As part of a government initiative in teachers' professional development, funding was made available for teachers from England to visit schools abroad to observe teaching methods. Mrs Stanley and Mr Vaughan-Smith successfully applied and spent three days in Göttingen at one of our exchange partner schools, Otto Hahn Gymnasium.
Our brief was to look at multi-cultural education and in particular the way in which German children are taught about the Holocaust. All the pupils to whom we spoke stressed their belief that everyone in the world should learn about the Holocaust because people need to understand how much damage can be done by making foolish political choices.
We were lucky enough to join a group of Year 10 students making a tour of the town in order to study "Germany and the Nazis" We started at the memorial where the synagogue used to be and visited amongst other features, the area where the banned books were burned and a church whose pastor, a Christian Jew, was deported, but survived the war and returned to his old job afterwards.
The visit was a great opportunity just to spend time in our partner school, to observe lessons and get to know the staff. Göttingen is a beautiful town and we also enjoyed shopping, sightseeing and eating out. (The "pirate's steak" at the Kartoffelhaus comes highly recommended!)
We were impressed by the standard of English spoken by the pupils (and staff) and we returned with many useful resources for English, History and Citizenship. Everyone who gets a chance to go to Germany should certainly go.