We are delighted to share the feedback from Lemington Primary’s visit to Newcastle’s twin city of Nancy in June. International Newcastle’s CEO, Declan Baharini, and Sarah Edgar (Newcastle City Council, School Effectiveness) supported the school to access funding from the UK Government’s Turing Scheme, to enable a group of the school’s most disadvantaged pupils and staff to visit their partner school in Nancy. Head Teacher, Craig Heeley, provided this report, photos and a video from the trip.
“It was an amazing week and everything ran very smoothly.
We took the train to London early Monday, Eurostar to Paris and a few hours touring Paris by coach and visiting the Eiffel Tower, before getting the early evening train to Nancy.
We enjoyed an official welcome on Tuesday at the city hall.
We spent the rest of the day at our partner school, Boudonville Primary School. We performed a joint song and dance with the school at their summer fair in the evening and enjoyed a BBQ together.”
On Wednesday we visited the Alain Batt Chocolate Factory where we enjoyed a demo of how they make the different sweet treats and some samples too! In the afternoon we headed to Parque de la Pépinière in the afternoon, enjoyed some games in the park and some time in the water fountains (temperatures were in the mid 30’s!). We enjoyed our evening meal in Angeluzzo.
On Thursday we spent the morning at Lorraine University taking part in a bilingual workshop with our partner school organised by student teachers at the University. It was a brilliant morning with lots of opportunities for the children to interact with each other and practice their French/English skills. We also shared some traditional French/English snacks together and then had a picnic together at lunch in the university gardens. In the afternoon we further explored the city visiting various landmarks, buying souvenirs before heading to Angeluzzo for tea.
Our journey back on Friday went smoothly with no delays and we arrived back at Lemington at 8:20pm.”
