Back to the Arctic 

Cranford’s exciting Erasmus project, delayed by the Covid pandemic, got back into full swing in March 2022 with our second visit to Kvaløya Videregående Skole in Tromsø.

For Sukhjeet Kudhail (Head of IT and Computing) this was a first trip to the arctic circle joining Mudassir Sarwar (Data Manager) and Rob Ind (Joint Head of School) on a project building collaborative relationships with high performing technical education systems around the world.

Kvaløya (‘Whale Island’) school specialise in Construction, alongside the general education they offer their 16-19 year old students, working closely with the industry in Tromsø to educate the carpenters, plumbers, concrete workers and tinsmiths Northern Norway needs. We were also fortunate to visit Nordkjosbotn upper secondary school who showed us round the mechanical and electrical engineering facilities.

Norwegian vocational education is hugely impressive. We observed practice demonstrating huge amounts of technical skill but also secure and highly academic specialist knowledge, culminating in a visit to the Level 5 and 6 maritime school in Tromsø school where they use their new £1.6m virtual bridge to train ship captains of the largest vessels on the world’s seas.

Our hosts, Oddbjørn, Jon and Tore, were fantastic and we even got a night out in Tromsø to see the ‘Norwegian Ed Sheeran’ – not quite!

Tromsø is very near the top of the world geographically but also in technical education and there is a lot we can learn from them. We look forward to working together to create opportunities for our students to have the chance to witness the magic of the Arctic in the future.