The aims for this year in our school include the development of ICT skills of our staff and an increase in international contacts in our everyday school life. Furthermore, our school tries to encourage our staff towards lifelong learning, which would enable us to better cope with the challenges of our work. If there are shortcomings in the skills and knowhow of the staff these are learly reflected in the motivation of the staff to help and encourage our pupils to learn better. The new curriculum will be effective as of the autumn 2016. Some of the central themes in the new curriculum include international relations and ICT. We try to encourage international contacts in many ways in our school: we have had delegations of teachers come for visits in our school and this year we are also hosting an assistant teacher from Portugal. We also had a Spanish assistant teacher work in our school for a couple of weeks in the autumn 2015. We also take part in the Erasmus in Schools -programme and invite Erasmus students to visit us from the University of Eastern Finland. Our school has a number of special education classes whose assistants not only attend the English classes with their pupils but also help all pupils with their homework. They have also been active in our international activities in the past. They feel that their skills in the English language are lacking and would like to attend a language course to improve their English. There is no intensive language training available in Joensuu. One of our language teachers is the head of our ICT team and is responsible for managing the organisation of the ICT training in our school. The new curriculum requires that teachers are up-to-date in their ICT skills but we feel that our skills in this area are lacking. Many computer applications are very well suited for language teaching, which is why our language teachers are keen to update their skills and have chosen courses in this field. The courses also provide excellent opportunities to network with other European teachers though whom the pupils could start to develop their own international networks. This type of courses do not in exist in Joensuu in summer.