Why should you do it?

• It enhances the curriculum and is a means of raising standards where learning is fun because it provides a new motivation and a fresh audience for learners’ work and interaction;
• It helps us to make our children true global citizens, not just members of our local and national communities;
• It helps learners to find out about and understand people from other countries – what drives them, what interests them and how they feel about us;
• It helps us to question the prejudices and predispositions that we have about others, about our perceptions and how we are perceived;
• It motivates learners to share with other people from other cultures our understanding of what’s important and what we want the future to be like;
• It helps us to understand global issues like poverty and AIDS and relate to these issues in a wider dimension;
• It develops the themes of partnership and friendship in a meaningful and positive way so that the curriculum focuses on real world situations and real people, not just what can be found in a book;
• In describing our values and priorities it helps us to make sense of who we are what we value;
• From 2008 Ofsted inspections will consider schools’ global linked work and from 2010 it will be a requirement for schools to show this is established;
• It’s too easy to be inward-looking and “mono-cultural” in our approach to learning and the curriculum, and the global dimension is something we all need to work on.

How do you go about it?

• There are three documents that you need to start: Developing the global dimension in the school curriculum (DCSF: enquiry@dfid.gov.uk); Putting the World into World Class Education (DCSF: from dfes@prolog.uk.com) and The global dimension in action (QCA: from orderline@qca.org.uk Read them!
• To learn what you can access quickly use the web and download what is interesting to you. Start with www.globalgateway.org which is a one-stop shop for dozens of documents and links. You can also download useful materials from www.teachernet.gov.uk/publications www.dea.org.uk/publications.html www.globaldimension.org.uk
• Investigate the possibilities of e twinning. To get started visit www.britishcouncil.org/etwinning which will give you lots of information. Talk to the UK National Support Service at the British Council etwinning@britishcouncil.org and register your school on eTwinning.net
• Consider registering your school for the International School Award. If you can meet simple criteria and can show at least three links you can retrospectively register for Foundation status. It just requires you to fill in a form on-line. If you can meet the criteria for Intermediate status you can also acquire this by just filling in a form, but you need to show at least seven links. For the full award you need to engage in some detailed work. To get started go to www.globalgateway.org
• Review your School Development Plan to see what potential there is for developing the global dimension. You could look at school websites where the school has worked hard on this. A good example is Lent Rise Combined School in Buckinghamshire. Look on Eduwight to find case studies and information on schools that have done a lot of work locally and talk to them. Find out what the best of them have done – they will be schools with an International School Award.

When should you start?

• What are you waiting for? Actually by reading this far you have already begun!
• Give yourself some goals and targets and get agreement and commitment on these at your school, especially from the school’s leaders.
• Inform the LA and talk to Di Christopher, headteacher at Sandown CE Primary School, who is chairperson of the LA’s Global Partnerships Steering Group.

Click below to access International Links:

		International Links with Pretoria, South Africa