Why Schools Should Partner with Charities

Schools very frequently welcome partnership with organisations (including churches) involved with charity and community service.

Most teachers are keen to encourage their pupils to develop attitudes that will encourage lifelong service to others, and to learn about initiatives, groups of people, and areas of society or of the world that may otherwise be unfamiliar. However, it is important for anyone involved with a charity or service project to understand that the school’s over-riding priority is looking for contexts that support pupils’ learning.

Through involvement in the sort of real-life contexts that can be provided by local church-based projects (or by national/international charities), children and young people really can learn better. Any approach to a school should therefore at least indicate in outline how a proposed partnership can help their pupils:

• develop as Successful Learners, Confident Individuals, Responsible Citizens and Effective Contributors.
• develop specific Skills for Learning, Life and Work.
• make significant progress in specific areas of learning (e.g. literacy, numeracy, expressive arts, technologies)

There are numerous opportunities for community involvement and real-life contexts for learning. Partnerships that can support this include those with

• local faith-based communities (churches etc),
• local Christian charities and organisations (e.g. Food Banks, projects for the elderly and disabled)
• Overseas Aid and Development charities.

Enterprise

Many charity-based projects are also closely linked to Enterprise, as this case study from an East of Scotland primary school demonstrates. Over a number of years, the school has continued a link with the Erskine Home not far from the school gates. The staff of the Home have been highly supportive of the link and have worked well with the teachers. Over the years, many different year stages have been involved. This case study highlights a project for Primary 5, which focussed on fund-raising for new building at the home.

Having found out about the Home, the class decided to design and sell badges that linked their school with the local Erskine Home. The project was based around the theme of

‘Dragon’s Den’, with pupils required to design an ideas pitch, design a prototype, cost their materials and developing and advertising campaign.

The project was developed to involve a number of areas of the curriculum, e.g. literacy (letter writing, publicity), expressive arts (badge design, posters), technologies (badge manufacture), mathematics (calculations about costings, marketing & sales; graphs, etc)

This particular project also enjoyed a high-profile launch at Edinburgh Castle. Parental involvement also gave extra dimensions to this particular project. Such community involvement is certainly not a one-off event, however. This school has wide-ranging community links including those involving local churches, carol-singing, switching on Christmas lights, and even a link with a Christian radio station.