Rydal Penrhos pupils travel to Bonn as part of international Comenius project
Mr Michael Farnell & Steffan Robbins
Students from Rydal Penrhos have recently completed a two-year joint European project with partner schools from Bonn, Germany and Nitra, Slovakia. The project was part of an EU funded project to encourage students to develop language skills and to internationalise their CVs. This was our 6th year in the programme. The principle aim of the current project was to identify and report upon how teenagers’ lives differ around Europe. In year one we concentrated on investigating how school life varies and in year two we investigated how home and social lives vary. Many students from the school have had the opportunity to visit our partner schools over the last two years and form good friendships. The students produced the design for the website to present their findings and collected all content themselves, working in small internationally diverse working groups using ICT to facilitate information exchange.
Whilst students from Wales indicate that clothes are less important in their lives, they also spend the most money, with an average expenditure of over €500 each on clothes. Students from Rydal Penrhos are also more likely to go to live concerts and listen to music on their computer when compared to European students.
For entertainment, students from Germany and the UK are more likely to engage in activities which cost money, such as discos and the cinema, whereas the Slovak students are overwhelmingly more likely simply to meet with friends or walk in the park.
Attitudes to smoking vary enormously, with 20% of British 16-18 year olds smoking (the lowest proportion), 28% of Slovaks and 39% of Germans smoking. British students are also more likely to start smoking at a later age. However, when it comes to alcohol, Slovak teenagers drink the least, spend less money on alcohol and start drinking at an older age. Whilst Germans start drinking younger, the British spend the most on alcohol.
German students have the most free time each week with the Slovaks having the least free time. All students rate sports participation very highly, whilst British students spend the most time studying. Interestingly, whilst British students enjoy reading the least, they read the most books; the Slovaks report they enjoy reading the most.
More detailed findings can be found on the website made by the students on comeniusteenager.net
As part of the project, students from school travelled twice to Germany and twice to Slovakia, staying with host families and working in their schools. Most recently we spent 5 days in Bonn. As well as working in school, we had the opportunity to visit the Federal Republic’s former nuclear bunker which had over 17km of underground tunnels and we ere fortunate to have a tour and visit to the European Parliament in Brussels where Herr Axel Voss, the MEP for the Bonn/Cologne region explained the work of the Parliament to our students.
Pupils who took part in the programme:
Thomas Warrington
Steffan Robbins
Lara Kotobi
Jennifer Ehrenstrom
Simone Vogel
Julienne Krool
Freya Cassia
Rydal Penrhos staff
Mr Farnell
Mr Tickner
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