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Tollbar Forging Links With College In Sweden
January 6th, 2009
A former Grimsby schoolteacher now working in Scandinavia is helping to forge a valuable link between Tollbar Sixth Form College students and their International Baccalaureate (IB) counterparts in Sweden.
Ruth Walton (35) taught French and German at Wintringham School and Hereford Technology School until 2002, before moving to Aranasgymnasiet Sixth Form College in Kungsbacka, near Gothenburg, with her husband.
She has been teaching English and French in the IB programme there for five years and when she heard that Tollbar had received IB status she was keen to promote a link with students in her home town.
Already the link is providing an exchange of ideas and good practice for both schools. Tollbar introduced the IB programme in September and has 85 students, but Aranasgymnasiet has been teaching the International Baccalaureate for six years.
Tollbar was ranked outstanding by OFSTED earlier this year and was said to benefit from strong leadership skills. Last month Tollbar IB teachers spent their half-term break at Kungsbacka to see how students there have taken to the IB programme.
Rachel Donoghue, deputy curriculum leader for science at Tollbar Sixth Form, said the three-day trip involved lesson observations and enabled them to share best practice, and also to set up a virtual learning environment for both schools.
"IB is a new course for us and, although we all feel we have got off to a tremendous start, with all of our IB students telling us that they are thoroughly enjoying this new way of learning, there is still a lot to be gained from liaising with other schools who have more experience of IB than we do", she said.
We have set up a penpal service between our physics students here and those at Aranasgymnasiet so that they can share their experiences of the course and help each other out with ideas!"
Aranasgymnasiet College was rebuilt two years ago and is set in the small coastal town of Kungsbacka. It has three sixth form colleges and students there study the IB programme for three years, instead of two.
Ruth Walton said "For members of the IB team at Aranäs, the exchange of teachers has been brilliant. We have had the programme at Aranäs for six years, so we, and our director, were able to talk to them about what we've done and what we have learnt over the last few years.
"It is also an ideal opportunity for our teachers to share information and knowledge. Our IB team leader has set up a room on our VLE (virtual learning environment) for both Tollbar and ourselves to chat/share ideas about our IB subjects.
"For our students, it's an excellent opportunity for them to learn about England, its culture and language".
"The majority of our students are Swedish, and they study five or six subjects in English, so this is ideal for them to learn about multiculturalism as well".
"For Tollbar students, they will see a completely different way of life".
"Sweden is a beautiful country; our students can share their knowledge with them and help them with CAS projects, as well as it being an ideal forum for them to discuss subject matters".
Simon Ritchie, assistant science curriculum leader at Tollbar, said the visit to Sweden had been very interesting for both sets of teachers and had forged links that would be available in the coming months.
