Annal Jyoti School is linked with Saint Martin's School, Solihull, UK.

Partnership Started : July 2007
Southern School: Annal Jyoti Boarding School, Lalitpur, Nepal
UK School: Saint Martin's School, Solihull, UK

The schools has obtained the Reciprocal Visit Grant and Global Curricum Grant and now working to prepare a joint curriculum project entitled "Energy" on the global theme of Sustainable Development.

Projects/works done before reciprocal visit

1.Partnership agreement Letter was drafted and signed by the authorities of both the schools
2.Email addresses of the students were exchanged and they were involved in email writings.
3.Project works from students of Annal Jyoti were sent to UK . The projects were entitled:

• People in war
• Kings of Nepal
• Visit to Bhaktapur
• Visit to Leprosy hospital
• Dashain

4.UK school send their projects to our school. They sent the projects and works on:     

• Letters to students explaining their family
• Bonfire night
• Halloween poems
• Christmas Cards

5.PowerPoint presentations were exchanged. The topics of the presentations were:

Annal Jyoti School    

• Land pollution
• Water pollution
• Pollution in Mt Everest
• Struggle for democracy 

Saint Martin’s School

• Waste management
• Plastic bags
• Recycling in England
• Fly Tipping
• Recycling Eco-friendly In UK

Reciprocal visits:

First - Niroj Maharjan, Vice Principal, Project Coordinator
Annal Jyoti Boarding School,(September 23- 30, 2008)

Second - Paul Delaney, International Coordinator, Saint Martin's School,(November 16 - 22, 2008)

During the visit:

• International project meeting was held at Saint Martin’s on 24/9/08 and the coordinators of both the schools ratified the minute.
• The evaluation and the visit report were done at Annal Jyoti on 21/11/08 with the consensus of coordinators of both the schools.

After the reciprocal visit:
As per the minute, we shared the works on the following topics:

• A view from the window
• Art exchanges
• Math Puzzles
• Tourism case Studies
• Similarly, a comprehensive project on following topic was shared: Energy Supply and Conservation

GC Grant

We won the GCP grant as well and we are collaboratively working on a global currriculum project entitled "Energy" with the global theme of Sustainable Development.

As to proceed the joint project on energy related to sustainable development, three teachers from Saint Martin's School, UK Val Highley, Iris Jordon and Audrey Jordon visited Annal Jyoti School in October 2010.

An Information sharing programme and demonstration of the Model House was done at Annal Jyoti School. Environmentalists (Indra Bhattarai, Deepak Raj), Journalists (Krishna Ghimire), President of Lalitpur PABSON (Nawaraj Mahat, Private and Boarding Schools' Organisation), Chief District Education Officer (Narayan Prasad Bhattarai) and Principals from different schools were present on the programme. The students of Annal Jyoti along with Audrey Jordon of Saint Martin's demonstrated a solar house where ideas like solar energy, wind energy, energy transformation, green house effect, biomass, Cooling System etc were discussed.

Click here to view PHOTOS OF SUSTAINABLE ENERGY DEMONSTRATION

Similarly, Principal of Annal Jyoti School Ms Jyoti KC and Vice Principal Mr Niroj Maharjan visited Saint Martin's School in June 2011. During the visit, Niroj Maharjan shared the projects of Annal Jyoti with Saint Martin's beside Nepali language teaching, religious education teaching, Himalaya presentation, Momo recipe, and other such participations. Mr Maharjan was also interviewed about GSP for the newsletter 'Chronicle'.

Mr Maharjan has meeting with science department to carry on the collaborative joint project on Energy in relation with water like hydroenergy and water uses. Also, curriculum sharing was done on information technology, religious education, geography and history. A project was agreed on geography to study the changes in environment as we move from cities to countryside.

Ms KC also attended the prize giving programme of Saint Matin's School as a guest. She handed the certificates and awards to the students of year 7, 8 and 9.

click here to view photographs on VISIT TO SAINT MARTINS

What is obtained by GSP?
Before GSP
Prior to the involvement in GSP with Saint Martin’s School, teaching-learning process in our school generally meant the transfer of information from teachers to students, preparing them for the good scores in exams and focused on books and classrooms. Now, being involved in the GSP, there has been a revolution in our school operations. The partnership enabled teachers and students to exchange letters, reports, and projects between the two schools opened an avenue to know about the wider world.

After GSP: In fact, students had the media literacy about internet to express their friendship, opinions and views with their friends. They developed writing skills and team works. Prabisha Rai, student of the same class mentioned that ‘homework was like a burden for me but now I enjoy doing projects because we do it in a team and the studies are not only from the book’. They are eager to know and understand the diverse cultures, values and beliefs of the two nations. In many instances, they started identifying and challenging the human and socio economic differences of the two nations. They are now aware of the wider world united by diverse social, economic, environmental and technological aspects. And they realize their individual roles are important and their efforts create change. Aarati Bista of class nine says that she gained ample knowledge on environmental surprises while doing a project on ‘Global Warming’ and asserts that everyone has to think to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Acheivements in GSP: Teachers felt easy to teach as they embed the global themes in their subject teachings of Social Studies, HPE, Science and English. ‘Students participate and have good creations on their projects’ says Sunaina Shrestha, a Science teacher with the bulk of science projects on her hand and adds that the GSP has made students curious on the global issues and they are interested to learn and share their ideas with their friends within the class and in UK. ‘The school has got the social identity by GSP and the curriculum based projects have triggered teamwork, participation, involvement, creativity in the teachers and students’ says Niroj Maharjan, International Coordinator of the school.The desire to learn from each other and useful tool to plan and implement joint projects is helping the partnership to go ahead. It has also developed skills like creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, appreciation and in taking and sharing responsibilities. The partnership provides students and teachers a wonderful opportunity to explore diverse world issues and to magnify the spirit of global citizen.

From the perspective of Saint Martin’s, our partnership with Annal Jyoti has helped us focus on global issues and our place in the world. We too got to focus on how we can improve the sustainability of our planet and our responsibility as global citizens. The exchange of work has been on a footing of mutual respect – Annal Jyoti looked at the example from Solihull of how waste can be disposed and recycled and Saint Martin’s looked at the environmental consequences of not sourcing food locally. The project work has enhanced the teaching and learning at Saint Martin’s as our case studies are now real people rather than abstractions from a book. We can also be sure that our information is reliable and up to date. Anne Short, a teacher of science has said how much she and our pupils have enjoyed collaborating on global curriculum projects and that working with Niroj on a geography field trip to Stratford sparked new ideas about sustainable tourism. Ideas for projects included the environmental impact of trekking in Nepal balanced against the economic benefit and comparing this with sites in UK. But it is not just on the examined curriculum that the partnership has had an impact. Pupils have enjoyed exchanging pictures, ideas and pieces of imaginative writing about life in our countries. Pieces included “A View from my Window” and “My Favourite Things”. From simple ideas have come meaningful discussions about physical geography and consumerism. As one Year 8 pupil put it, “Having partners in Nepal has helped me learn about myself”.

As long as we realize that we will keep learning from each other, so our partnership will flourish. We look forward to building upon this foundation in our next reciprocal visit, planning a Global Curriculum Project.

more photographs of Saint Martin's School, UK