MS joins German school network to expand language ties

Menntaskólinn við Sund (MS), an Icelandic upper-secondary school, has replaced Borgarholtsskóli as a partner in the international PASCH school network, mbl.is reports. The network links more than 2,000 schools in about 120 countries and aims to strengthen German teaching and educational and cultural ties with Germany.

The school says membership will give students and teachers better access to learning materials, international school partnerships and courses. MS also hopes to act as a link between German-speaking regions and German teaching in Iceland, including for other Icelandic schools.

Helga Sigríður Þórsdóttir, MS’s rector, said the partnership was already having an impact. A trainee teacher studying to teach German as a foreign language is spending eight weeks at the school, while one of its German teachers will attend a course in Germany in November. MS students may also have opportunities to study German abroad in the future.

Helga said the network would give teachers access to new ideas, resources and professional contacts. “It’s like a bank that’s easy to draw on, so it makes the work more lively,” she said.

The school celebrated its new partnership at a ceremony attended by German ambassador Clarissa Duvigneau and Barbara Honrath, head of the Goethe-Institut in Denmark. Musician Svavar Knútur performed, and students learned about the collaboration.

The PASCH initiative was founded in 2008 at the initiative of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then Germany’s foreign minister and now the country’s president. More than 600,000 students belong to the network worldwide.