Together

A bit of a mad dash from the city centre after leaving our young visitors from Blackpool at the Jain Centre. With our generic banner in tow, clutching a bunch of our leaflets on the eight communities represented on the Council of Faiths, I'm off to Beauchamp College, Oadby, this afternoon, to take part in its annual inter-faith event for students, parents, staff and members of the wider local community. This year it's all going on under the title, "Together". The college has an enviable record in promoting a broad, inclusive and welcoming outlook among its students and staff. It's probably the leading educational institution in the county in terms of inculcating a global perspective in all aspects of its life. I first learned about their good work in this field through our mutual involvement with the East Midlands Network on Global Perspectives in Schools (EMNGPS) and Global Education LeicesterShire (GELS). There are active, vibrant cultural and faith societies among the student body and I spend time talking with some of their members here. I also take the opportunity today to make positive contact with Oadby & Wigston Hindu Community and Oadby & Wigston Muslim Association, both of which are exhibiting here today. I can see no reason why members of these groups shouldn't be invited to join in the public activities of Leicester Council of Faiths, such as our Leicester Speaks dialogue events or the exhibition in Highcross during National Inter Faith Week. After all, several members of the Council of Faiths itself live in this part of the county, rather than in the city, and many members of these groups live or study in the city - giving them all a stake in the promotion of good relations among the faith communities in both places.

This event has been organised by Chris Swann, who played the major part in having Oadby recognised as a Fairtrade town. She has created a website for Oadby, which you can access here:
http://www.oadbyweb.org.uk/

Find out more about Beauchamp College:
http://www.beauchamp.leics.sch.uk/

SO, FAREWELL THEN EMNGPS

At the Kayal South Indian restaurant, Granby Street, for a farewell dinner in honour of Rohini Corfield and Annette Jarvis, who have been running the East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools (EMNGPS). Involvement with EMNGPS loomed large in the first year or so of my post and helped shape what I do to this day. I first met Rohini when we were both new in post, at a seminar run by the Runnymede Trust on the role of faith schools in promoting community cohesion. When I saw the name of the organisation she was representing there, I fastened myself to her and after that, took every opportunity to be involved in anything I could that EMNGPS was running or helping out with. This led to more regular involvement with Global Education LeicesterShire (which started life as EMNGPS's "locality group" for the city and county. My ongoing association with GELS and its members is well documented, in this blog and elsewhere.

The support I got from EMNGPS as an organisation, and from its staff as colleagues and friends, contributed a lot to the sustainability of my post. I made sure that the EMNGPS logo went on the leaflets and posters produced by Leicester Council of Faiths during this time, in acknowledgment of this positive association with EMNGPS. My involvement with them opened many doors for me that I could not have opened by myself.

Halfway through what was supposed to be a guaranteed ten-year long supported programme, the Department of International Development (DfID) earlier this year pulled funding from its national network of Development Education Centres and the regional organisations that supported them. In virtually one and the same breath it congratulated EMNGPS for being arguably the most successful of these regional bodies and withdrew its financial lifeline, effective from the end of August 2010. Efforts were made to save EMNGPS, of course, but they have been to no avail. Another useful and distinctive educational service for the teachers, pupils and students at schools in Leicester and Leicestershire has been lost. Now we can only hope that the kind of work that EMNGPS has been doing can be carried on by other people through other means. EMNGPS leaves a considerable, powerful and positive legacy and there are lots of us who won't let that just dwindle away to nothing.

Good luck Rohini and Annette - we'll miss you!

guess who's coming to dinner

To Scalford Hall, Melton Mowbray, this evening for dinner and networking at a residential conference for the East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools (EMNGPS). Delegates are attending from a variety of organisations across the East Midlands (and some from further afield) working to promote global citizenship in various forms with schools, teachers and pupils. Organisations represented at this event include:

• Brocks Hill Primary School
• CfBT Education Trust
• Coaching for Hope
• Derbyshire County Council
• East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools
• Education for Sustainable Development Schools Working Group
• Global Education Derby
• Global Education LeicesterShire
• The Discovery Centre
• Leicester Botanical Gardens
• Leicester Masaya Link Group
• Leicestershire County Council
• Lifeworlds Learning
• MUNDI
• NASUWT
• Northamptonshire County Council
• Nottingham City
• Skillshare International
• Studentforce for Sustainability
• University of Leicester

Despite the fact that EMNGPS has performed very well (indeed, the East Midlands has arguably been the most successful of all English regions in promoting the global dimension in schools), the Department for International Development has pulled funding from its national network halfway through a ten-year funding stream. Another tranche of funding has become available, but it's not in a form that could allow the work to continue in its present form. Many of the people and groups here at this event have banded together to put in a collective bid for new funding - we eagerly await the outcome of that bid.

Many of the people here are leading figures in fields of primary, secondary, further and higher education across the East Midlands - and they are the type of people who are minded to favour issues of equality, diversity and human rights. So this is a fruitful environment for me to promote the work of the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership (REDP), especially as it relates to young people - an area for which I currently have special responsibility. Although EMNGPS itself is living on borrowed time, these individuals and (most of) the institutions they represent won't disappear and could be drawn on in a variety of ways to support REDP's mission.

Dinner was very nice; almost everyone took their desserts into the TV lounge to watch the third and final election debate. I was having none of that though and didn't get up from the table. But I couldn't resist peeping at Twitter every so often to see some of the wry, amusing or despairing postings about the debate there.

Find out more about the East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools:
http://www.emngps.org.uk/

Find out more about Scalford Hall Management Training Centre and Hotel:
http://www.scalfordhall.co.uk/

GLOBAL EDUCATION LEICESTER-SHIRE SPRING TERM MEETING

To Castle Rock High School, Coalville, this afternoon, for the spring term meeting of Global Education Leicester-Shire (GELS).

We get a detailed report from Kerry Major on the Community cohesion project that ran at Castle Rock and Newbridge high schools in the week beginning 22 March. The Council of Faiths lent its exhibition to the schools for the first three days of that week.

Rohini Corfield, manager of the East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools (EMNGPS) presents an update on funding support from the Department for International Development (DfID) - or rather the end of it. Following a recent series of reviews done at the behest of DfID, EMNGPS was praised as a very good example for promoting the global dimension in schools - in particular for its success in building capacity, encouraging partnership working and involving organisations form across all sectors. However, this was not found to be the case throughout the country. This kind of work in other regions was felt not to be delivering value for money, so DfID decided to stop all funding nationally. Despite the fact that EMNGPS was in the middle of an agreed funding stream with DfID till April 2013, no money will be forthcoming after the end of August. DfID have put up a new multi-million pound tender, for "Global Education England". We won't know the likely outcome of any bids for this tranche of funding till the end of May.

Noel Singh, Policy Officer with Leicestershire County Council, speaks about a new website promoting community cohesion for schools, which went live just as this meeting started. You can see this website here:

The meeting ends with discussion of the forthcoming Summer Showcase event for GELS at Southfield Library on Tue 29 June. There's a nice little (underused) theatre at the library and it would be nice to do something in there.

GLOBAL DIMENSION IN SCHOOLS

To the School of Education, in Fraser Noble Hall at the University of Leicester, where I’m presenting a workshop as part of a training event for PGCE primary school teachers: “Education for the 21st Century – Incorporating the Global Dimension”. The Global Dimension is an educational initiative supported by the Department for International Development, which has grown out of earlier programmes developing themes of citizenship and community cohesion in our schools. In a nutshell, it encourages children to have a wider perspective on the world in which they live and instills in schoolchildren a sense of awe and wonder at our planetary home. It is meant to be embedded across the curriculum, campus and culture of schools.

Making the Global Dimension a central part of school life means equipping children to live in a world of change, in which they will have to live with intensification of issues that earlier generations may not have had to address: climate change; biodiversity loss; air pollution; terrestrial system weakening (deforestation, desertification, agricultural overuse); poverty; inequality; debt; conflict; pandemics. These are often described as “megaproblems”; how much of this can we burden children with? Teachers and schools have to help children respond to these megaproblems in ways that are that are positive, hopeful and energising. It’s a strange thing to be doing, on a number of levels and we’re all very self-conscious of this. We’re helping train teachers who will prepare children for adult life in a world that we can barely imagine. These teachers, qualifying at the start of the second decade of the 21st century will be in charge of children who could easily be living into the start of the 22nd. Given what’s happened over the last 100 years, how can we conceive of what might take place in the next? It beggars belief and baffles the imagination. But whatever we’re passing on to the next generation, we can’t make them a gift of apathy, disinterest or fatalism. Many of the difficulties that we see bubbling up now will hit them with full force – heaven help them.

The “Global Dimension” in education has eight key concepts: global citizenship; sustainable development; human rights; interdependence; conflict resolution; social justice; diversity; values and perceptions. The workshops are designed to try and cover all these principles. The workshop I’m presenting is entitled, “The Globe on Our Doorstep”. It’s my intention to help these trainee teachers to consider ways to use the presence of faith communities in and around the city as an educational resource to help further the global dimension, presenting them as being of interest and relevance to the school and its wider "family", to show how we might discover their unity and celebrate their diversity. Other workshops on offer today:

• Developing Thinking and Enquiry Skills Through Philosophy for Children (Clare Carr)
• The Global Dimension Accessed Through the Outdoor Classroom (Claire Plumb)
• Sustainable Schools and the Global Dimension in the Classroom and Curriculum (Phil & Barbara Smith);
• Global Education Through School Linking (Helen Trilling)
• Using Play to Bring Home the Global Dimension (Paul & Alice Warwick)

There are about 120 student teachers attending. They get to pick two workshops to fill their afternoon, so we all present our one-hour session twice, to 15 of them at a time.

This is the third time I've contributed to this sort of event at the University of Leicester. Involvement in the East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools has been a constant feature from the earliest days of my post with Leicester Council of Faiths. Given the state of our world – and its possible future – it might be argued that there is no part of our children’s education that’s more important than this. But right now it looks like there will be no funding for this programme from the middle of 2010 onward. Now that can’t be right, can it?