Global Education

We at Kirkstall St. Stephen’s recognise the increasingly interdependent world in which our pupils live and the challenges this creates for our shared future.  We want to prepare our pupils to be citizens of the world and  also to have an understanding of the world-wide church that St Stephen’s Church is a part of.   This is reflected in the attributes we aspire our children to attain - shown in the fruit of our values tree.   

We aim to give our children opportunities to explore what it means to be a global citizen and develop responsible attitudes in order to work for a more just and sustainable world.    Global education provides a real life focus for many curriculum activities and collective worship themes.  

Micah 6:8 "What does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
 

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded the bronze global neighbours award this year! 

Our Global neighbour's award!

We are thrilled to be recognised for the work we have done as a whole school community to raise awareness of the extreme inequalities across our globe and perhaps more importantly, the steps we can take to address these. The pupils learn about global issues regularly and gain an understanding of injustice in our world. Pupils are passionate about the environment and have written to the manufacturers of Walker’s Crisps asking them to change their packaging so that it can be recycled. Our eco-council has worked hard to monitor our energy usage and encourages all of us to recycle and reduce single use plastics in school. The eco-council has also led us in a project to reuse school uniforms as part of Leeds West uniform exchange project. As part of this Year 6 learnt about the impact of fashion on the environment and made rag rugs as a fun way of exploring how to reuse materials. “We have had a sustained commitment to Fairtrade and, in this past year, pupils were able to meet a farmer from Sierra Leone to hear more about the difference the Fairtrade premium makes to his community. They also attended a Fairtrade celebration event at Leeds Civic Hall, as well as asking catering staff in school to use Fairtrade products. We took part in Christian Aid’s scheme because it gives us a practical way of living out our school value of justice.

‹GNS Assessment Report Kirkstall St Stephens - 20.1.2021.pdf

West Leeds Youth Summit

Four pupils from year 5 went to the West Leeds youth summit at Leeds Civic Hall at the beginning of October to learn about how democracy works within the City Council.  They met the Lord Mayor and our local councillors and had the opportunity to ask questions in the banqueting hall.  There was a youth fund activity where the pupils had a chance to express their views on where the funding should go.  They then moved to the Council Chamber to find out more about how meetings were conducted. 

Global club meet Faisel, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan

After learning about refugees and asylum seekers global club were very pleased to meet Faisel, a former pupil from Lawnswood, who came from Afghanistan at the age of 11, brought on his own by people smugglers.  Faisel is now 18 and has settled really well in Leeds.  He is hoping to become an electrician. The children asked some really good questions about what it was like for him.

Year 5's visit to Mount St. Joseph's care home 

All of year 5 had a lovely visit to Mount St. Joseph's care home last week (June 10th) where they sang 'Getting to know you' (with chime bars) and gave out origamis flowers they had made.  The residents loved talking with the children, it brightened their day enormously!  See below for photos.

New peace banner for Bradford Peace Museum

Some of year 5 have helped to create a new section of a brand new peace banner celebrating International Women's Day 2022 - see below for more explanantion!

Fairtrade Pancake fun!

Global club managed to raise a huge £123 pounds for fairtrade charities by selling pancakes with fairtrade toppings and also chocolate brownies on Shrove Tuesday!  Photos below show how much everyone enjoyed it.  Well done Global club!

Children from years 3-5 responded to a challenge from our local Starbucks to design a cup in honour of Fairtrade Fortnight and international Women's day. Click here to see the winners! /uploads/600/files/Starbucks competition winners.docx

Year 3 workshop from the Peace Museum

Year 3 recently enjoyed a visit from Bradford Peace Museum for a Caring for our world workshop.  After looking again at the importance of looking after our environment the children discovered stories of local environmental and peace campaigns including the anit-nuclear movement and the Hockney family. In groups the children chose an issue upon which to base their own campaign, designing a logo, a banner and a badge.

Christmas cards for B:Friend

Children in years 1-4 made Christmas cards for the charity B:friend, which works with isolated old people.  The cards went into Christmas day bundles, the old people said their favourite part of the bundle was the card from the children. 

Global club

In Autumn term members of global club in year 4 have looked at the global development goals and in particular number 6 (clean water and sanitation).  We asked the school to help us twin our toilets and told them all about it in a collective worship. We have also made peace doves for the Christmas tree and played a faritrade game about gingerbread ingredients (and enjoyed decorating our own biscuits!) See the photos below.

In Spring term Global club have been planning our fairtrade fortnight activities - thye have an assembly planned and selling pancakes with fairtrade toppings on Shrove Tuesday.

COP26

Some children in year planned a collective worship about COP26.  Lots of children made prayer boats to send to COP26 which is a Christian Aid initiative. Some have drawn pictures of eyes which were sent to Boris Johnson with the message that the eyes of the world are on the leaders at COP26.  We made a tree of promises for the hall - on one side the children wrote their own pledges and on the other they wrote messages to the world leaders.

Our Intergenerational project

This is our latest project where year 5 will be linking with Headingley nursing home.  The children are very excited about the opportunity to get to know some local people from the older generation.  They have lots of ideas of things they might do together and teach each other.  So far they have just written postcards introducing themselves and are looking forward to hearing back from the residents.

Connecting classrooms

Year 4 have linked with a year 4 class at Greenmount primary school in Beeston.  The children have begun projects to get to know each other. So far they've shared introductory videos and made bunting for each other's classrooms.

Our 90kg rice challenge

In 2020 we undertook the challenge to selll 90 x 1kg bags of rice from Malawi - this is the amount of rice it takes for a farmer to send his child to secondary school for a year. We rose to the challenge by writing to our friends and families encouraging them to buy rice, some children made rice stress balls and others made rice pictures.  Thanks to an amazing team effort ee achieved our target, this was not easy as school was heading into lockdown!

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