Rosehill Secondary College

Student Exchange Program

SISTER SCHOOL PROGRAM             Kogakkan High School                  Istituto Blaise Pascal

Through our exchange program, not only our students but also staff and wider community get the educational, cultural and international benefits and opportunities, including the following:

• to foster friendship between Italian and Australian students, families and teachers
• to enable students to learn first hand about another country and culture
• to enable students to travel to another country without having to find accommodation
• to increase our understanding of another culture's educational system
• to improve skills in a language other than English
• to allow ongoing professional development for teachers

 

Kogakkan High School

- ITINERARY 2009 , View 2009 Trip Gallery

Since 2004, Rosehill Secondary College has established a sister-school relationship with Kogakkan High School, a Shinto school, in Japan. The school is located in Ise city, in the centre of Japan, blessed with a mild climate and spectacular setting between mountains and the sea. Ise city is also famous for the most important Shinto shrine in Japan known as Jingu or “Ise Grand Shrine” which has two-thousand year history and serves as the centre of all shrines nationwide (Mie Prefectural Government). Jingu also has been held a position of special importance among Japanese.

We have had an ongoing and positive relationship with Kogakkan High School, including a visit to Rosehill by a group of students since 2002. Furthermore, in 2003 and 2005, we visited Kogakkan High School, where we were shown very warm hospitality upon our arrival as always. We firmly believe that strong relationships with schools in other countries will provide wonderful opportunities for our language students and staff, as well as the wider school community. It is a significant milestone for Rosehill and our future direction.

Istituto Blaise Pascal   top of page

DESTINAZIONE ITALIA 2007  

1. Background

The Exchange Program to Italy will be with Istituto Blaise Pascal in Reggio Emilia, northern Italy. The exchange program will be offered to students of Italian in years 9, 10 11 & 12, an opportunity to travel to Italy for three weeks in September 2007.

The exchange with Istituto Blaise Pascal has been running since 1999 when it was established with Altona Secondary College by Lina Morales & Maria Viglione. The exchange was shared by two schools from 2001 when Lina Morales transferred to Gladstone Park Secondary College. Due to Altona College's restructuring from P - 9 and its unsuitability to continue a sister school relationship with a senior Italian school, the exchange will be shared between Gladstone Park SC and Rosehill SC.

At this stage it is anticipated that a total of 24 students from Gladstone Park and Rosehill colleges will be taking part in the exchange, accompanied by four staff members. The trip is planned for the last week of Term 3 and the September school holidays. The group will be staying with families from the school and students will be attending some classes at the school with their host siblings as well as general sightseeing. Hotel accommodation will only be required in Rome and Venice. The group will return in time for Term 4.

Hosting families in Reggio Emilia will be selected based on the age of their child at the school and their ability to adequately accommodate and supervise our students. Hosting families will be provided with clear guidelines established between the schools involved to ensure that all conforms to our requirements. In matching students to their host family, every effort will be made to match boys to boys and girls to girls, but this cannot always be guaranteed. As soon as host families have chosen the student they wish to host, we will actively encourage students to communicate via email so that by September; they will be more familiar with each other. It is anticipated that Italian students hosting our group this year will be coming to Australia in 2008 in a reciprocal arrangement.

2. College profile

The Istituto Blaise Pascal is an experimental high school situated in Reggio Emilia a city of 140,000 inhabitants in the Po Valley area of Northern Italy. The school's pupils are aged 14-19. Like other high schools in Italy it offers a five year course of studies. In the first two years all pupils follow a common curriculum with a few optional subjects. In the final three years pupils have a choice of four different courses:

Each course of studies leads to a different high school diploma. With this diploma pupils can continue their studies at the university faculty of their choice. At present the school has a total of about 750 pupils.

The school was founded as an experimental school within the Italian state school system in 1974 and its present course structure was developed in the following two years. Although like other schools it offers a five year course of studies leading to the high school diploma.Its present course structure does not fit into one of the standard categories of Italian high schools.

The school would never have been founded had it not been for the hard work of a group of dedicated teachers who worked closely together with the first headmaster in the initial development of the project. The following factors were instrumental in the decision to found the school:

1. The desire to experiment with a different kind of school organisation and teaching methods in the wake of the 1968 student protest movement.

2. The desire to give pupils an all-round education in their first two years of high school so that they will be better equipped to make responsible choices regarding the courses to follow in their final three years of high school and beyond.

Teaching methods

1. Laboratory work (language, scientific and technical) is a vital part of the learning process in all areas of study.

2. Team teaching is the norm. Teachers meet weekly to plan their work and all the classes at the same level share the same course content, teaching and learning objectives. They are also given the same tests which, as far as possible, are marked using the same criteria.

3. Pupils who have difficulty are given help in special remedial courses held at the beginning of the school year, during each term and alongside their normal lessons.

3. College address
Via Makalle`, 12
42000 REGGIO EMILIA
Phone: (0522) 51 23 51
Fax: (0522) 51 67 41
Website: www.pascal.re.it

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