CHILDREN have been taken on a whistlestop tour of the globe by their peers in a school initiative design to broaden their horizons.
Year 6 children from Barnard Castle Preparatory School staged a day-long tourism fair as part of their Achievement Award, an invaluable alternative to SATs.
Children selected a country of their choice before researching every aspect of its culture. They then set up stalls featuring a host of interesting facts, games, artefacts and even food types which they shared with young visitors to the event from other year groups.
Teacher Nathan Joy said: “The children have to market their stalls to wow the visitors into calling on them rather than the competition. They did this with interesting facts, games and even food so as well as covering the geography element of the Achievement Award it tapped into a host of other skills.”
Lily Fortune, 11, Sienna Barras, 11, and Imogen Mobley, 10, chose Jamaica, which was the first time the country had been featured at the fair. They organised a drinks tasting session where visitors had to decide whether it was grapefruit or mango and pineapple juice.
Lily said: “We chose Jamaica because it is a popular holiday destination and we really enjoyed discovering things we didn’t know about the country. They have a bread festival. They even eat deep fried bread and we also found that there are poisonous creatures such as the Scorpion fish and a yellow snake. I’d love to go there one day.”
Headmistress Laura Turner said: “The annual tourism fair has become a rite of passage for Year 6 pupils who relish the opportunity to research foreign climes.
“The younger children learn such a lot from the experience, are inspired and look forward to the day when they will be manning the stalls.”
The tourism fair is an important part of the school’s Achievement Award, which replaces the traditional SATs exams in Year 6.
Instead, pupils learn a huge variety of skills throughout their final primary year ranging from basic first aid and culinary skills to an innovative research project which is presented to a panel of teachers and pupils.
“Mental wellbeing is given the highest priority at Prep School and we see little value in creating unnecessary stress through formal exams,” Mrs Turner said. “Instead we prepare our children for the tests of life, not a life of tests, which is why our Achievement Award programme in Year 6 is so popular.”