Ardingly College Science trip to the Gambia 2009

The tenth annual Ardingly College trip to the Gambia ran from the16^th to the 26^th June 2009. During this 10 day time period, 24 Lower Sixth students who have been selected to participate, taught Science in 3 very different schools. All lessons were taught to wide age range of Gambian students and covered many practically based science topics. Our students spent a considerable amount of their own time planning their lessons prior to the trip. All involved practical experiments, from making parachutes, to racing cars along a track, to catapults and their enthusiasm was infectious.

This type practical lesson is exceedingly unusual and very exciting for the children receiving the tuition. In The Gambia schooling is very poorly funded and supported and the learning environment is usually one of class sizes between 45/60 children per teacher, depending on the school. Most activities in the classroom involve copying from the board in a poorly ventilated and lit classroom, and these were the conditions that our students had to acclimatise themselves to. Teaching outside on bantabas in the shade of mango trees was therefore, unsurprisingly, the preferred option.

This year we re-visited our long-standing link school, Old Jeshwang. We also visited the rural school of Kartong on the southern Senegalese border, and St John's School for the Deaf. The latter of these enables our students to learn to teach using sign language – something they pick up remarkably quickly.

The trip is also important as it enables us to see how the money raised at Ardingly has been used in the schools. It was good to see proper windows now installed in the Ardingly Block of classrooms at Old Jeshwang and we put plans in place for yet more alterations which are currently underway, using labour from the local community.

Having worked in very poorly lit and airless classrooms in Kartong, this year's students suggested that new large windows be installed in one of the old classroom blocks. Other plans include the whitewashing of all classrooms and new blackboards painted. Bantabas are also to be built in the playground, using sustainable pressed sand bricks, from a building company within the village. The aim of this is to provide a central focus for the school community where students will be happy to gather.

St John's was thrilled with the 4 extensive Sign Language dictionaries that we took out, a resource much needed and beyond their reach.Funds were provided this year to enable them to buy a video recorder and VCR which will enable them to record their own Gambian Sign Language.

Each year, the trip goes from strength to strength and Ardingly's role in the school community in The Gambia increases. The incredibly warm welcome each new group of students receive on arrival in the schools is a very humbling experience, but each year it grows, reflecting the hard work, dedication and enthusiasm of all the students who have visited before.