Ballakermeen High School is working with the Goethe-Institut London in the UK to focus more on German culture.

The Douglas secondary school is part of the initiative ‘Schools: partners for the Future’ (PASCH), which forms a worldwide network of more than 2,000 schools with a special focus on Germany and German culture.

The Goethe-Institut helps schools include or expand German teaching on their curricula and offers teachers further training in language courses, as well as equips schools with multimedia-friendly teaching, learning and cultural studies materials.

It sends teaching experts out to assist the partner schools around the world.

Youth programmes are run in Germany for pupils from participating schools, allowing them to improve their language proficiency, develop their intercultural skills and experience Germany and its culture.

It was launched in 2008 by the German Federal Foreign Office to create and strengthen a global network of partner schools with links to Germany.

The Goethe-Institut London and Glasgow are in charge of implementing the initiative in the UK, which promote knowledge of German abroad and encourage international cultural exchange.

The Goethe-Institut fosters around 600 PASCH schools worldwide with a special focus on German and German culture.

Due to a delay because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the official launch took place on Monday (July 11).

Ballakermeen High School has been a partner school since July 2020 and adds to the Goethe-Institut’s existing PASCH partner school network in the UK, taking its number of partner schools to 12.

The Goethe-Institut London said it is ‘honoured’ to welcome Ballakermeen High School in Douglas on the Isle of Man in its ‘thriving’ PASCH network in the UK.