Education Network

Education Network

Intergenerational work in education is often led by just one or two people who, having heard about or seen for themselves the difference engaging with older adults has upon children and young people, have decided to develop these opportunities in their own community. You can listen here to Education Scotland’s podcast with GWT regarding the importance of intergenerational work in education.

Our aim is to connect teachers, staff, volunteers and individuals who are interested or engaged in developing intergenerational work within the education sector, from early years onward. By providing a space to bring interested parties together, we will be able to share experiences, knowledge, best practice and research, through discussion opportunities, bite size training, guest presentations and most importantly, learning from each other.

The network will meet as a twilight session, online three times each year via a Teams link. If your link does not arrive, please check your spam/junk folder. Should you wish to join the Education Network please contact GWT office here

2026
Wednesday 3rd June 4pm – 5.30pm
The session focused on young people, the challenges they face as they leave education and prepare for the world of work and how involvement in intergenerational programmes can help to build resilience and confidence.
We were joined in this session by Natasha Fletcher from the NSPCC and Nikki Stein from Working Rite who shared their knowledge and experience on this topic.
Session slides can be viewed here and the recording here

Other dates for 2026, to be confirmed.

2025 Education Network meetings:

Tuesday 25th November
This session focused on the importance of quality within intergenerational work. If you are going to invest time and resources embedding intergenerational work into the curriculum it makes sense to have a good level of knowledge of intergenerational work and its core principles and quality standards, to ensure that your intergenerational practice is of good quality. The better the quality, the more likely you are to achieve the outcomes you are looking for, which in turn makes your programme more likely to become sustainable.
In this session we heard from two education based intergenerational programmes which had recently been awarded a GWT Excellence Award at the GWT Inverness Conference; The Compass School and Our Community Kitchen and MCR Pathways
They each shared their work and how it has developed and been embedded within the curriculum and the results they have seen.
Lorraine also shared GWT Education Network updates There is recording of this session.

Wednesday 12th February 4pm – 5.30pm
This session included a presentation from Fey Cole, author of ‘Intergenerational Practice in Schools and Settings’ and Lorraine George shared the new GWT intergenerational resources available for the education sector.
View a recording of the session here

Tuesday 10th June 4pm – 5.30pm
Developing intergenerational work in schools need not always be just the teachers responsibility. This session explored how effective partnership working can be led by volunteers, pupil support staff at all levels, and partner organisations and the guest speakers were Alec Thompson-Miller from Ace Voices and Laura Taylor from Active Stirling
View the recording and transcript of the session.
The new publication ‘A brief guide to loneliness among young people and children at school’ can be downloaded here

INTERGENERATIONAL RESOURCES FOR THE EDUCATION SECTOR

Twilight information sessions about the new intergenerational resources available for the education sector are being held at 4pm on the following dates:

Dates to be confirmed for 2026

Information about the resources and how to access them can be found here