Visiting your partner school

The benefits

Visits between partner schools will help to consolidate a partnership. providing teachers with the opportunity to develop stronger professional relationships through personal contact.

Reciprocal visits allow teachers to experience their partner's educational systems at first hand, and so serve to strengthen an understanding of how best to develop a partnership for the benefit of all schools involved.

Visits are also beneficial on a personal level, as teachers and pupils can gain first hand experience of different countries and cultures.

Making the most of the visit

Whether you are hosting a visitor or visiting your partner school it is important that all schools in the partnership work together to plan a detailed programme of educational and professional development activities.

Before your visit

• consult with your local authority, headteacher and parents at the earliest opportunity
• exchange draft visiting plans and objectives from your grant application
• familiarise yourself with background information about the country and culture
• learn as much of the local language as you can and at least be able to greet people
• the host school should draw up a detailed provisional programme and share it with the visiting school for their comments and approval
• ask pupils to prepare material that you can take with you e.g. a guide of their local area, information about their everyday lives or questions they would like to ask pupils in their partner school
• ask colleagues what information they would like you to collect for them and how they would like you to record and present it
• make sure you know what formalities you need to address in terms of visas, passports, formal invitations and so on
• carry out risk assessment and agree actions with school leaders
• find out what the weather is likely to be like and pack accordingly, e.g. October to April in the UK can be cold, wet and windy – so warm and waterproof clothing is essential
• if you are hosting a visit involve as many people as possible from your own school and outside e.g. parents, governors, Diaspora groups, local media and businesses? Colleagues may help identify particular areas of interest.
• Think about the environmental impact of your visit and take what action you can to offset this e.g. staff and students can make energy savings to match carbon emissions produced by the transport used on the journey.

• There are possible activities to undertake during your visit:
• getting to know the host school better (i.e. classroom observations, meetings with senior management, attending staff meetings, meeting the student council, shadowing a pupil).
• Sharing with the host school more about the partner school (i.e. participating in assemblies, Q&A time in classes).
• Teaching - team or solo teaching related to the global education theme/curricular plans – and taking assemblies. Check that teachers are happy with teaching in a set-up that may be very different from their usual experience e.g. chalk and talk/small group work, and where there may be different relationship between teachers and pupils e.g. the level of respect pupils show teachers.
• Curricular planning (i.e. time with relevant staff members to plan joint curricular work with global education themes and time working with the relevant curricular documents for each country).
• Taking photos and collecting artefacts and resources for use back home (involve the pupils in selecting what they would like you to take back with you e.g. photos, artefacts etc).
• Partnership planning (i.e. developing or updating a Partnership Agreement, resolving issues that have arisen in the partnership, planning for the next reciprocal visit, discussing the future of the partnership, improving communication methods, preparing a Global curriculum project application).
• Evaluating the visit or the partnership itself.
• Completing final report forms, including financial reconciliation.
• If you are a cluster, consider how much time you need to spend in your partner school, and how much as the whole cluster.

These check-lists are available to download opposite.

Practical advice for preparing in advance

For practical advice on preparing in advance for your visit, please download the Practical Advice check-list opposite.

Child protection procedures

UK partner schools should follow the Child Protection procedures as set out in their school for both incoming and outgoing visits, and take account of guidance issued by the Government and Local Authority*.

Visiting teachers from Southern partner schools may have police certificates but these are not a replacement for a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check. Consequently, in line with child protection policy, UK schools should not leave visiting teachers alone with learners during the visits.

UK partner schools are also responsible for UK child protection standards for visiting pupils from the Southern partner.

* Child protection issues are the contractual responsibility of the UK school and therefore do not come under the auspices of the British Council and its child protection policy.