A GROVE Academy pupil is heading to Beijing to take part in the final of a worldwide competition encouraging dialogue between youngsters from different countries.

Fifth-year pupil Claire Pollington (15) will represent the Broughty Ferry school in China at the conclusion of the UNESCO Mondialogo contest later this month.

The secondary and its partners from a Japanese school make up one of only 50 teams that have been selected from over 2700 in the competition this year.

A group of 26 pupils from Grove entered the competition at the start of the year and they were paired with a school from Fukiai High School in Kobe, Japan.

“We heard about it through the school, and I was particularly interested in the communication aspect,” said Claire.

“The more I got involved, the more I found out about the cultures. I have learned a lot about our own culture and gained more of an insight into the culture over there.

“I’m more confident in speaking to new people we have met through the project and I’m now looking forward to putting faces to the names.”

The two schools took on the project Promoting Cultures Through Folk Tales, in which they told each other traditional stories from their own countries.

Grove pupils took inspiration from stories sent from Japan and created books for young children based on these tales, some featuring cut-out illustrations.

Grove and Fukiai also worked together on a cross-cultural original story.

The Kobe youngsters created Kamishibai—traditional Japanese picture dramas of Scottish stories—as the two schools communicated through the internet to take the project for- ward.

Representatives of the two schools will meet in Beijing as they take part in the final from September 25-28.

The 50 nominated teams will present their projects to an international jury, which will select the best three and announce the winners at an awards ceremony.

Claire added, “The thing I’m looking forward to most about the trip is seeing first-hand the culture and how the people live.

“It’ll be very different from back here in Britain.

“I’m really lucky to be going and am very much looking forward to it,” she added.