundraising can have on global learning but promoting stereotypes and power imbalances. The literature however also acknowledges the inescapable fact that there are inequalities in resources between schools, which need to be given careful consideration during establishing a partnership and during school fundraisers the sustainability of the partnership.

Visits - Some of the guides also included some specific advice on visits:

• Think about the costs vs the benefit and reflect on the reasons for the visit. More specifically think about the impact economically, socially, culturally, politically and on the environment;
• Make sure visits are reciprocal to avoid bring imbalances to the partnership;
• Make sure visits are mutually beneficial and both partners share the objectives:
  • An important aspect to consider is that the activities should not take away from local employments;
• Include a pre-visit programme for those that will be part of the visit;
• Evaluate and learn from the impact and outcome of the visit;
• Do not include visits to orphanages or care facilities for children unless these are very carefully researched and any activities are fully justifiable.

What these guides show is there are well developed resources available for teachers to think about establishing a partnership and planning a visit. However, a key question remains, which is whether these guides find their way to schools and teachers for utilisation and at what stage in the partnerships/exchange process? These guides are valuable before a school exploring a relationship prior to any commitments. Interestingly the Education Scotland website, a key resource for Scottish schools, does not specifically link to any partnership guidance, or mentions some of the questions or areas that schools should be considering before establishing a partnership.

3.9.2 Aim of a Partnership

The guides all mention the aim of a partnership, such as to understand local-global connections, to learn about other cultures and challenge stereotypes. These aims encompass the definition of global learning: “being knowledgeable about global issues and one’s role within a global context, as well as possessing way of thinking that reflects and acknowledgement of social and environmental interdependencies and responsibilities that extends beyond personal and national boundaries.” (McGladdery and Lubbe 2017, p.294). What remains unexplored, however, is what a partnership specifically brings to global learning. There are some mentions of learning from direct examples and encouraging engagement, but there is little reflection on what exactly a partnership can bring to global learning.

In meetings held with organisations involved in partnership programmes, this question was also put forward: Is a partnership the most effective or best way to develop global learning, or in the Scottish context to develop learning for sustainability? A partnership takes a lot of investment from teachers, and requires whole school integration, including the curriculum, to make it sustainable and ensure its delivers on its educational focus. Moreover, as the Oxfam and Build guides point out, if a partnership does not include elements of education and critical thinking it might have the opposite effect and actually reinforce stereotypes. Build therefore states that if a school cannot facilitate a couple of key elements, they should reconsider a partnership. This goes for school trips as well. School trips often ask for lot of investment from teachers, including the time to fundraise with a risk that it reinforces power imbalances and stereotypical images of poverty and developing countries. As one development education expert mentioned, perhaps we should ask more often whether a partnership, or a trip, is always the best way to teach pupils about global citizenship?