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The British Council’s Connecting Classrooms project teams UK schools with schools around the world. Here, two teachers from secondary schools in Nigeria and the UK respectively talk about how their partnership has worked.
Iyke Chukwu is a computer studies teacher and teacher trainer at Government Secondary School Jabi (GSS Jabi), a school in Abuja, Nigeria. He’s been teaching for more than a decade, and works with the British Council as a digital ambassador and a Microsoft expert educator.
I teach students aged between 14 and 18, who are preparing for a high stakes exit exam called the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE), which they need to pass before they can go to college. There are about 750 students in the school, with about 50 students in each class.
When our Connecting Classrooms project started in November 2012, we began by exchanging hello messages between teachers in the UK and Nigeria. Next, we shared introductory emails from the head teachers in both countries, and exchanged messages between the students. We set up a Connecting Classrooms club made up of 25 students, with each class represented, and ran a huge publicity campaign in the school about Connecting Classrooms to make staff and students aware of the partnership.
Our students are enthusiastic and excited about the programme. They are very keen about sharing information about their country and school with their St. Mary’s peers, and think Connecting Classrooms is an awesome programme that will help them become global citizens. They have learnt a little bit about the UK, and we also ran a big cultural day with fashion parades and cultural dances from different parts of Nigeria. Video from the cultural day was packaged onto a CD and taken to our partner school, so the UK students could learn more about Nigeria.
We found there were some similarities between our schools. Both schools are mixed sex, all the students wear uniforms, and all the students must study for a high stakes exit exam at the end of their final year. But there were differences, too. We start school at 07.30, instead of 08.30, and our school day ends at 14.00 as opposed to 16.05 at St. Mary’s. We also have bigger classes – our average class size has 50 students, rather than 30 at St Mary’s.
Zara Hassan is head of history and the Connecting Classrooms coordinator at St. Mary’s Church of England High School in Hendon, North London, which is partnered with Iyke’s school in Nigeria. She visited the school last month.
St. Mary’s is a mixed, multicultural secondary school, with students from year 9 (age 13-14) to year 13 (age 17-18). We have between 25 and 30 students in each class.
So far, we have carried out projects that have got our students learning more about Nigeria. In June this year, we carried out a cross-curricular project with our year 10 students, in which they completed projects about Nigeria in different subjects. This was great for the students as it enabled them to investigate and learn more about Nigeria in a number of areas such as geography, history and music. We have also explored Nigerian history across the school, as part of Black History Month, in assemblies and classroom time.
I met the Connecting Classrooms co-ordinator from our Nigerian partner school in July and asked lots of questions, so I was well prepared for my visit in November. But I was really surprised to find out on my first day that the students themselves were actually responsible for cleaning their classrooms and arrive at 07.00 every morning to do this! I also did not anticipate the amazing reception that I would get from both staff and students. Everyone was so friendly and very happy to have me there and it was a real pleasure to get to chat to the staff and students.
During my visit, I found that St. Mary’s has lots in common with our partner school. First, the lessons that we teach and the examination system are quite similar. There is a real focus on gaining five qualifications, including English and maths, which is the same here. Some lessons are also very similar, for example civic education in Nigeria is essentially the same as citizenship here. I also think that there are many similarities between the students themselves. On the whole, students at both schools seem to really care about their education and work hard in order to succeed. They are also equally keen to find out a lot more about each other.
The main difference was in terms of facilities and buildings. Although GSS Jabi has an information and computer technology suite and interactive whiteboards, in some classes they do not get the funding that UK schools are fortunate to get. As a result, some classrooms and buildings are quite basic.
Many of our UK students have Nigerian or other African backgrounds and love the fact that their school is partnered with another African school. The students have been really excited to hear all about my visit and this has had a very positive impact on the membership of our Connecting Classrooms club. The students are looking forward to finding out a lot more about their peers in Nigeria and planning various projects to take the partnership to its next stage.
UK teachers: Find out more about partnering with a Nigerian school through Connecting Classrooms.
Find a school to partner with in one of 180 countries through Connecting Classrooms.
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