We wanted to job shadow across subject teachers, management and support for learning staff in order to create an ongoing sustainable dialogue between our schools, including collaboration between the learners of our schools. We wanted to compare our education systems to create mutually supportive sustainable collaboration. Specifically, we were looking at how to build and implement more interdisciplinary and cross-curricular learning opportunities into our Broad General Education curriculum. The project would help us establish living and meaningful participative links for our pupils and staff to design these opportunities with a comparative international dimension. We also wanted to explore how pupils with additional support needs could be better supported and included in learning across our school. We wanted to find ideas that would support greater opportunities for outdoor learning, building on sustainable practices and life skills for our pupils. With Scotland specifically beginning to integrate the UNCRC into law, we were seeking opportunities to give our pupils a voice that transcended traditional local boundaries and links with European young people which would inspire them to collaborate and learn in a wider dimension.
We wanted to build on existing links with the Dutch partner school (Erasmus + KA2) and collaborate with our partner schools (NL and the new contact in DK) on our improvement plan regarding learning for sustainability. We felt it was important to learn lessons from our European partners around both environmental and educational sustainability at a time when resources are becoming scarcer and new ways of learning and thinking could be achieved through wider collaboration. Our school is in a semi-rural location and we felt it was an important statement to our community that we were looking outwards, beyond our traditional local and national horizons to learn in a more global context.