Budehaven Community School

Budehaven has continued to develop this link through staff and student visits, sharing teaching pedagogy; providing a coach education programme and widening the impact whole school with Ethiopian flexible learning days. Budehaven will continue to work closely with the PE staff in Assossa High to enhance PE provision, working in partnership to create a high quality and fun driven learning environment to raise student engagement and aspirations, to empower young people to give them the leadership skills, to support and develop teaching pedagogy for themselves and future learners, using the Olympic and Paralympic values of 2012 and encouraging maximum participation therefore allowing students to reach their maximum potential. Staff from both schools are creating joint sustainable resources to empower students and teachers to develop in a positive manner their overall learning experience. Budehaven Community School were the instigators of introducing the sport of netball to Ethiopia. This was carried out through a group visit to Assossa to deliver a coach education programme to 14 different schools. This has been further developed in two other regions, Addis Abbaba and Oromiya, and a further visit at Easter 2012 working again in Addis, with 70 schools now playing netball. The Budehaven students worked with staff and students for 10 days, teaching netball and English in the schools. These qualified Ethiopian staff are now developing netball and reporting back to our link teacher and Budehaven to show their progress. Ethiopia has now gained associate membership of the International Federation of Netball Associations and is hoping to move towards getting a national netball team. Another on-going partnership with the Youth Sport Trust is with Endicott College, Boston, USA. Denise May and Tracey Reynolds, Senior Management at Budehaven, went on a study trip to look at how the USA use competition/sport to raise academic standards. Ms Reynolds says, "We are creating the Budehaven zone to provide support and challenge for our academic 'athletes' focusing on students who we have been identified as in need of further challenge to aspire to their A grade potential. We are also using the school games to change the image of academic performance and to develop 'sporting skills' amongst students such as training in the 5Rs. By developing academic competition to run alongside sporting competition we recognise the value of team success and we develop pride in the team/form/school and thus impact on aspiration." Staff and students are also involved annually in exchange visits to France and Spain, fundraising for charities both here and abroad and writing to pen pals across the globe. Mrs May commented, "This is recognition for the dedicated staff who continue to work so hard to further develop the international dimension in so many activities. We must now ensure that the unique opportunities presented by exchanges and visits can be used further to enhance global learning not only in the curriculum but also the wider community".