Teachers and students at St Paul’s have been celebrating after being awarded the highly regarded British Council National eTwinning Award at the weekend. Teachers from across all four regions of the UK came together from Friday 27 September until Sunday 29 September 2019 to celebrate the 14th annual British Council eTwinning National Conference, which was held for the first time at The Crowne Plaza in Nottingham.

The eTwinning National Award ceremony took place at a Gala dinner on Saturday, recognising outstanding international projects led by UK schools. There were 12 awards presented across various categories and one award for the overall winning project.

To secure the award, the local school worked in partnership with schools across Europe to create an outstanding project using digital collaborative tools. The project entailed an effective and sustained use of technology and scored highly against each criteria of the below pedagogical framework.

• Pedagogical innovation

• Curricular integration

• Communication and exchange between partner schools

• Collaboration between partner schools

• Use of technology

• Results, impact and documentation

eTwinning, the digital community for schools has seen over 700,000 teachers from 44 countries across Europe and beyond register since 2005. The programme is funded by the European Commission as part of the Erasmus+ programme and managed in the UK by the British Council. The eTwinning National Award is issued to schools that produce outstanding work as part of their eTwinning partnership.

Mr Jarlath Burns, Principal at St Paul’s, paid tribute to his colleague Ms Christelle Bernard, who laid the project, and said: “We are delighted to have been the awarded the eTwinning National Award. Everyone at St Paul’s has enjoyed working with other schools across Europe on our project on ‘Me Voilà! Et toi…c’est qui?’. To secure the eTwinning National Award is a real honour for the students and teachers who participated in the project. The eTwinning project has brought immense benefits to our pupils, the local community and strengthened our important European partnerships.”

Pupils from St Paul’s High School, Bessbrook, who won a British Council National eTwinning Award for their innovative and exciting European project. The pupils are pictured with their teacher, who led the project, Ms Christelle Bernard, and school Principal, Mr Jarlath Burns.