UK teachers taught Latin lessons

First, London buses were run on cheap Venezuelan fuel. Then, former mayor of London Ken Livingstone began advising authorities in Caracas on traffic problems. Now, the latest link between the two areas appears to be in education.

The notorious Caracas neighbourhood of 23 de Enero is one of the most deprived parts of the Venezuelan capital and seems a world apart from leafy Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire.

But for the past week, a group of head teachers from 10 British schools have been working in some of the poorest areas in the city on an educational exchange programme known as Connecting Classrooms.

The scheme, in which their Venezuelan counterparts will visit schools in London and Hertfordshire next year, is designed to improve both the Venezuelan and the British approaches to teaching in difficult social environments.

"We've been working in schools in particularly challenging circumstances," said Steven Connors, the head teacher of Manor Fields Primary School in Hertfordshire.

"And although they're in tough parts of town, what we found was that the schools were serving their communities in the most amazing way. They were oases of calm and order where children are able to get that one life opportunity to get an education."

The teachers now hope the Connecting Classrooms project, which is overseen by the British Council, will be extended to state-run "Bolivarian" schools across Venezuela following a meeting with the country's education ministry on Tuesday.

"We're at the beginning of what I hope will be very strong links between our two schools," said David Winters, a head teacher from Mitcham in south London.

"We have discussed ways in which the children will work on shared projects and we'll be using video links and e-mails to exchange the stories, poems, posters and artwork the children will produce.

"So it promises to be a very exciting and worthwhile project for both schools."

Although the Venezuelan government disputes the exact figures Caracas is widely recognised as one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America with one of the highest murder rates in the region.

The barrios (poor neighbourhoods) in which the teachers were working, such as Petare, 23 de Enero, La Vega and el Junquito, are some of the worst affected.

"It's a common problem between Britain and Venezuela and in fact our Venezuelan colleagues were surprised to hear the extent of the problem in the UK," said Mr Winters.

So, what aspects of the way the Venezuelan teachers approached the violence and social problems in their communities could be applied to English schools?

Better citizens

"Where they are very strong is in the area of values," he said, "in instilling in their pupils the belief that when they grow up they must be better citizens and must not allow the situation which exists at the moment in Caracas to continue.

"They want the children to strive for a better future, and a better future will mean that the population in general is at less risk of crime and of criminality."

The social philosophy on the English side of the relationship comes from the government's national programme to link children's education with other social services, known as Every Child Matters.

Soraya Colmenares from the British Council, who is from one of the barrios, says that the Every Child Matters concept was something the Venezuelan teachers were keen to translate and adapt to their own particular set of circumstances.

"The Venezuelan teachers were also very interested in the British head teachers' ideas of standards and self-evaluation.

"That is something they want to take on board so they can assess how well they are progressing over time and in relation to each other."

Critics would say there are inherent problems in using education criteria from the British government in a Venezuelan school.

Is the scheme not in danger of becoming a prescriptive exercise in which Western teachers tell their Latin American counterparts how things "ought" to be done?

Not at all, says Mr Connors.

"This is a partnership of equals. We have learnt as much from the Venezuelans as they have learnt from us.

"It's made me re-evaluate what my school community is and how best I can serve them. So I go away as a different head teacher to when I arrived."

Current Mayor of London Boris Johnson may have scrapped the city's oil deal with Venezuela but for now, it seems, the informal twinning of Caracas and south-east England continues to flourish.

Source: BBC News