Scholenbanden – S-Cool-Links

13 Oct 2025

1 min read

Explanation on the use of the S-Cool-Links platform

Challenge

SDG 13 – climate action: Teachers worldwide acknowledge the importance of climate education, and there is growing interest in the teacher community to promote climate action through their teaching practice.
Over the last decade, Flemish schools have been working on the SDGs and building a partnership with a school in Africa, South America or Asia. Their wish is to bring the SDGs and global citizenship competencies into the classroom through a personal relationship with a school in Africa, South America or Asia.

However, individual teachers lack the necessary knowledge, competencies and resources to implement school climate action, and schools often lack the necessary contacts, competences and resources to turn their collaborations into successful and sustainable partnerships. Support from a third party is crucial.

Goals

In both cases of climate education and global citizenship education, connection, knowledge exchange and partnerships play a key role. In the case of climate education, the aim is to connect teachers worldwide to facilitate peer learning and project-based learning in support of climate education. In the case of global citizenship education, schools develop sustainable international school links that create a forum for educational and intercultural exchange through which competences of global citizenship are fostered at the level of teachers and learners.

Approach

The SchoolLinks/S-Cool-Links programme centres on strengthening teachers, school leaders, and other relevant individuals of the school community to better understand the other’s reality and challenges, and to respond to them in a positive way, whether the focus is on climate education or global citizenship education. This should inspire them to co-create and experiment with new school projects and teaching practices. In the case of climate education, teachers are invited to participate in an online community of practice platform called S-Cool-Links. The platform supports collaborative learning and climate action and aims to use education as a strategic tool to battle climate change and increase resilience to climate injustice within future generations. In the case of global citizenship education, teachers are trained to use the schoollinks as an educational tool to stimulate changes in their learners through intercultural exchange activities in co-creation with their partner school. 

The programme is built around three pillars:

Quality support and guidance of the schoollinks so they can successfully evolve into a sustainable partnership
Effective communication about S-Cool-Links so teachers are inspired to connect with their peers to promote global school climate action
Strengthening teacher capacity on climate education through supporting knowledge exchange and climate actions on the S-Cool-Links platform