SO. FAREWELL THEN, CLARE CARR

At Southfields Library (AKA "Pork Pie Library") this afternoon for one of Global Education Leicester-Shire's celebrated Strawberry Teas. These are known far and wide as jolly liitle affairs, but there's mixed feelings at this one. It's a farewell do for Clare Carr, Schools Worker at GELS and one of its two part-time employees (on the left in the photo above, with Claire Plumb, Development Worker at GELS).

For the past eight years Clare has been a mainstay of Global Education Leicester-Shire and its predecessor, East Midlands Network for Global Perspectives in Schools (EMNGPS) Leicester and Leicestershire Locality Group. She's also been a leading proponent of Philosophy for Children (P4C) and Fairtrade initiatives throughout the city and county and is currently one of two joint co-ordinators for Philosophy in Pubs in Leicester.

Many of the people here today have given their support to GELS, EMNGPS (and directly or indirectly, Leicester Council of Faiths) in helping broaden the horizons of children, teachers, families and communities. We've done a lot of good work together over the years and it saddens me to think that this may be the last time many of us will be in the same room together. Still, there's little time for that, as we join in the party fun, including pass the parcel (photo below). And of course, the food is delightful, featuring virtually every edible use of strawberries than you could imagine!

Clare is moving on to a job based in one of the city's schools, starting at the end of August. Those who recognise and appreciate the contribution she's made to the current good name of Leicester Council of Faiths - either by her own direct efforts or by supporting mine - will wish her well in her new post.

GLOBAL EDUCATION LEICESTER-SHIRE TERMLY MEETING

At Southfields Library (AKA Pork Pie Library) for the autumn term meeting of Global Education Leicester-Shire (GELS).

There are 24 people in attendance today, representing a number of schools, charitable and educational organisations, as well as practitioners and consultants from city, county and further afield. Schools represented include:

• Crown Hills Community College, Leicester
• The Meadow Community Primary School, Wigston
• Newbold C.E, Primary School, Newbold Coleorton
• Outwards Edge Primary School, Loughborough
• Snareston Primary School, Snareston
• St Cuthberts C.E. Primary School, Great Glen
• St John Fisher, Wigston
• St Joseph's Catholic Prmiary School, Market Harborough
• Westfield Infants School, Hinckley

Global citizenship activity

We’re given an ice-breaker activity: “What does being a Global Citizen mean to you?”. This is taken from a UNICEF resource called “Just Living”, a secondary school resource pack to help young people develop a rights-based approach to economic well-being. Many of the activities can be adapted for use with KS2, post-16 students and adults.

Part 1: In groups, come up with one word beginning with each letter of the alphabet to describe the qualities and beliefs that a global citizen would have, including attitudes, skills, values, actions, feelings and knowledge.  Here’s a summary of the words that the groups came up with (see if you can identify my contributions, faithful reader):

A	All of us, awareness, aspirational, all-embracing, acceptance, appreciation, ambitious
B	Broad minded, better citizen, understanding…, bi-lingual, bothered, brave
C	Cultural, communication, co-operative, caring, courageous
D	Diversity, democratic, diverse, daring, determined
E	Equality, equal, empathetic, evaluative, education
F	Freedom, fairness, fair, fair (trade)
G	Growth, global, good citizen, giving, go-getting, globally aware
H	Happy, healthy, hospitable, helpful, hopeful, horizons
I	Interdependent, intelligence, inspirational, international, interested, inquisitive, inclusive
J	Joining up, justice
K	Knowledge, knowledgeable, kind
L	Links, learning, linking, love, languages
M	Multi-cultural, motivated
N	Not alone, neighbour, negotiator, nice, not prejudiced
O	Overseas, ownership, opportunities, open-mindedness, open
P	Partnerships, pragmatic, people, prospects
Q	Questioning, quality, quick to respond, quest for knowledge and understanding
R	Responsibility, relationships, responsible, resourceful, resilient
S	Sharing, safety, sustainable, smiley, searching
T	Team work, trust, tolerant, travelled
U	Understanding, unifying, universal, ungreedy
V	Versatile, variety, values, vision, vivacious, vibrant
W	Well-being, worldly, willing to help, willingness to learn, develop and change
X	Exciting, xenophobia-challenging,
Y	Youthful approach, youth aware, young at heart, yearning
Z	Zeal, zoologically considerate,

Part 2: Choose the 3 words that seem most important to the members of your group and write a definition of a global citizen using those 3 words.  Here are the definitions that each group wrote:

• “All of us are global citizens.  We are not alone, but share responsibility.”
• “A global citizen is someone who builds trust and learns to understand their neighbours.”
• “A global citizen is someone who is open-minded enough to promote equality and sustainability.”
• “A global citizen is a person who is empathetic, hopeful and who challenges xenophobia.”
• “A global citizen is someone who is tolerant of diversity and difference, is aware of the reasons for this and understands that they can make a difference.”

Opportunities for schools

The formal part of the programme closed with the presentation of a number of opportunities for schools. Here are those opportunities and the groups and individuals who presented them (including mine):

The Mighty Creatives (Sarah Bailey)

This year, The Mighty Creatives has places to work with 11 clusters of schools on child-centred, creative school improvement. We want to help schools support improvement in learning and each cluster will be different according to your individual needs. So far, clusters focus on Literacy, Parental Engagement and Curriculum Development. We’d love to come and speak to school about how this offer can benefit their group of schools.

Christian Aid East Midlands (Judi Perry, Catherine Garsed)

All our Christian Aid resources, ranging from our paper resources, such as classroom activities and games, all the way up to our human resources such as coming in to run sessions or workshops, are completely free. If you would like to get in contact with us please either ring our office on 01509 265013 or email us; we would love to hear from you! Resources include simulation games and an interactive whiteboard resource. Primary topics include Fairtrade, Global Citizenship, Water and Sanitation. Secondary topics include peace and poverty. A resource is being developed around the 2012 Olympics and Global Citizenship. Catherine has a particular interest in Modern Foreign Languages.

International Linking (Helen Trilling)

Helen is International Links Officer for Leicestershire County Council, working with county and city schools to help them develop partnerships all over the world. Most of the programmes/awards are now being run by the British Council. There is still some funding (mostly EU) available to support international school linking, but many of the programmes are coming to an end so Helen’s advice was to apply whilst the funding still exists. Helen’s presentation covered:

• The Comenius Programme
• Comenius multilateral school partnerships
• Partner finding and resources
• The International Schools Award

During the meeting, Helen was able to match up a Snareston Primary School with a school in Nepal with a view to developing a school link. Congratulations!

Global Learning for Community Cohesion (Linda Barker)

Linda has been working on the Global Learning for Community Cohesion Project, which was funded by the Department for International Development for 3 years. The project aim is to find the common ground between two agendas – global learning and community cohesion. It has been run through a partnership between the host organisation (Global Education Derby), the Schools Linking Network and Lifeworlds Learning. The outcome of the project is a web resource with activities for use in primary classrooms and CPD, suitable for staff meetings and dedicated sessions.

National Interfaith Week (George Ballentyne)

Third national Inter Faith Week will be celebrated in England, Wales and Northern Ireland from Sunday 20 to Saturday 26 November. Inter Faith Week is organised nationally by the Inter Faith Network UK. It has three main aims:

• Strengthening good inter faith relations at all levels;
• Increasing awareness of the different and distinct faith communities in the UK, in particular celebrating and building on the contribution which their members make to their neighbourhood and to wider society;
• Increasing understanding between people of religious and non-religious beliefs.

Leicester Council of Faiths is sponsoring a number of activities and events during this week, including an inter faith exhibition in Highcross shopping centre incorporating the new Faiths Trail created by the University of Leicester and De Montfort University and a photographic exhibition at the People’s Photographic Gallery (previously the Central Lending Library in Leicester). Details of these events are listed on a PDF flyer, which will be sent out with these minutes.

Food For Thought Project (Claire Plumb)

The Food for Thought programme, now in its eighth year, will be running from 30 January to 3 February and 17 to 21 September 2012. This programme is offered by the Leicester Masaya Link Group and the University of Leicester Botanic Gardens. Aimed at Years 5, 6 and 7, Food for Thought offers an interactive approach to global citizenship and brings Leicester's town-twinning link, with Masaya in Nicaragua (Central America), to life in a day of activities at the University of Leicester Botanic Gardens. Here, pupils encounter a wide range of plants that grow in Nicaragua's tropical environment and discover how these are used in food, medicine and crafts.

Endeavour Learning Centre (Nilesh Chohan)

Nilesh is Curriculum Enrichment Advisor for Leicester City Learning Services. He is based at the Endeavour Learning Centre, which is part of the National Space Centre. Workshops and programmes for pupils in KS 2/3 include Rocket Engineering, Asteroid Impact on Earth and Astronaut Training. CPD for teachers on raising standards in mathematics by enriching the learning environment is also available.

Global School Partnerships: Bangladesh Conference (Clare Carr)

A reminder that the British Council is holding a training day and conference for schools looking to develop a global school partnership with a school in Bangladesh on Tuesday 29 November in Leicester at the Campanile Hotel, Leicester LE1 3JE. The conference is not only free to attend but schools can also apply for a £250 starter grant to help you attend. Further information can be found at http://www.dfid.gov.uk/get-involved/in-your-school/global-school-partnerships/get-started/apply-for-a-starter-grant/

Please follow the link below for further information and course bookings:

http://www.dfid.gov.uk/get-involved/in-your-school/global-school-partnerships/start-to-build-your-partnership/country-partner-finding-conferences/

Rajkot Twinning Association (Bharat Patel)

Leicester is twinned with Rajkot in India. The Twinning Association is making links with 25 schools in Rajkot. If any school is interested in making a link, please contact Bharat. The group will be running kite-making workshops in preparation for the traditional kite flying festival on 14 January.

SEAL and the Global Dimension (Roz Folwell)

This is an area of interest for Roz and she is keen to make links with primary and secondary schools to explore this.

SLIDE CHARLIE BROWN, SLIDE!

I pop into Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre this morning, to pick up another bunch of brochures (the November one, with our Faiths Film Festival in it). I want to put these into packs for people attending the Global Education Leicester-Shire (GELS) termly meeting at Southfields Library this afternoon.

By chance, I bump into Andy Jones, Phoenix Square's Programme Manager, with whom I worked on the Faiths Film Festival. When he asks me how it's all going, I chance my arm and ask if we could get a slide (or "slate") made up for projection immediately before each of the five films, saying something like "This film is being shown to mark Inter Faith Week (20-26 November 1911) and for the 25th anniversary of Leicester Council of Faiths".

I tell Andy that I know I'm going out on a limb on this one, that they've done plenty already - but he appears to really like the idea and almost finishes my sentence for me! I should trust my instincts more often (and our pop-up banner is still on show at the box office).

SACRE AT QUAKER MEETING HOUSE

Leicester SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) meets this afternoon at the Quaker Meeting House, Queens Road. A speedy taxi ride gets me here from Global Education Leicester-Shire's strawberry tea at Southfields Library, just as the meeting starts at 1645.

One of the main purposes of Leicester SACRE is to receive requests for "Determinations" from city schools. If the headteacher of a school feels that the provision of collective worship within the broadest interpretation of the law is not suitable for that particular school, then the headteacher should consider whether it might be appropriate to ask SACRE to grant a "determination" in accordance with the law. A determination is the decision of SACRE whether it's appropriate to lift the requirement for wholly or mainly broadly Christian collective worship to be provided for the school, or any class or description of pupils at the school, having regard to any circumstances relating to the family background of the pupils for which the determination is requested. The SACRE must review the determination if the school so requests and, in any event, within five years of the date when the determination was made or last reviewed. Members of SACRE discuss such requests in fixed blocks, reflecting their own interests and associations before voting on whether or not to grant the determination. Today we hear a Determination application from the Head Teacher of Catherine Junior School, supported by the Chair of the school's governors.

Leicester Council of Faiths attends meetings of SACRE as an invited observer; we have the right to speak and query, and can get involved in all sorts of activities and projects, but we don't vote on determinations or any other processes.

Among the activites that consitute the "Core Service" that Leicester Council of Faiths delivers for the City, we are requested to "Contribute fully to the SACRE". One of the ways that we've been doing this recently is by helping develop a set of booklets with the series title, "Engaging with Faith Communities in Leicester". Today we see how these booklets have progressed from their paper form, as Ben Robinson from Leicester City Council gives a quick introduction to how they will appear in their electronic format.

Following on from that, I've been asked to give a short presentation about the features and benefits of creating and developing a blog for Leicester SACRE. Some members have been talking about having a freer sort of online area where they can share ideas, seek and give support in their teaching activities etc. It's neither possible nor permissible to do this on the regular SACRE page hosted by the City Council, so a blog might be part of the answer to this perceived need. I'm going to give it a try - starting with an entry for this very meeting!

Linda Bradshaw, ACT (Advanced Skills Teacher) at Rushey Mead School gets us up out of our seats, responding to questions that she's stuck on the walls around the room. these demonstrated ways that students are being encouraged to distinguish between opinion and evidence in RE and learning the complementary (or sometimes contradictory) ways that they can be used in studying the subject.

The last item of business is feedback from two members who attended the recent Beaumanor Partnership RE conference. Being from two very different traditions and representing two very different points of view, their reports made for a stimulating contrast!

We end this the last SACRE meeting of the academic year with some time for eating together and socialising. The pleasant gardens of the Quaker Meeting House on this warm and sunny evening provide a lovely setting for this.

GLOBAL EDUCATION LEICESTER-SHIRE'S STRAWBERRY TEA

Claire Plumb (GELS Co-ordinator), Nilesh Chauhan (Curriculum Enrichment Officer with Leicester City Council), Clare Carr (GELS Co-ordinator)

To Southfields Library this afternoon, where Global Education Leicester-Shire (GELS) is holding an informal meeting and social get together to give long-standing members a chance to reconnect, and to welcome people who have joined the network recently. Borrowing a lovely idea from Whitehall Primary School, GELS plays host to a "Strawberry Tea".

This is a very enjoyable interlude in a very busy day for me. I'm due to attend the meeting of Leicester SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) at the Friends' Meeting House, Queens Road, which starts at 1630. So I'm only able to stay for half an hour - long enough for a quick cuppa, a few spoonfuls of Eton Mess and a scone ("Me? A scone? Go on!") But I wouldn't have missed giving my support to the old team today. ("Less of the 'old' if you don't mind!" says Clare C.)

I'm glad to hear, later in the day, that reinforcements turn up after I have to leave. Just as well: there was quite a pile of strawberries to get through!

RELIGION AND PLANET VIEWPOINT DAY AT NEW COLLEGE

At New College, New Parks, early this morning preparing for "Religion and Planet: Viewpoint Day". This is a whole day activity, for Year 10 students (most of them 15 years old).

I'm here as one of a team of four facilitators, working together on different strands of the day's theme.

• Clare Carr, of Global Education LeicesterShire, is running a session modelled on "Philosophy for Children", using artifacts from different religions (most notably a "Jain cloth") as stimuli to encourage the students to come up with their own questions, developing skills of enquiry and reflection.
• Linda Harding, Leicester City Council Arts and Museums Outreach Officer, helps students explore the spiritual nature of our world in a "hands-on" session involving art objects - some of them created by the students themselves.
• Madeleine Coburn, freelance consultant currently attached to the Museums Department, helps students explore displays from the exhibition, "Our Leicester, Our Story", mounted in the school library.

In my sessions, I break the class (usually numbering 24) into eight groups of three (roughly), give each group a quotation from each of the religions who are members of Leicester Council of Faiths and ask them, first of all, to match their quote to the religion from which it comes.

• “Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self.” (Bahá'í)
• “Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world, through love alone they cease. This is eternal law.” (Buddhist)
• “God is love. Those who live in God live in love and God lives in them.” (Christian)
• “Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation. Know the nature of joy.” (Hindu)
• “Do not injure, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture or kill any living being.” (Jain)
• “Devote yourselves to justice; aid the oppressed. Uphold the rights of the orphan, defend the cause of the widow.” (Jewish)
• “We have created you from a male and a female and made you into different nations and tribes so that you may know each other.” (Muslim)
• “A place in God’s court can only be attained if we do service to others in the world.” (Sikh)

These are the same quotes that feature on the pop-up banners that were created originally for the National Inter Faith Week exhibition in 2009 at Highcross.

New College doesn't have the sort of obviously mixed student body as you find in city centre schools. There's not a large number of students from religious or ethnic minority communities. Many of the students wouldn't normally go to parts of the city where they'd see a gurdwara, a mandir or a mosque; nor can it be assumed that they'll have seen a public religious festival, such as Diwali or Vaisakhi. When I went round the different groups, asking which religion their quote comes from, the first response was almost always Christianity - said with certainty and conviction. Any that they didn't think was Christian was almost always Buddhist. 

When preparing for these sessions, I'd spent some time trying to find other quotes for today, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that it would be good to pitch caring about the planet as caring for other people. So the second part of the exercise was to get the groups to discuss how living according to these principles would change things in the world around us (assuming , of course, that they would affect change). Then I got them to recommend three changes they would like to see made in how we live, that would change the way people can share the planet with each other.

Many of the students were surprised (and interested) that the Council of Faiths has such a strong presence in social media. We picked up several new fans for our facebook page today.

Five one-hour sessions with Year 10 sudents: tough gig.

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.