A GLASGOW education partnership with Malawi has now expanded to help seven primary schools.

The Malawi Leaders Of Learning Programme was founded by Maureen McKenna, the city's director of education, and this week will travel to the country to see how work is progressing.

She said: "I am very excited about the trip. Malawi is starting to feel like a home from home now.

"We have seven primary schools partnered with pri­maries in Glasgow and our aim is to provide them with the skills to run themselves effectively and give the best educational experience to their pupils possible.

"It is about empowering them to lead themselves."

As previously reported in the Evening Times in 2011, Mrs McKenna set up the scheme to give two-way training with the East African country.

It is the first of its kind in Scotland and last year gained charitable status.

Teachers from Glasgow travel to Malawi to help train their counterparts there while teachers there come to Glasgow to see how classes are run in the city.

Primaries from both countries pair up and pupils exchange letters to help Malawian youngsters learn English.

There are also opportunities for secondary pupils to visit their African peers.

An emphasis on PE and outdoor learning is also shared, as Malawian pupils do not get much activity during the school day.

As well as training and leader­ship, money raised in Glasgow's schools goes to buy books for Malawian libraries.

To make sure the scheme runs properly requires creative thinking from those involved.

And it means making sure parents are on board with the programme.

Parents are involved in school committees in Malawi, much like parent councils in Scotland.

Mrs McKenna meets parent groups and persuades them that Malawi Leaders Of Learning can help their school.

She is so passionate about the scheme she even managed to get her mother involved, making book bags for African pupils.

The education chief said: "In Malawi family ties and community are very important so I think the mothers I spoke to were impressed that my mum was making things to help their children.

"They wanted to know how to make the bags and I, naively, assumed there would be someone in the village with a sewing machine.

"Of course, there wasn't so we had fundraising activities to buy one. Now, when we do fundraising for books for a new school library we also raise money for a sewing machine to teach people how to sew book bags and also school uniforms.

"Who knew that if you wanted to start a library you would need a sewing machine too?"

The project came about partly as an idea put forward by Tom McDonald, former head teacher at Holyrood High in Glasgow's South Side.

He now runs a leadership development programme in Malawi and travels out three times a year to make sure the scheme is running effectively.

Schools become involved for two years, after which time they should be able to keep the programme going by themselves.

Mrs McKenna, who funds the trips herself, hopes to expand the scheme to more and more schools "a bit at a time".

She and education press officer Fiona Ross will be keeping a blog of their travels.

It can be found at: www.mlol.co.uk/pages/show/79 or on Twitter @malawilol or Facebook at facebook.com/malawilol

catriona.stewart@ eveningtimes.co.uk