Extract from The Guardian : 13th Nov.

"A Passage to India"
Some formal programmes have sprung up in recent years that explicitly link schools in different kinds of the community in Britain and with ones overseas. The UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), managed by the British Council, links clusters of 4 schools in the UK with clusters of 6 schools in India. This year schools from inner-city Leicester, in which most pupils are from an ethnic minority background, have formed a cluster with schools in the leafy Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray, where virtually all pupils are white British. Both will be working with schools in Kerala and the Andaman Islands in India.

"We have many opportunities to work with schools in Leicester itself," says Matthew Parris, assistant head at Rushey Mead secondary, one of the inner-city schools. "This is an opportunity to work with kids who are culturally different - in Melton Mowbray and India - to bring that perspective to our students."

All 10 schools are currently working on a photo-story project, taking snapshots of their school and where they live to build up a picture of their daily lives.

"I want to learn more about the lifestyle in India and how they live compared with us," says 12-year old Shivani Kotecha, a year 7 pupil. "But I think it will be good for us to know about their schools and the things they learn because some of it might be things we can copy. Learning about how other people live is just really interesting. It makes you look at where you live differently."