Week 4: Working with communities, families and stakeholders

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3. Working with stakeholders - teams across the community

In a community there may be several stakeholders working to support a child. You will revisit the video of support teams at Ebhotwe Primary school in a poor district of South Africa . It is a hub school for the district with a number of teams inside and outside the school community. Inside the school, one team has specialists  working side by side with teachers on adapting materials for learners with specific learning needs and assisting them in class. They also assist neighbouring schools. Another team of community volunteers come into the school with food for children and offers support for families with HIV.

A network of teams like this may depend on policies and also needs time and resources to develop. It involves leadership from governors (or the School Management Committee) and connections with specialists and voluntary organisations. Developing teams may be a goal of a school management strategy and part of a district or national policy plan for capacity building of networks.

Activitiy 4.4 Ebhotwe Primary School : school-based partnerships

Allow approximately 20 mins on this activity

Watch the clip from the film Developing Inclusive Education in South Africa: Support Structures and find out about the teams and community context at Ebhotwe Primary school.

Please watch the section from 0.48 to 5.38 ending with one teacher’s reflection: 

“Inclusive education is not about being perfect it’s about understanding the strengths and the can do’s of the particular person”

Makes notes on:

  1. Note examples of internal and external teams community partnerships and stakeholders all offering support.
  2. For a child in this school what different kinds of help is available and what difference might this make to a child’s life?
  3. Imagine you are a headteacher and want to develop your school to be an inclusive school like Ebhotwe over a period of time with support structures. What would reasons and key points would you present to convince your school management and local district office to support your plan to become an inclusive school? What risks or challenges might there be in setting up partnerships? What advantages might there be?
  4. Post a few lines on the Week 4 forum about how you would convince your local stakeholders including school management committee to make better links outside the school and any challenges that would be involved.
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