Regent High School hosts Erasmus+ European exchange visit
Regent High School recently hosted a visit this week of staff and students from its European partner schools with the aim of understanding what makes the most effective teaching and learning in and between music and English language education.
Working with world-renowned staff from the Roundhouse, Regent High School facilitated an exchange visit involving 92 staff and students from Germany, Hungary, Spain, Sweden and Regent High School. During the course of the week, staff led a range of workshops designed to investigate what makes the best music and English language lessons, while also sharing ideas and expertise with artist-educators from the Roundhouse.
Part of a two-year European Commission-funded Erasmus+ project entitled ‘Innovate to Create II’, the exchange week is the second stage in a five-stage research exploration that commenced with a staff visit to Sweden in November last year and will include staff visits to Hungary and Spain and a second student exchange to Germany next spring. This ambitious, action research project, aims to create a toolkit of the most effective and impactful teaching approaches in and between music and English language that, at the end of the two years, will be shared with schools across Europe.
It is the third European-funded project led by Regent High School; the previous projects have focused on visual art, drama and digital technologies, with this third project completing this exploration of the main art forms currently taught at Regent High School. Across the five schools, this latest project is worth in excess of €142,000 over the two years.
The opportunity to understand and share practice with European colleagues, and to understand more about each other’s countries and contexts, has been a fundamental component of the three projects, with this becoming an even more significant element as the UK explores its future relationship with the EU.
Speaking about the project, Richard Harrison – Regent High School’s Director of Community Engagement and project leader – said: ‘Regent High School is an outward facing school that wants to both share its practice while also learning from the approaches taken by teachers in other contexts. We know that our students will go on to work across Europe and the world, and so it is particularly important that we have a shared understanding of each other’s educational systems and styles. As staff, we are also able to refine our practice by learning from and with our partner schools and cultural organisations.
‘The Erasmus+ programme supports staff and students across Europe – and beyond – to travel and to learn from and with each other. It gives participants experiences that will remain with them throughout their lives, and which help them to see themselves and the world a little bit differently. We are hugely proud to be leading this project and to be using it to develop and share the very best teaching and learning in and between music and English language education.’
Gary Moore, Headteacher of Regent High School, said ‘Successful schools are outward-facing, and we are thrilled that we are able to look beyond London to our European partners and neighbours. This is a visionary project and I am looking forward to seeing how the partnership develops.’
