Cheswardine Primary School welcomed some international guests this week as part of a two-year European educational project.
Children and teachers from schools in Italy, Poland, Turkey and London spent three days in the village for the school’s Treasures project.
The Cheswardine school was chosen last year to take part in the project which aims to encourage co-operation and understanding between different countries and cultures.
The group stayed with families in Cheswardine, enjoyed a barn dance at the village hall and visited Goldstone Hall and Ironbridge before spending the rest of the week at Brecknock Primary School in north London.
Treasures coordinator Jill Mackintosh said: “To us, it’s where the project came home and it meant more to the children because they’d heard so much about the other schools and this week they met them.
“The one thing that struck me was how the children communicated with each other and that’s the whole purpose of the project. We wanted to show our visitors English rural life because the contrast with London is amazing.
“A lot of overseas visitors think England is London but our guests saw both aspects of our country.”
Three Cheswardine Primary School staff members visited Turkey last October for the first part of the project, with another group spending a week at a Polish school in May.
Staff will visit a Romanian school in March before the project ends with a trip to Italy in May.
One of the visitors, Palma Liuzzi from Giovanni XXIII Primary School in southern Italy, said: “The families in Cheswardine the children stayed with were lovely and the scenery was amazing.”
