The snow that decorated the tree in the school quadrangle in February has now been replaced with white April blossom. The excitement of seasonal change has been echoed by the atmosphere generated by a relentless succession and hubbub of educational activity across the school. ES Culham has been buzzing.
Academically, the Nursery/Primary ‘Carnet Scolaire’, the first semester class-councils, the half-year reports and parents consultation evenings indicated that pupils were successfully grasping the abundant learning opportunities offered to them. Year 7 students have their preliminary baccalaureate ‘B’ grades and university offers under their belt and have their heads down working towards final results that will open the door to their futures beyond the school.
As in all good schools, education goes well beyond the classroom. The musical, artistic and creative celebration of the School’s 30th anniversary in September has been followed by Christmas and ‘Carnival’ expressed in different European traditions, an outstanding production of Wilde’s ‘The Important of Being Earnest’, orchestral and choral concerts by both primary and secondary pupils, a sell-out dance-show, a massive drama and music extravaganza involving hundreds of kids from all the sections and just recently a ten day series of events focusing on Africa culminating in an erudite debate on ‘Aid to Africa’ involving over two hundred pupils and marvellously vibrant cultural evening of African dance and music.
Simultaneously, our sport teams continue to compete successfully in the local area and lifted sixth prize in the Eurosport tournament in Karlsruhe, the best of all the smaller European schools! We are delighted that we have started an exchange with our sister European school in Strasbourg in order to support learners of French as L2. S2 pupils report they had a really positive learning experience when they visited Strasbourg in March. While they were there, we were hosting visiting pupils from schools in Aix-en-Provence, Wiesbaden, Budapest and Malaga. In the primary school the whole of Year 5 left for a week of activities on the Isle of Wight, while FS2 and DS2 deepened their understanding of the European dimension by travelling to Hadrian’s Wall and immersing themselves in the history of Romans, Picts, Angles, Saxons and Vikings.
ES Culham was also well represented by its pupils at the 25th Anniversary of the Model European Parliament held in Brussels within the European Parliament buildings. It was an incredibly impressive event as young people from all 14 European Schools divided themselves into political groupings and simulated a European Parliament session by first electing a President and then debating issues such as “European troops and Afghanistan”.
Squeezed in amongst all this were two other overseas trips. One to promote the study of Astronomy with a visit to the observatories in the Canary Islands; and another to have an intensive course of Arabic in Egypt and to visit the pyramids and the seat of civilisation that underpins so much of the European cultural heritage and identity.
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