International Education

The latest news, events and developments from Citizenship, which now covers Confucius Classrooms, International Education and Sustainable Development Education.

Currie Community High School has won the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy. Its approach includes a wind turbine to generate power for the school, and a variety of energy conservation measures to reduce the building’s consumption. A BBC story gives more detail.

The competition, held at the office of the European Parliament in Edinburgh on 16th June, was won by two pupils from Holyrood Secondary School in Glasgow. They stressed the serious consequences for democracy of continuing voters’ apathy. Other teams taking part were from the Highlands, West and Central Scotland.

Young Scot have offered a day’s training in making a podcast as a prize.

Congratulations to all the winners, and the participants, in the 2009 Scottish Education Awards. The Awards ceremony was held last week in Glasgow, and a list of the winners and finalists is on the SEA website.

I’ll highlight the winners associated with developing global citizenship in Scottish education:

- Perth High School won in the ‘International Schools’ category

- St Paul’s High School in Glasgow won the ‘Active Citizenship’ category

- St Leonard’s Nursery School in Edinburgh won the ‘Greener Schools’ category

- Iochdar Primary School in South Uist won the ‘Homecoming’ award

Our annual educational conference and exhibition, ‘Scottish Learning Festival 2009‘, is open for registrations through the event website. As usual, its in Glasgow at the SECC, and offers a great variety of international presenters, expert workshops, and an exhibition of educational services, products and experiences. This year’s dates are Wednesday 23rd September and Thursday 24th September.

Last year LTS welcomed over 7000 visitors to the show, mixing teachers, managers, trainee teachers, consultants, education companies and foreign educators.

Within the keynote and seminar programme, there are many opportunities to find out more about International Education, Education for Citizenship and Sustainable Development, all key contributors to the successful implementation of ‘Curriculum for Excellence’. Aspects of education in Brazil, China, Colombia, France and the USA are just some of the seminar themes.

Sign up online for this free Continuing Professional Development opportunity, and make your bookings for the best of the seminars.

Norway won the Eurovision Song Contest this weekend, but some pupils and teachers in East Lothian were more interested in their own active participation in a Europe-wide singing contest. Yester Primary School in Gifford was taking part in ‘Schoolovision 2009′, an initiative designed by their teachers as an enjoyable way for children to learn more about Europe and utilise their ICT skills. Thirty primary schools from European Union countries were involved, sharing songs, text and their voting through blogs and videoconferencing, linked via the e-twinning programme. An article in the Scotsman provides background.

The Scottish Book Trust is running a CPD event for teachers and librarians about ‘Writers in Schools in Scotland and Chicago’. Authors Elspeth Murray and Amanda Lichtenstein will describe the types of work they do with pupils, including inspiring pupils to write and running creative literacy projects, and contrast their experiences of working in schools in Scotland and the USA.

This free event is on Tuesday 16th June 2009, from 1700-1830 pm, at SBT’s base in Edinburgh. It will be suitable for P3-P7 classroom teachers, secondary English teachers and librarians. Contact Chris Newton at SBT to book a place. chris.newton@scottishbooktrust.com

The Scottish Parliament hosted the Finals for this year’s Euroquiz competition for Scottish primary school pupils, a nationwide competition to test their knowledge of European affairs. The annual Euroquiz has been run by the Scottish European Educational Trust (SEET’s new website will have photos soon) since 1993 and this is the second year the event has been held in the main chamber of the Scottish Parliament. The event is sponsored by Standard Life, who have a news story on their website.

The General Teaching Council for Scotland has recognised the hard work and commitment of a number of Scottish teachers who participated in the ‘Global Teachers’ programme managed by Link Community Development (LCD).

These teachers worked with schools in Malawi and Uganda, contributing their expertise to support local development, and gained a great deal from this international professional learning experience. Back in Scotland they use their new knowledge to help Scottish pupils learn about being responsible global citizens.

Learning and Teaching Scotland has been working in partnership with LCD, to support groups of Scottish teachers undertaking work in sub-Saharan Africa through our SCIPD professional development programme.