The following article comes from Laura Neill, Class Teacher at Kirkhill Primary School, Scotland.
At Kirkhill Primary School we believe that it is important to embrace the wealth of cultures from our families and local community. We ensure inclusion is at the heart of decision-making and place huge importance on Global Education in order to widen the experiences of our pupils. We are taking action to improve consistency in language learning and are dedicated to preparing our children to become confident, successful Global Citizens.
We recognise the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals and the connections between STEM, children’s rights, global citizenship, pupil voice and family engagement. There is a fundamental need for our children to become involved in working towards these goals by connecting with organisations, agencies and schools across the world.
We strive to equip our pupils with the transferable skills, knowledge and understanding required to be successful and happy in society, allowing them to contribute and communicate effectively while making a positive impact in the world.
Global education aids us in embracing our school values of perseverance, diversity, optimism, unity, resilience and respect.
The Global School Alliance has allowed me to connect with like-minded teachers around the world and I have benefited immensely from the very high quality monthly conferences where amazing speakers inspire and instruct. I also attended the conference in London to celebrate 5 years of the Global School Alliance, which was invaluable in connecting with others and in the very high standard of distinguished speakers.
Since joining the GSA, we have written our own Global education policy which links to all areas of school life. We have joined two projects on the GSA platform and have forged links with a school in Spain. We are committed to embedding international education across our school and in sharing our journey with the school and local community. We have achieved the Bronze Award which is a great motivator, as we feel that we have begun our international journey at last.
We aim to develop our project work on the Global School Alliance platform, deepen our international links with other schools and begin to involve our school community in a range of ways. We are taking steps to support teachers in language teaching and are developing a relationship with the languages department in the local senior school in order to work together on our language provision at primary level.
We also aim to develop our transferable skills through a skills passport programme along with creativity and primary engineering in approaching world issues and the SDGs.
To learn more about the Global School Awards, visit: www.globalschoolalliance.com/global-school-awards/.
