Our objectives for this project focused on developing a greater understanding of vocational education in schools, implementing careers education into the curriculum and observing and learning from the teaching and learning strategies that allow Finland to rank so high in the PISA scores.
At Sharples School, we have greatly benefited from our growing international scope thanks to our partnerships with a range of schools around the world. We applied for this project in order to enrich the teaching and learning offer at our school, and to provide staff with high quality professional development. Finland has a renowned educational system we felt staff could learn a lot from to ensure that the education the school provides its students is as researched and groundbreaking as possible. In particular, we were interested in vocational education , as this is an area that needs to be developed at Sharples to provide a more rounded education to the range of pupils who attend. In particular, the Performing Arts department intended to improve on vocational opportunities. Two teachers representing the Performing Arts department, including the Director of Subject, attended the second mobility with the aim of experiencing first-hand the benefits of vocational education integrated with academic subjects. Through international cooperation, we intended to learn more about careers education. The assistant headteacher in charge of careers education in school attended the first mobility, and said “I am interested in embedding careers into our curriculum, and Finland does this very well. I feel that we can learn a lot from our partner school.”Finally, we aimed to gain a new perspective on teaching and learning . Our selection of the Gradia School in Jyvaskyla was thanks to an established partnership formed by one of the Deputy Headteachers at Sharples with a member of staff at Gradia School in 2013. Their work together on an astronomy project in the past provided an opportunity for further collaboration.