School children as far apart as Chennai and Haywards Heath are learning, and growing closer, together writes Marisol Grandon.

It’s 9am at Little Flower Convent School for the deaf in Chennai, India, and already a simmering 33°C. Away from the surging city streets, morning prayers in the shady courtyard follow a solemn flagraising ceremony. Then to the beat of a Tamil drum, 500 girls march off to lessons.

Today the children are conducting an acid rain experiment – and will later share their findings online with English students several thousand miles away. Why? Little Flower has a five-year partnership with Warden Park secondary school in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, part of the Global School Partnerships programme. It’s one of 1,800 such links in the UK.

DFID Global School Partnerships provide grants for teachers to visit their partner schools in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Set up five years ago, the scheme is designed to raise awareness of important global issues like climate change and gives students in both countries the chance to understand a different culture. Through direct exposure to people in a developing country via shared classroom based projects, Skype and instant messenger, it aims to make British young people aware of poverty and inspire them to support direct action against global poverty in future.

“The students involved are the leaders, scientists, businesspeople and decision makers of tomorrow,” says Andy Egan, DFID Global School Partnerships programme manager. “This kind of direct contact explodes stereotypes on both sides. Poverty is not just about starving people – it’s a far more complex picture than that.”

While climate change tops the agenda for parents and students in both schools, Little Flower students are also faced with local issues like homelessness, a growing population, job security and social problems with arranged marriage and broken families. For instance, Warden Park’s year eights were astonished by an Indian teacher’s lesson on arranged marriage where she told them how she found and married her true love in spite of ‘fair skin’ prejudice. “Partnerships make children more engaged in development issues as adults and ultimately more demanding of their governments to push for change,” said Egan. “In our interconnected world, international events have a huge impact on the lives of people in the UK.

“So contact like this should encourage students to make more responsible decisions as adults that have a positive impact on poorer communities across the world.” So far, 26 British and Indian staff have visited their opposite number for five days at a time and worked and taught in the schools. Little Flower teachers visited the West Sussex school and took part in a variety of lessons. Martin Hooper, Warden Park’s school project leader, said the scheme “opened our pupils’ eyes to how their lives and futures are so closely tied up with those of other young people across the world.”

“We now have the sense that we are citizens of the world,” says Little Flower teacher Evangeline Kennedy. “At this time of global economic recession, students can recognise and think critically about development issues.” The scheme is working so well that DFID now wants to raise the total number of UK schools involved to 5,000 over the next three years.

“I think it is really important for schools in the UK to have links with schools in other countries,” says Warden Park’s Maddy Fry who worked on the acid rain project. “You benefit a lot from it. You learn a lot about different cultures and ways of learning. I definitely think other schools should be setting up links like ours.”

For more details on DFID Global School Partnerships go to www.dfid.gov.uk/discoveryzone/