Coombeshead (England) - Istituto Comprensivo Statale (Italy)
We went to Italy as part of the Comenius project, to study democracy in Italian schools. We went to a middle school in Treviso, 10 miles from Venice, for children aged 11 years to 14 years.
We attended a class council meeting, school council meeting and a whole school assembly. We found that these meetings were very casual and included everyone. The students were very confident to let their voice be heard. Pedro (one of our students) translated all the meetings for us. In the whole School meeting they were discussing homework and what happens when a student does not hand work in. The whole school voted about the proposals. Pedro explained how our homework system works. They were very interested about the support students were given.
The school was very different from ours, mainly because of the timetable, Monday to Saturday. It started at 8 am and ended at 1 pm apart from Friday which ended at 4.30pm. We only had 15 minutes for break again apart from Friday when the canteen was open for lunch. The school is also a lot smaller than ours, we have 1250 and class sizes of up to 30 while in Italy there are 300 students and class sizes of up to 22.
The school was very relaxed; one indication of this was the fact that the pupils didn’t wear uniform. In the whole of Italy only Primary Schools have to wear a uniform.
Italy 2008
On October the 19th, 10 students from Coombeshead went to Italy as part of the Comenius project to study their schools, the way they work and their democracy. We went to a middle school in an area called Treviso, which is close to Venice. Whilst attending their school until 1 o’clock we also had time to socialise with our host families and school friends that we made. On the second day, we went to Treviso and went shopping. Later we returned to the school and met up with everyone then went to a pizzeria and had a HUGE pizza!!
On the Wednesday Stanley had an average Italian school day and then met up and went around to one of the Italian student’s mansions and had lunch and had a party!! On Connie’s Wednesday she went shopping in the local shopping centre and had a gathering at her host’s house. On Thursday we took a train and a bus to Venice for the day and were taking photos every second we had! After being amazed by the amount of shops, we got lost. In Venice! To get back to the train station we took a water taxi.
On the Friday we were all excited to be going home again and were more than ready to go! We got back to Coombeshead at half past midnight and glad to be back! |
