Fife Education's Learning and Teaching site

Young people growing up in Scotland today can look forward to spending their working lives as citizens of an increasingly complex world. International education will become fundamental to their realising their potential in such a multicultural and global society.

International education is a broad concept, and it can be exemplified in a variety of forms and experiences. These include school-based experiences, often using ICT, in addition to school links, exchanges and overseas visits. Learning in and through international education can make learning about any subject or any cross-curricular theme more relevant and fun.

116 Fife schools are participating in global citizenship activities.

We are participating with the University of Dundee in research on attitudinal change in children resulting from global citizenship activity within the curriculum. We are taking forward Earth Project linking with the Scottish diaspora, working with Education Scotland to develop educational opportunities for children in Fife and nationally to appreciate the impact and contribution that Scotland has made to world wide developments.

Fife is recognised by a number of study programmes (General Teaching Council Scotland (GTCS) and international study programmes) for staff visits on best practice from Greece, Spain, Portugal, Germany Finland and Lithuania, including reciprocal links with Norway.

The British Council offers more information on e-twinning.

The Commenius Project is a part of the British Council and the European Union's Lifelong Learning programme and offers schools the chance to communicate with other schools across Europe and to arrange exchange visits.

This can develop into Global Citizenship and Global Partnerships of which e-twinning and the Comenius project are prominent in Fife schools.

A number of Fife schools have partnerships with schools in Malawi (such as Touch Primary in Dunfermline) and many have links to schools across Europe (such as Waid Academy with their extensive overseas links).

In fact, Promoting Positive Relationships is the focus of Fife's Discipline and Behaviour Strategy.

Fair Trade Foundation Awards
This externally accredited award system is a new key result for Fife Education, determining whether the wider society believes that the global citizenship strategy is impacting on our young people. The Education Service was a key and active partner in the recent success of the Fife area achieving Fair Trade status in 2011. The great majority of our schools are involved in Fair Trade activity. Eight Fife schools have achieved accreditation as Fair Trade Foundation Schools which we believe is the largest nationally of any Education Service. Since this is a new result we do not have five year trend analysis