We are a large Junior School with limited cultural diversity and therefore saw the opportunity to develop wider cultural understanding across the school and develop strong links with education across the European community, by engaging in a European project at a level that was new, creative and exciting for the school, pupils and the wider school community. Our mobility aimed to send key staff on high quality training to impact on school improvement using models of good practice elsewhere in Europe. As we moved towards becoming a Multi-Academy Trust we see ourselves working closely to develop stronger links with our partner schools. Our European Continuing professional development project, is a mobility project that aimed to develop teaching and learning and to provide a European context to our teaching in the whole school. Our Objectives were to: 1. Develop key skills within the curriculum, particularly in creatively developing literacy, numeracy and computing skills. 2. To enable our pupils to understand the changing face of the world and have the opportunity to embrace change that supports their learning, future development and life-long chances. 3. To enhance international links and global understanding for teachers and through this our children 4. Quality first-hand training for staff as we need to be looking beyond just our locality. 5. To give staff time to reflect and develop their ideas as part of the quality training, in order to be able to enthuse, motivate and inspire other staff in developing the curriculum and learning opportunities for our children. 6. To have a deep understanding of the methodology around why changes are being made and to make those changes with enthusiasm and passion. This project has enabled our school to take advantage of some of the best education providers across Europe which have provided the opportunity to develop professional development for all our staff, which involved not only the teachers attending the courses but also those who indirectly benefited from the dissemination and implementation of new skills, knowledge and competencies. These included, teaching and non-teaching staff within our school and those within our wider network of schools part of the Pilgrim learning partnership. Overall, our project involved attendance in structured training in 2 different countries in Europe, namely Finland and Spain.6 members of staff attended structured training courses with a duration of 7 days each on a number of subject areas. Finland: leadership in Education, the Finnish Educational System Spain: Teaching Literacy Through Visual Narrative. The project involved 6 teachers with a range of skills and experiences to develop their own professional skills as well as developing the schools expertise in developing an inspiring curriculum. These will provide long term benefits to the school and the education offered to its pupils. We aimed to ensure the project had long term impact by ensuring that it was linked to the school’s school development plan and impact was monitored regularly to ensure sustainability. We were able to do so as the staff who attended the course were selected based on their range of skills and experiences and motivation to develop their own professional skills as well as reflecting on how their experiences could impact on the school as an organisation . A number of dissemination activities have taken place to ensure our project would impact on the wider educational community. These included: Assemblies Newsletters Notices to parents Dissemination at the Pilgrim meetings Reports to governors Staff meetings and presentations after each course attended Specific targets on the school development plan Sharing of expertise with MAT schools We are pleased that key aspects of the learning whilst on the courses are now embedded into our curriculum / organisation – The use of SEN teachers (following the Finnish model) Enhanced use of visual literacy and iPads Lesson study being an integral part of all teachers’ professional development. European awareness on the curriculum and some links with partner schools These new initiatives would not have been in place had we not taken part in the mobilities.