Express & Star

High Arcal School students get taste of German life

From shadowing a dentist to getting a taste of life as a physiotherapist, a group of year 10 students have completed a week-long work experience programme in Germany.

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Staff and students from the Academy of English and the High Arcal School in Oldenburg, Germany

It was organised as part of the long-standing partnership between the High Arcal School in Sedgley and the Academy of English in Oldenburg.

It was the sixteenth exchange visit and the fourth time that students from the High Arcal get an opportunity to do their work placements in Germany.

High Arcal students worked in a range of fields and companies across Oldenburg, including in medicine, law, graphic design, physiotherapy, education and agriculture. Working in a dentist surgery 15-year-old Caitlin Hoyland spoke highly of the experience gained on her placement. She said: “I was made to feel very welcome and worked as part of the team, even assisting with a root canal extraction”.

Another student, Kaylem Wynne, worked in a physiotherapist and gained unique insights into physiotherapy treatment for the elderly, making more than 20 house visits in four days.

Kaylem said: "It was really good to interact with the German patients and get to see how physiotherapy helps them in their daily lives."

Living in a renovated farm house, the students got a taster of living in suburban Germany and also participated in a range of social activities from cycling, cooking, swimming and going to the cinema.

On the last full day of the exchange, the students took a business trip to the Netherlands and engaged in work-based motivational activities, including a Chinese painting workshop.

Director of Studies of the Academy of English in Oldenburg, Dr. John Goodyear, originally from Rowley Regis, praised the continued partnership between the two institutions.

He said: “Work experience in Germany gives students a real taster of life and work in the country, which does much to widen understanding and awareness of Germany and Germans among young people from the Black Country”.

Accompanying staff members from the High Arcal School, Kiri Westwood and Rebecca Leigh, paid tribute to the praiseworthy conduct of the students, agreeing that they did an 'excellent job at integrating into German work culture, thoroughly benefitting from the language and social interaction with colleagues on their placements'.

The seventeenth exchange visit will take place in October when a group of German students from the Academy of English will visit the High Arcal School for 10 days.

It will include joining civic leaders for a Service of Anglo-German Remembrance and Reconciliation at the Wolverhampton Cenotaph on October 13.

It will take place at 10.45am to remember the fallen of the Battle of Passchendaele in the First World War.