Bilateral Commission. Cornwall November 4th-7th 2013

Summary of outcomes

1. The remit of the bilateral commission and the roles of its members should be specified in a document to be signed by both parties.

2. The educational context in both regions is quite different: in the UK schools have autonomy of budget and curriculum with the local authority having a minor role; in Spain, there is still substantial centralised control by regional governments in, for example, in-service training. This will have an impact on how the project is managed in each region.

3. CLIL is well established in Castilla y León, but not in Cornwall or the rest of the UK. Both Spain and the UK lag behind the rest of Europe in terms of success in language learning.

4. The aim of sharing good practice will be facilitated by twinning 9 secondary and 9 primary schools in each region. Cornwall will identify its twinned schools shortly.

5. The work plan for the twinned schools in the first year is a, a PowerPoint presentation of each school to be shared with the partner (by January 2014) b, the preparation of job shadowing and junior assistantships in each school and c, in secondary schools, a web quest shared between classes (by July 2014).

6. Schools will decide their own priorities and tasks for the second year (September 2014 to June 2105) but will be asked to draw up a work plan for such joint activities and to agree it with their local authority coordinators.

7. Cornwall will prepare guidance on junior or mini assistantships. Castilla y León will prepare guidance on job shadowing.

8. The project will fund the job shadowing for teachers but cannot, under Regio rules, fund the mobility of pupils. A substantial proportion of the Regio funding is allocated by the EU to support the collaborative work of the local authorities. 9. Castilla y León has prepared a website and VLE for the project.

10. The teacher training department in Castilla y León will offer a course in basic CLIL for both regions in 2014 (April to July)

11. Both regions undertake to prepare in-service training courses which may attract Erasmus+ funding in 2014 and 2015