THERE was a real European feel at

Okehampton Primary last Friday when the school welcomed visitors from Germany and Italy.

It was part of a two-year project to enable staff and pupils from different countries to share ideas and experiences.

Joining Okehampton Primary in the project was St Andrew's Primary from Buckland Monachorum, Franziskus School, in Dortmund, Germany, and Torre del Greco School near Naples in Italy.

Okehampton pupils learned songs in German and Italian to welcome the guests at an international assembly.

The children also greeted the guests in German or Italian as they were shown around the school.

Children from all four schools have also been working on a logo to represent the project, with the winner to be announced at a later date.

A full agenda of activities was planned to show off the county, including visits to Tavistock and a scenic journey along the River Dart from Totnes to Dartmouth.

The school also took the German teachers to meet the mayor of Okehampton, Cllr David Weekes, where they were shown historic photographs and asked him about his role.

Headteacher of Okehampton Primary Brian Cunningham said: 'The visit went really well and the children were brilliant.

'They had learnt some greetings in German and Italian and they sang songs in the assembly, the visitors were really impressed.

'We also had the national flags flying outside.'

The school was awarded 17,000 euros from the British Council for the European Comenius Project, WinDoors to Europe.

It aims to bring European schools together to establish a cross-cultural view of primary education and exchange teaching and learning strategies.

Mr Cunningham said the visit was an all round success to the start of the project.

He said: 'This will be a whole school initiative and the related themes will run through the curriculum in each of the key stages, incorporating writing, music, drama, ICT, cooking, ecology and languages, to name but a few.

'The work from all schools will be shared in a variety of formats such as books, digital pictures, video and audio recordings.

'We are now planning on how we are going to take the WinDoors project and develop it in our individual school.

'We will also be looking at the opportunities for staff in all the schools involved to visit each other's schools.'

'We are confident that the project will provide our children with a real purpose for their work and help us address some of the issues in our recent Ofsted report.'