GCE PE Study Trip to UK - Day 2 @ Eaton Bank

Early in the morning, I woke up and decided to go for a morning jog to enjoy the fresh air. Taking a leisurely 15 min jog in the cool English country air, I hardly broke a sweat as the temperature was about 10 degrees celsius. The nice view of the countryside, the cool morning breeze and the fresh air made it a great way to start the day.


At 11.20, Matt Hogan, my buddy from the UK TIPD programme in Feb and our liaison here brought us to visit his school- Eaton Bank High School. Matt is sorta like my mirror image: I'm a PE teacher with strong use of IT in my teaching; Matt's the Head of IT who teaches PE as his minor subject- Cool,eh:)

There we met up with other familiar faces from the UK TIPD programme that VS help to host in Feb. We met up with Linda from Sandbach High School and arrangements were made for us to visit her school on Thu.

Here you see us, all busy at work, planning the schedule for the next few days (So Boss, you can see us really 'zho kang', we never just come here play-play wan :P)


The major part of the day was spent on a tour around the school, introducing ourselves to the various teachers and staff that we would be observing in the days to come.
Unlike here in Singapore, there seem to be multiple venues of 'free space' that can be used for various sporting or other activities. There were 2 halls, a dance studio, drama studio- all places were students could have the flexibility to work, play and create. Here is one of their sports hall which would serve as a good model for our Indoor Sports Hall which VS will build in 2008

In on of the halls, we were able to see a GCE PE class in action having badminton:

What was interesting was the way assessment rubrics were readily visible to students taking GCE PE. The criteria and requirements for each skill level were clearly spelt out and made available to students:

At the end of the day, we met up with the Head Teacher (i.e. Principal) of Eaton Bank, Mr Paul Roberts. Paul's a die-hard Manchester United fan (and Manchester is just a 2 hour drive away from Congleton here), so naturally the conversation turned to football. We also found out that Cristiano Ronaldo has justed moved to Congleton and was spotted in a pub nearby. Hmmm...

The hospitality this first day was simply great and it looks like everyday will give us more insight into how education functions here as well as how we can share our best practices in pedagogy. Everyone has been most kind and generous to our delegation from Singapore and it looks to be a most enriching trip for us.