AN ULVERSTON school has formed a special relationship with a primary school in Ethiopia.

Jane Newby from Church Walk C.E. Primary School has forged a partnership with Dandii Boru Primary School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia as part of Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning, a unique global education programme.

The school is taking part in the programme as part of a cluster of schools, including Sir John Barrow Primary School, Croftlands Junior School and George Romney Junior School, because of its commitment to preparing young people to make a positive contribution to their world.

Students are working with their counterparts in Ethiopia on an exciting project learning about one of the UN’s Sustainability Goals: Quality Education. This has been particularly relevant to the children due to the changes in education caused by Covid-19.

Jane Newby from Church Walk C.E. Primary School said, “We were keen to develop the children’s understanding of interdependence of people around the world and skills of communication and problem solving through the Connecting Classrooms project. It has been great to celebrate our progress today with a visit from our local MP, Mr Simon Fell and Hayley Coyne, a representative from the British Council. The children have had the opportunity to take part in a Zoom call with students in our partner school, share their work with Mr Fell and we have been awarded the International Schools Award.”

As part of the Connecting Classrooms programme, Jane Newby from Church Walk C.E. Primary School planned to take part in an exchange visit with the partner school to share experiences and success in teaching and implementing global learning in both schools. However, this has had to be postponed due to Covid.

Mrs Newby said: “We hope to be able to arrange the exchange visit in the future but in the meantime, we are communicating through emails and Zoom meetings. The children have enjoyed meeting each other virtually and writing letters. All schools involved in our cluster have completed work considering what education was like before, during and after lockdown. The children thought about challenges and solutions and our students thought that working outside more would enable them to be more active and work in groups more easily. As a consequence of the children’s ideas, we have arranged ‘Field Days’ where each class takes it in turn to use our school field for outside learning.The children were interested to find out that many of the challenges we have faced through lockdown have been similar for those in our partner school.”