[Anglican Alliance] Four Anglican education administrators from across the Communion started a high-level fellowship study programme with a round of national education policy meetings in London this week.

The four are Jacqueline Glasgow-Browne, Senior Education Officer of St.Vincent and the Grenadines; Dauda Seidu, Regional Manager of Anglican Education Unit, in Tamale, Ghana; Ven David Emenike Agbo, Education Secretary, Anglican diocese of Enugu, Nigeria, and Joe Calvin Takeli, Education Secretary, of the Anglican Church of Melanesia, based in Solomon Islands.

They commenced the professional educational training programme as the first fellows in the fellowship scheme set up by the Anglican Alliance and funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. They arrived in the UK on the 15TH of January 2012.

Their first week activities have taken them to briefings with senior civil servants in the UK’s Department for Education, Church House, meetings with Members of Parliament, and visits to Westminster Abbey and Lambeth Palace.

When the fellows visited the Department for Education and the Houses of Parliament, discussions centered around the state policies for education, including the origin, process, implementation and evaluation.

Simon Smith, of the International Education division spoke about policy priorities in England. Issues relating to “Schools with a religious character,” were highlighted by Jackey Byrnes, while Angela Overington talked about “narrowing the attainment gap” between children experiencing disadvantage due to income, gender or ethnicity.

The fellows were also briefed by Fiona Boardman of the local area policy and performance division on “relations between central government and local authority.”

At the Houses of Parliament fellows held discussion with two MPs;

Barry Sheerman MP, an expert in general education policy and former chair of the Education Select Committee, and Karen Buck MP, an expert in childhood early years policy.

Visits were also made to the Church House at Westminster and to Lambeth Palace where discussions were held with Dr. Rob Gwynne, education under-secretary for the Church of England. The Revd Rachel Carnegie, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Secretary for International Development, warmly welcomed the fellows and shared with them the Church’s mission for development throughout the Anglican Communion.

The fellows were also taken on a tour of Westminster Abbey.

According to Dauda Seidu, a fellow from Ghana, “the programme is not only exciting but is providing first hand experience to be gathered for use back home.”

The programme is schedule to last for nine weeks and will include visits to local education authorities, diocesan education departments, primary and secondary schools, specialist education programmes and a week in the education leadership academy in Nottingham.

If you want to contact the fellows about their course you can email them at anglicanalliance@aco.org.