St Louise’s Comprehensive College: Right to a quality education for everyone

Location: 468 Falls Rd, Belfast, BT12 6EN

Website: http://www.stlouises.org.uk/

Entry Date: 04 April 2018

Worldwide, millions of school age girls are still being denied an education. This issue has become a major global learning focus for pupils at St Louise’s Comprehensive College, which is attended by an all-female student population of more than 1,500.

Year 14 Drama students at the school recently drew inspiration for one of their key performances from the life story of Malala Yousafzai, a young activist who was shot by the Taliban for defending the right of girls to go to school, but thankfully survived. Her fearless activism in support of female education was featured as a central strand in the class’ A Level performance piece about women’s rights.

Teachers were so impressed with the drama students’ work that they arranged for them to perform their piece for a group of Year 12 pupils at the school, who were studying Global Citizenship as part of their Learning for Life and Work (LLW) GCSE. This encouraged even more students to think critically about the value of their education and proved to be a very successful example of peer education in action.

On top of this, St Louise’s also shared learning from the project with an all-girls school in India. This was part of an ongoing exchange between the two schools, with both sharing work produced by pupils on the importance of equality.

To find out more about Malala and her campaign, please visit www.malala.org/malalas-story. A documentary about Malala, He Named Me Malala, is currently available for free to UK schools. Find out how to access a copy here.