Since 2003, The Holt has been partnered with IES El Bohio in Cartagena, Murcia, Spain. The contact was set up through the STT and the equivalent in Spain. There, schools which offered seccion bilingue were chosen to build partnerships with schools in England which are Language Colleges. Of the initial 18 teachers who went out in February 2003, only two schools are still collaborating together.

The exchange programme has involved over 200 pupils to date, and comprises a twice yearly visit as well as exchanges of emails, letters and work. The Holt visits Cartagena in March and the Bohio school comes to Wokingham in October usually, although they are visiting in June 2008.

The programme has been very successful in promoting Spanish in school, as the attraction of speaking to Spanish boys greatly motivates our girls, and has enabled some cross curricular activities to take place.
The bilingual section pupils in Spain not only learn English in their English lessons, but they also have science, technology, art and IT lessons in English; up to 15 hours of English per week, compared to our pupils' 2 hours.

This has encouraged staff at the Holt to investigate teaching other subjects in Spanish, and a pilot CLILL project was undertaken in Sept 07, teaching a topic of Geography (on Japan) in Spanish to year 8 set 1.

The success of the programme in building up long-term friendships is also evident in the number of pupils who are now confident enough to visit their pen pals on their own. 4 sixth formers went to Cartagena in February half term, 2 year 11 went in April, and 2 more are going in August. In addition, the Spanish are visiting their penpals here, and there have been 4 such visits, with more planned this summer and in September.