Making international partnerships work

For many years UK schools have engaged with others across the world in partnership schools programmes.

Originally, relationships were set up with European partners on foreign language exchanges while, more recently, the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms has endeavoured to establish connections between UK schools and those in the developing world – often with Commonwealth countries such as Malawi, Kenya and India.

With Brexit and the departure from the European Union it may be that some of the more local partnerships fall by the wayside and there is uncertainty surrounding the well-funded joint endeavours such as Erasmus. Connecting Classrooms is also at the end of its current round of funding for partner visits and its future is under debate both in the UK and in the countries receiving British visitors.