There were many things that impressed me on the excursion to York but my personal highlight was the visit to RC All Saints school. I liked the warm atmosphere of the school building and the kindness of the teachers, especially the friendly behaviour of our host Mr. Green.

The history lesson that I took part in gave me the impression that the pupils were much more disciplined, followed the lesson in a more concentrated way and worked more quietly than pupils in Germany, although the lesson took sixty minutes and the class had thirty-two pupils.

I was also surprised that there were no group tables but that the pupils sat at tables for two with their faces to the blackboard. Obviously the lessons in Britain are still very teacher-oriented, which means that the teacher leads the pupils through the lesson and they do what he or she wants them to do.

The pupils in that class were very nice, too, and when they realised that we came from Germany they tried to show us what they had already learned in their German courses at school and they said to us: “Guten Tag!” and “Auf Wiedersehen!”, with a nice British accent, of course.

All in all I have to say that I really enjoyed that visit because it gave me an impression of the English school system and the “English way of teaching”, which is in some aspects quite different from lessons I have come across in Germany.