成人快手

On 6 December 成人快手 World Service spends an entire day into the lives of young people. School Day 24 is set to be a record-breaking on-air link-up. Virginia Crompton sets the scene.


School Day 24 is partly a product of , a project which grew out of a chance encounter on red dust road in northern Uganda. In 2001, I was there recording a 成人快手 radio programme when a couple of bright-eyed ten-year-olds caught up with me in the street. Giggling, they asked me to be their penpal. I took it as a joke, but when I said I was too old to write to them their faces told another story. They really did want someone to write to. They really did want to connect with the rest of the world. It came to me that this was something the 成人快手 could do. We could help connect young people around the world.

With support from across the 成人快手, World Class has developed as a collaboration between programme teams and organisations such as the British Council. We share the idea of international school twinning with our audiences on the radio, on TV and online via our local, national and global networks.

Through shared learning, World Class gives children, parents and teachers around the world an opportunity to communicate directly with one another, transforming statistics and stereotypes into friendships built on understanding.

"It opens people's minds - not just the children's but everyone in the school community. It makes you question your beliefs." Tim Buckley, Head Teacher

Nadia Kamran, School Links manager for the British Council in Islamabad, says: "We now have 175 links amongst UK and Pakistani schools that are working on a variety of projects. Faisalabad Grammar school has completed a project on Islamophobia and Lahore Lyceum on religious tolerance with their partner schools. We also have schools working on the themes of conflict resolution, child labour, sustainable development and women's rights."


The School Day idea was piloted in June, when 成人快手 Television News linked up Hesketh Fletcher School in Wigan, northern England, with Phefeni Senior Secondary School in Soweto, South Africa. School Day: South Africa marked the 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprising, an event led by children in direct response to education reforms. Children from the Wigan and Soweto schools exchanged more than 1,000 emails and answered one another's questions live on television throughout the day.

Watching School Day South Africa was a moving, amusing, insightful experience. The kids were unpredictable and engaging, with quite a lot to learn about diplomacy? The school children in Wigan performed a Zulu dance (live and mildly embarrassed) around lunchtime. Among many questions about the daily routine in schools, from playground games to school dinners, pupils from Longdendale Community College asked the Phefeni students about their teachers. "Strict," came the answer from Zanele.


Through 成人快手 World Service, the potential of this idea is multipled. And, with more than a dozen language teams already preparing their programmes, School Day 24 will be a breathtaking event.

In Sri Lanka, the is working in partnership with national radio stations and Save the Children to see whether it can connect and Sinhalese schools. In Ivory Coast, the team is planning to bring children from the north and south of the country to meet at the ceasefire line. In Kosovo, the and Services are working with a school which teaches children from the Macedonian community in the morning and the Albanians in the afternoon. Under normal circumstances the children never meet; School Day 24 will bring them together. And while the team are planning a dialogue between children in school with children who can't get to school, the is negotiating to broadcast live from schools in Chechnya and Moscow.

Children separated by conflict will connect with schools across the divide; within a country torn apart by civil war, across national boundaries marked by generations of fighting, and between communities defined by mistrust and misunderstandings, even across faiths.

A 成人快手 News website will provide a point of access for the audience. Whether in Ghana or Guyana, translations, highlights in English, as well as video and audio streams, offer audiences everywhere a uniquely global access. Every school link-up is part of a bigger event. In a nutshell, School Day 24 is something which only the 成人快手 can do.


Virginia Crompton launched , the 成人快手's international school twinning project which has linked thousands of schools around the world. She has ten years' experience of making radio documentaries.