21 January 2010
International Development Secretary, Mike Foster, will hear from students of de Ferrers Specialist Technology College, Burton-upon-Trent about their partnerships with African counterparts - undertaken as part of the Global Schools Partnerships programme, run by the Department for International Development (DFID).
The Minister is visiting the college to see what the students are doing to support the ‘1 GOAL’ campaign to focus on the plight of 75 million children worldwide who are not receiving any education and the 35 million of those who are in Africa.
In this, the year of the World Cup in Africa, the focus is on 1GOAL and kicking around many ideas on climate change, food production, clean water, global poverty, health and education to establish and maintain links with schools around the world via common interests in football and the future of the planet. 1GOAL was launched by the Prime Minister in October 2009 along with leaders from South Africa, Spain and the Netherlands who joined footballers and the FIFA president to pledge support to provide education for every child.
Since the valuable work of our troops in Afghanistan six million children have been put into education, including girls who were previously banned from the education system, and funding has financed the salaries of more than 165,000 teachers.
DfID funding has a real impact on ordinary people around the globe. In Afghanistan, aid has provided access to clean water for nearly half a million people, eight in 10 people can now access healthcare, skilled antenatal care has tripled and nearly half of the population now has access to electricity, up from just 23 per cent in 2005.Afghan entrepreneurs have received almost 1.5 million small loans and helped initiate nearly 50,000 locally-generated projects to improve water, roads, health and education throughout Afghanistan.
As part of the visit, the Minister will also see the college’s work on eco-footprints and other measures to help the environment. This work is part of the conscious effort to raise awareness of the effects of climate change on them and their fellow students. Students will present extracts from their ‘global theme days’ and talk about their 3 year initiative to raise funding to support children with hearing impairment in the Gambia. The college has placed International Mindedness at the heart of its purpose to raise achievement and personalise learning. Sixth form students will speak about their experience of the International Baccalaureate diploma programme and of their impending visit to Tanzania the summer of 2010.
De Ferrers has recently been awarded the International School Award – Intermediate Level by the British Council for it’s achievements in developing internationalism.
Mr York, Principal of de Ferrers commented that “International Mindedness is central to the continuing development of de Ferrers. We truly aspire to becoming a ‘World School’ where our ethos, curriculum and qualifications reflect this aim.”
1. ‘1 GOAL’
1GOAL is a campaign which will link the World Cup 2010 with a renewed drive to secure an education for every child in the world.
The campaign is calling on world leaders to deliver on their existing commitments to the world’s poor on education, and for donor countries to pledge additional funding. 1GOAL aims to get tens of millions of football fans and other supporters of education to sign up to the campaign petition calling for education for all.
2. De Ferrers
de Ferrers has grown into a large, split-site, co-educational comprehensive college catering for the full range of students from 11-18. There are currently 1930 students on roll, including a large Sixth Form, and each entry since 1985 has been oversubscribed.
The college is now in its 3rd phase of Technology Status and in the last few years has received an ‘Outstanding’ Ofsted grade, achieved the ICT Mark and the new Design Mark and become an IBDP World School. The 2009 GCSE results were the best in the college’s history and the college continues to be innovative – a new electronic pathways system has been developed to give students a personalised 14-19 route through the curriculum.
de Ferrers is heavily involved with the Specialist Schools and Academies trust in personalising learning – it helped develop the idea of the four ‘deep’ areas and serves as a deep experience hub and the West Midlands Focus School for the ICT Register. The Learning Observation room was developed in partnership with the Innovations Unit. There have been numerous projects and partnerships at college, including links with ALITE, RealSmart, Channel 4 Learning and Frog.
18 students and four members of staff are currently preparing for a project-based expedition to Tanzania where they will work alongside a community, near the Arusha National Park, on maintenance of the school and vegetable gardens. The students will have the opportunity to teach English, organise a variety of sporting activities and participate in a challenging trek up the active volcano Mount Mero. So far the group has raised £15,000 towards the trip.
The sixth form football team, which will be kitted out for the photo-opportunity, is in the last 32 of the National Cup, in which over 650 teams entered, from across the UK.
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