During the October half-term break, I had the opportunity to visit the International School of Hellerup in Copenhagen. As a high-quality IB School, it has been an inspiring experience for our team.

Our main focus point during the visit has been to see the personalized educational plan delivered to the need of each student.

The way the school collects and uses data is the key to the system which they have implemented. As data leads to information, and information leads to knowledge, the collaboration among the teams at the school plays an important role. The learning support department consists of 10 staff members and leads by Jonathan was impressed with the individual attention they manage to give at least 4-5 students from each age group. Play therapists and Speech therapists who are full-time members of the learning support team help the students improve in all the necessary skills.

After the visit, while looking at my notes and seeing the Finnish Lessons 2.0 recommended by the head of ISH, once again I acknowledged the importance of supporting the learning difficulties of the children in their young ages so the support needed by them in the upcoming years becomes less and less. This way they prevent also possible behavioural issues which would arise from those students who do not feel confident in accessing the curriculum.

I was happy to see many similarities between our schools and to have this opportunity to inspire how to plan certain things as the school grows. Through the intervention groups formed in the last years of our school, the data collection mechanisms turned out to be more effective, and how we use the data to support our student’s teaching and learning became more valuable. Now what we are planning is to be able to extend and improve this mechanisms in the following times.