Day 5 - Certificate Ceremony

Today was dominated by the Trinity College London Certificate ceremony. This was basically a big ceremony to give 30 or so students their english oral exam certificates. It is a really big affair with lots of important guests. It took place in the large ampitheatre here at the hotel that we are staying in. The invited guests included the British Embassy representative for the Ivory Coast, the "prefet" of Grand Bassam (the President's representative......always flanked by soldiers!), the founder of IRMA and owner of the hotel (M. Olo), the national education minister and the head of the british chamber of commerce in Ivory Coast. the whole ceremony was really geared towards the achievements of the children and was full of protocol (rules for speaking).

The Trinity College system works on 12 levels of achievement. the children today achieved levels 1 to 4. Myself and mrs Ward had to translate a live speech from the lead professor at Trinity College. It was a little nerve wrecking, especially as we only got to see the speech 15 minutes before the ceremony started and it was in front of roughly 300 people (students, guests and parents). The whole thing ran very smoothly and I was very impressed with the professional approach to rewarding these students for their achievements. We could probably learn a few lessons about how we run our awards evening. One aspect I liked was the students coming into the theatre to the "chariots of fire" music.........unfortunately they weren't running in slow motion but it was ace anyway!!

This afternoon we finalised our official school business/visit by discussing where to go next with this amazing partnership that we have developed. We all have lots of ideas on how we could go forward with it, but more on that when we get back to school, right now it's time for holidays!! All the children at IRMA have returned home for the Easter holidays and the teachers here are winding down just like the teachers are at Pleckgate!

I hope everyone enjoys their holiday and we will see you when we return

Please comment if you are still reading the blog so I know whether or not to write one tomorrow, thanks

Mr P