A personal letter from GSA Founder, Thomas Camilleri

Dear Global School Alliance family,

As we look back on 2022, there are a number of truly satisfying achievements I would like to share with you all.

This year the world started to recover from the pandemic and many countries have found their way of living with Covid-19. For most schools, teaching and learning has returned to a face-to-face environment and students can continue to engage in very important authentic learning experiences.

It was a great year of development and innovation for the Global School Alliance (GSA); our community exceeded 7000 educators, approximately 4000 schools and hundreds of hours of online events and professional development. We celebrated establishing 22 new partnerships and re-igniting over 30 more. We proudly launched our Global School Transformation programmes, providing a clear framework for educators worldwide to easily access support for their global dimensions work.

The Global School Alliance is proud and delighted to launch our prestigious and impactful support for International Coordinators which demonstrates our central commitment to supporting and celebrating this key central role in the school.

I believe that the GSA is now the leading provider of funded global transformations and we have had a great start in the autumn of 2022 welcoming some fantastic pioneering schools to the programme. We look forward to supporting their successes and sharing their inspiring stories with the community.

In 2022, we welcomed some exciting additions to the Global School Alliance team, including John Rolfe MBE, who is leading on Global Schools Community & Partnerships. John brings with him his vast experience of 20+ years with the British Council and continues his great contribution to the advancement of global education now with the GSA. We also welcome Juan Risi from Peru who is leading on developing programme delivery and increasing support for Latin America and Spanish-speaking nations.

I am confident that 2023 will be remembered as the year of returning global travel. We look forward to seeing the very welcome return of amazing cultural immersions, language exchanges and impactful global citizenship experiences that all start from creating global friendships.

To support this, we recently announced a new cohort of funding for our Global Education Fund. We are currently taking early registrations of interest with our waiting list reaching over 60 early applications to date, but expect to to quickly exceed the last cohort we received of 300 applications.

Our mission for 2023 is to facilitate the widespread development of global friendships for all our inspirational members. We wish to see all our members connected on the platform and engaged in powerful communications and collaborations. We will also expect to welcome another 5000 educators to our community over the next 12 months and have a, soon to be released, schedule of events workshops and global round tables to further support our core commitment to enriching and inclusive dialogue.

We also have a number of student exchange trips taking place over the Spring and we are all particularly thrilled to see real face-to-face interactions returning for our Sister School Partnerships once again. Early next year, we are launching our global teacher research trips, leadership delegations and round tables programmes and welcome you all to join us as we take global educators around the world to learn from one another, share and disseminate best practice in global education and to establish and develop long lasting and mutually professionally fruitful partnerships.

On the platform, you can expect to see further development to your key partnerships and projects activity, along with our inclusive and impactful Global School Awards and Accreditation programme.

I am writing to you from a cold, snowy and very “Christmassy” England and thank you all for your continued support and dedication to our combined essential mission. Global Educators are the most important people in the world! You are all impacting the future of our connected planet and we appreciate you all for your continued hard work.

From all of the team at the Global School Alliance, we sincerely look forward to connecting with you all in 2023 where we can hand in hand continue to make a difference to students’ lives all across our beautiful and interdependent planet.

Best Regards,

Thomas Camilleri

Founder and CEO at Global School Alliance

In 2022, the Global School Alliance welcomed over 3000 new educators and schools to the community, established 22 new school partnerships and are now working in 125 countries worldwide.

We have been inspired and amazed at the rich, innovative and creative tapestry of global projects, partnerships and communication that has been created over the course of 2022.

Our wide, committed and diverse community of globally minded educators have again shown their profound passion for, and commitment to, sharing and celebrating outstanding global education across the 125 countries we work in. We are proud to work with you all, our over 7000 educators, who all share that passion for bringing the world into their schools and sharing best practice in global teaching and learning.

Our successes are because of you all and your hard work and wonderful team spirit and we look forward together to new exciting challenges and developments for our Global School Alliance across 2023.

Our hugely successful monthly webinars have explored a range of shared global topics and concerns. Thank you to all of our amazing 30+ speakers for contributing and sharing their knowledge and expertise:

  • William Law, Head of Modern Languages & Head of French at Tornbridge School, UK (Jan)
  • Siddharth Rajgarhia, Director of Delhi Public School, India (Jan)
  • Sapna Changrani, Head of Secondary at Dubai Scholars, UAE (Jan)
  • Jonathan Bailey, Deputy Head at Kent College Cairo, Egypt (Jan)
  • Susan Hannam, Headteacher at Lichfield Cathedral School, UK (Feb)
  • Parm Plummer, Assistant Headteacher, UK (Feb)
  • Edwina Dunn OBE, Founder and Chair of The Female Lead, UK (Feb)
  • Andrew Ackers, Principal at International School of Ticino, Switzerland (Mar)
  • Ozgu Ozturk, English Teacher at Büyükçekmece Atatürk Anadolu Lisesi, Turkey (Mar)
  • Kisset Mangabat, Chair of St. Peter School, Philippines (Mar)
  • Joanne Ladds, Associate Consultant at Noble and Eaton, United Kingdom (Mar)
  • Nina Claire Hartley, Child Protection & Safer Recruitment Advisor at Rugby School, Thailand (April – SMP)
  • Paul Dwyer, Head at Redmaids’ High, UK (April – SMP)
  • Kirrili Williams, Director of Creative Arts at Harrow International School Beijing, China (April – SMP)
  • Andre Double, Founding Head of Primary at Invictus School, China (April – SMP)
  • Tania Ahmed, Head of English at Arcadia School Dubai, UAE (April)
  • Lloyd Allington, Year 1 Teacher and Science Lead, UK (April)
  • Daniela Shankland, Head of English at Capital School Dubai, UAE (April)
  • Sam Lenton, Head of English at Wycombe Abbey School, UK (April)
  • Dr Victoria Carr, Headteacher at Ellesmere Port School, UK (May)
  • Rob Ford, Director of Heritage International School Group, Moldova (May)
  • Tor Del Federico, Principal of Southlands British International School Rome, Italy (May)
  • Hazrabee Shaikh, Head of Primary at The Indian Academy Dubai, UAE (June)
  • Sarah Ferris, Director of International Programmes at Highworth Grammar School in Kent, UK (June)
  • Matthew Tansley, Head of Secondary School at International British School of Bucharest, Romania (July)
  • Sehrish Zafar, Head of Middle & High School at Dubai International School-Al Quoz, UAE (July)
  • Holly Barradell, Director of Performing Arts at Radnor House Sevenoaks, UK (September)
  • Rizwana Mahmood-Ahmed, Headteacher at Carlton Junior and Infant School, UK (September)
  • Isabelle Jones, Teacher of French and Spanish at The Macclesfield Academy in Cheshire, UK (September)
  • Shelly Cozens, English Teacher and Head of Careers and Cultural Capital, UK (September)
  • Tatiana Papa, Head of Global Education at Heritage International School (October)
  • Barry Corrigan, Principal of Millennium Integrated Primary School, Northern Ireland (October)
  • Wendy de Corte, Independent Global Consultant, UK (October)
  • Patrick Carroll, Primary School Teacher, UK (November)
  • Janice Morran, Secondary School Teacher, UK (November)
  • Aicha Ben Slimen, Computer Science Teacher at Ibn Sina High School, Tunisia (November)
  • Stewart Cook, Assistant Headteacher, Frances Olive Anderson Primary School, Lincolnshire, UK (November)

If you are interested in contributing to an event or via a blog, please get in touch by registering here.

2022 Global School Awards

This year we celebrated schools around the world and awarded 40+ schools as part of the Global School Awards programme.

Our supportive Global School Awards offer a resource-rich and motivational framework around which to build, develop and celebrate a whole school approach to embedding languages, overseas partnerships and joint curriculum-based global projects.

A total of 572 educators took the self-assessment to find out how their school performs against our global framework.