PARTNERSHIPS

For any school, communication with parents is essential, but finding the best way to do this can sometimes be quite difficult. The traditional route of the letter sent home, as you might expect, has fallen out of favour due to the number of notes lost crumpled in the bottom of school bags. We’ve also found that SMS communication wasn’t all that effective either, as parents found it too intrusive due to the sheer volume of text messages sent. One parent, Daniel, told us: “You would get every single update for all 400 pupils at the school to do with classes, events and activities; it was a lot of information at once.”

How best to build pedagogic bridges across the world? We recently had a lively Skype conversation with Stewart Cook (Frances Olive Anderson Primary School in Lincolnshire) and Myassar Al Itani (Mohammad Shamel State School in Beirut) on their award-winning, transglobal partnership. The two educators were meeting at a Connecting Classrooms event in Amman, Jordan, and were keen to tell us about the power of such a collaboration….

Today, Innovate My School were approved as official BESA members by the organisation's executive council. The trade association for the world's leading educational suppliers, BESA operate on a not-for-profit basis and has an 80-year heritage serving the UK education sector, representing over 300 educational suppliers in the UK. Innovate My School will be using this new alliance as a chance to bring even more edu-insights to its audience than ever before.

The internet and modern transport offer unprecedented opportunities for pupils to learn about - and even experience - faraway countries, their peoples and different cultures. As part of a study in global community cohesion, we heard from the international co-ordinator at George Abbot School, a state secondary in Guilford, about the benefits of its partnerships with schools in different parts of the world.

George Abbot, which has held the International School Award since 2003, has links with schools in France, Germany, Canada, Tanzania, China, India and South Africa. These partnerships have enabled its pupils to experience different cultures and engage in some truly inspiring programmes.

Careers Education, Impartial Advice and Guidance, Work Related Learning and Enterprise are all subjects when done well require input from employers. Previously there has been a plethora of organisations who were placed to be that link between education and employers, EBP’s who could put on a Careers Fair, Dragons' Den or Work Experience programme to meet the needs of the school. Sadly, in many cases they have gone, and so too has the budget to buy in such services.

Schools are left with a choice: to continue to deliver an enriched programme of learning or to bring it down to the statutory basics and offer a very limited CE/IAG curriculum. In some schools it is the fear of the planning and employer engagement that leads this decision.

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