Peer Education Project

Project Components and Delivery

The clusters formed and their projects will be participatory and based on particular issues relevant to global dimension and/ or sustainable development principles. The projects will include activity around 'whole institution' work in schools, a programme of INSET and workshops for teachers and good practice/ information sharing through networking.

They will look to improve participation “across the board” using teaching methods focussed on:

Peer education and active learning - pupils working with pupils around project ideas exploring local and global aspects of areas such as Health, SD, trade, poverty, resources and consumption, etc. Part of the peer education work might include student exchanges between peer cluster schools or ‘ambassador’ work between feeder cluster schools.

Working with teachers and Initial Teacher Education (ITE) institutions. Working with teachers may include developing appropriate curriculum development work, cross curricular activity (including between schools), training and resource procurement.

Continuing Institutional Change - helping individual schools to take on board the ESD/ GD agenda together and build support beyond a few committed teachers. Institutional Change might include ‘whole school’ work around Citizenship, Healthy and or Eco schools.

The initial cluster project ideas will involve a great deal of input from the pupils as well as teachers, and might be about food, or health, drugs, litter, recycling, the playground, play, sports/ games etc. This will indicate the direction of the cluster formation and the project.

e .g., a food project might involve a cluster consisting of a community organisation (a local restaurant, organic food shop, fair trade rep, food pressure group), appropriate schools support (e.g. Healthy Schools), a Southern partner (e.g. from India, environmental focus, agriculture), an external consultant (e.g. a school catering company). The overall project may draw on any relevant support identified in the initial audit of ESD work in the region. The ESD and National Curriculum areas would be developed on the basis of the project idea (e.g. Citizenship, PSHE, Geography etc) and more detailed project plans drawn up.

The projects will be delivered with DEP, working with established support structures to enable the involved schools and organisations/ groups to successfully implement their projects.