We are a junior high school situated in the Shetland Islands. Aith is a well-maintained school, consisting of Primary, Nursery, and Secondary departments. The secondary roll includes pupils from 4 cluster primary schools whom we work with closely. Aith is an inclusive school and pupils with special needs are catered for in mainstream classes. The modern language taught in upper primary and secondary is French. We have a vibrant team of teachers and we work closely to provide our pupils with an excellent learning environment. Shetland is geographically isolated from Scotland and therefore the staff have less opportunities to attend events and network with other organisations. Although we are a remote community, we recognise that we need to look outwards to experience and learn from other countries with the focus being on continually improving our achievement and attainment. Shetland is currently going through a structural review of its education and our school is involved in leading the attainment strategy at local authority level in both primary and secondary education. Our aim is to plan a holistic programme from Early years onwards. We are looking to developing innovative approaches to learning and teaching through international links and to kick-start relationships with schools to develop international education and develop global citizenship within our school. This project will help with the delivery of the 1+2 initiative by developing an 'all-through school' language programme. This project would also give us the ideal opportunity to look internationally at a leading world-wide education system. Through making links and connections in an international setting we would hope to share ideas and good practice and integrate new approaches. We would like to develop knowledge and understanding of other education systems and implement changes in our own school in the context of our authority’s structural review. The staff selected to participate in the project are well motivated and placed to lead changes which we have identified as being strategic across both the primary and secondary phase. The following teachers will take part: • Early years teacher who will be delivering French as an L2 next session; • Upper primary teacher who is our school language ambassador for primary and well placed for leading staff training within our school ; • Secondary teacher, the language coordinator of 1+2 in Shetland and will be involved in the training of primary teachers in the authority; • Primary principal teacher: responsible for running the primary department and is a member of the authority’s school strategy working group; • Secondary head teacher: responsible for running the secondary department and the overall management of the entire school. Is also a member of the authority school strategy working group and will be able to oversee the implementation of change across the whole school. The training courses we hope to attend are: July 2015 - Teaching and learning of French language course and culture (early years and primary) September 2015 - Leadership in secondary education October 2015 - Teaching and learning of French language course and culture (secondary) April 2016 - Leadership in primary education All courses aims and objectives include: cultural sessions and visits, a visit to an institution for observation of practice and an opportunity to make links for future partnership work, evaluation and reflection of practice and language and methodology classes. We will learn about the approaches and strategies used in leading a successful school, to evaluate teaching methods, commonalities and differences in educational systems which will link to our school development plan. We hope to make connections with schools abroad and embed these within our practice, thus providing a European context and add value to teaching and learning. The courses will build our confidence and develop knowledge of current and up to date language, provide experience of different cultures and inspire creative teaching approaches including the use of ICT to motivate primary and secondary learners. Learners will benefit from new resources, skills and knowledge acquired by staff and the varied pedagogical approaches which will enhance attainment and may have an impact on motivation and behaviour of the pupils. Our new skills, competencies and knowledge, will shape our learning and teaching and when combined with the European dimension will ultimately have wide and long term benefits for our school, cluster schools and the authority.