School Linking
Building cultural awareness and understanding through international partnerships between schools.
International school partnerships are close to the heart of the UK National Commission.
The promotion of friendship, understanding and collaborations between nations is the foundation upon which UNESCO was built and exists. School linking supports these goals by enabling children to connect and communicate with peers in other cultures and countries and to engage in issues of global justice and development.
Cultivating an international dimension in education and support for Education for All forms an increasingly important part of government policy directives in the UK. The international education strategy document Putting the World into World Class Education (DFES 2004) recommends school linking as a way to contribute to school improvement and benefit individual students which also falls within the provision of Community Cohesion and Every Child Matters.
The potential of international school linking in the promotion of EFA, in our own locality and beyond, provides a further reason for the UKNC to support such links in its role of encouraging and supporting UNESCO-related activities in the UK.
In support of this, the UK National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) attended the Commonwealth Consortium conference on school linking in Cape Town, South Africa, in December 2006. Promoting School Partnerships, the resulting report by Education Committee member Bob Doe, highlighted that only a minority of UK schools have strong international links.
