MELBOURNE - On Monday October 2, Strathmore High School welcomed a group of 21 Italian students from the Luigi Galvani International High School in Bologna.

The students arrived in Melbourne accompanied by two of their teachers on Saturday September 30, and received a very warm welcome at the airport from their host families.

Their Aussie hosts have wasted no time, giving them a taste of the city and Australian life straight away.

Strathmore Secondary College, a public secondary school with around 1900 students, started this exchange programme more than a decade ago, finally restarting it this year after the hiatus imposed by the pandemic.

During the welcome ceremony, Jillian English, the school’s principle, greeted the Italian students and explained to them the meaning of Welcome to Country, with which every public ceremony opens.

They were invited to reflect, during their stay in Australia, on the differences and similarities with Italy.

The microphone was then passed to Italian teacher Antonella Alampi, who outlined the intense programme planned for the Bolognese students’ stay.

The program consists of activities and excursions that will allow the students to not only visit some of the most iconic places in Melbourne and Victoria, but to participate in classes with their Australian peers in a totally immersive experience.

Andrea Velli and Mark Wilson, the teachers who accompanied the Italian students, speak about them with great enthusiasm and fondness, describing them as a well-prepared group that is highly motivated and interested in studying languages.

And it could hardly be otherwise, as the Luigi Galvani International Scientific High School offers an IGSE - International General Certificate of Secondary Education - diploma, which involves students attending classes in Italian and English.

Their English is at such a high level, they are able to take the seven exams required for entry to the University of Cambridge, as well as the CAIE - Cambridge Assessment International Education. In this way, once they graduate, they have access to more than one hundred universities around the world.

In order to prepare for these exams during their five years of high school, students in Bologna spend periods abroad in order to deepen their knowledge of the subjects covered by the exams.

This is the background context to their current exchange in Melbourne, where they will study aspects of astrophysics thanks to a tour organised at Swinburne University.

They’ll also take advantage of the prestigious Victorian Space Science Education Centre, opened at Strathmore Secondary College in 2006.

“The selection of the 21 participants was based on the students’ academic performance during their second and third years, and the demand was great, because it is the first trip after Covid,” explains Velli.

“They all left with great enthusiasm for the experience and had no worries about staying with their families, since they were in contact virtually throughout the summer and got to know each other from a distance,” Mark Wilson adds.

Next year, the Strathmore students will travel to Italy where they will enjoy cultural and academic experiences that will help them learn more about Italian culture and improve their language skills.

Although they have only been in Melbourne for a few days, the Italian students already say they are really happy to have had the chance to experience this.

“The first weekend spent with my host family went very well, I was with my two ‘brothers’, we walked around the city and visited St Kilda,” sa says Renzo from 4M.

“They were very curious about life in Italy and asked me many questions.”

What is particularly striking is the awareness these young people have regarding the value of studying languages, as Emanuela from 4O says:

“I chose an international high school because I think that languages give you many opportunities and I believe that by knowing languages I will have more possibilities to choose what I want to do when I grow up.”

“Languages help you to better understand the culture of a certain country and to experience it fully,” Elena adds.

At the end of their two-week stay the students will say goodbye until April, when they will be together again and walking under Bologna’s arcades.