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Our International Dimension

We are keen to provide as many opportunities as possible for our pupils to develop a better understanding of other cultures, to travel widely and to be able to communicate in a wide range of languages.

In 2008 we were awarded the Intermediate International School Award which recognises the international dimension which Sheffield High School is so proud of. In 2009 this was followed by the Full International School Award. This award is described as “a major prize for excellence in the field of international activities and partnerships with school overseas”.

Our Junior School is also part of the Sheffield Local Education Authority’s cluster of the British Council’s ‘Connecting Classrooms’ project. This is a global programme that creates partnerships between clusters of schools in the UK and others around the world. These partnerships bring an international dimension to young people’s learning, to improve their knowledge and understanding of other cultures and prepare them for life and work as global citizens. Our link is with the Experimental Primary School attached to the University of Science, Engineering & Technology in Chengdu, China. For more information of the Connecting Classrooms project, please see the British Council website.

All girls in our Junior School now study three languages (French, German and Spanish) and, as they move into the Senior School, they can also take up Mandarin Chinese which is also available as a lunchtime club in the Junior School.

We now have links with schools in France, Germany, Spain, the USA, China, Bangladesh, India, Kenya and Egypt, some of which involve e-mail and letter correspondence with pupils, sharing of ideas between teachers or group exchange and visits.

Many opportunities are offered to our pupils to travel to all corners of the world. Trips in recent years have taken the girls on Sports Tours to New Zealand, Fiji, Barbados and China and cultural visits to Peru, Bonaire and the Galapagos Islands.

The Languages Department organises trips to Moscow and St Petersburg, France, Spain and Germany. There are also cross-curricular trips to Florida, Paris, New York, Iceland, Rome and Pompeii as well as Concert Band tours to Amsterdam, Bruges and Disneyland.

Sheffield High School prides itself on its diverse cultural mix which provides an environment in which girls from a range of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds work and play happily together on a day to day basis.

Approximately 15% of our pupils have English as an additional language, with more than 40 different languages spoken in family homes. Our inspection report in February 2008 described our school community as one in which ‘the girls are tolerant and supportive of each other’ and where they ‘work and play well together in a caring and thoughtful manner.’

To download a copy of our recent International Flyer, which gives further information about our links and visits, please click here (665.6 KB .pdf file)

For further information on our international links, please see some of the School’s publications

Recent School Visits Abroad

Current and Planned Future Visits