French School Partnership - Versailles

As a bilingual school, with the LabelFrancEducation and British Council International School Awards, our role is not just to teach a language but to give children a chance to experience it. Making a connection with children outside of their local community, outside of their city and outside of their country can be a very powerful tool. Powerful because, what better way to understand the value of speaking, reading, listening and writing than to actually use it to communicate in a real and meaningful way.

At the end of last year, we were approached by a group of schools looking to start up their own bilingual model near Versailles, just outside of Paris. They too recognised not just what we could learn from each other as teachers and as an institution, but recognised that putting the children at the heart of this exchange, could make this relationship a strong and lasting one.  Students across the school have already met each other via video link, presented work to each other and created videos to show their new friends around their school. The video BELOW/ABOVE? was created by our bilingual Year 6 class to give them a tour around Shaftesbury Park and explain what a day in the life of a Shaftesbury Park bilingual student is like. And this is just the start. We are also excited about the opportunity, at some point in the near future, to include school visits to our partner school for the Year 5/6 residentials. Having the opportunity to make friends with letters and videos is powerful in itself, but meeting them in person gives even more value to what we feel is important in developing in our children here at Shaftesbury Park: children who think about their world; enlarge their world and change their word.