School partnership with Shree Beena School, Nepal

School partnership with Shree Beena School, Nepal

The British Council run a fully funded scheme called ‘Connecting Classrooms’ which allows schools in the UK to form a link with a school in an emerging country, the aim is to forge a collaborative partnership of shared teaching and learning.  After attending a 2 day core skills training programme we were eligible to apply for the grant and were lucky enough to be successful!  So, during February half term two teachers from Prendergast School, Miss Teresa Griffith and Ms Julia White had the exciting opportunity to visit Shree Beena School in Nepal to set up a partnership with them.  

Shree Beena is a village school just outside of the city of Dhanghari in the west of Nepal, it is an all through mixed school with over 1200 pupils from ages 3-17, we were working in the secondary sector.

It was a privilege to be welcomed into the school by The Headteacher, Aparna Gupta, her staff and pupils.  We were treated to a display of cultural dances from different Nepalese regions and then had the opportunity to meet with staff and pupils.  The pupils were fascinated to hear about life in a London school and had a long list of questions for us!  They were delighted to receive a letter from our Head Girl and wrote one back in return.  It was humbling as a visitor to see the excitement and love for learning that the pupils had and dedication and commitment from the teachers despite having class sizes of over 60 pupils and having very limited resources to help them. 

We want the partnership to be a long term success and so our next step will be to fundraise for the school to help stock their library and we hope to bring a group of teachers and pupils back out to Nepal to work alongside the staff and pupils there.