Taff Ely Turtles Swimming Club for People with Disabilities

Nuertingen Special School

When we visited the special school on friday 12th May they were holding a school fete and open day.
One of the specialist teachers who spoke very good english was kind enough to give us a guided tour of the school facilities and explain to us how children with special needs are educated and integrated into the community in Germany.
One of our group found that language barriers fell easily at the ice-cream stall.
An interesting system we found was that after the age of sixteen German children are able to begin work but they still attend school for a couple of days a week until the age of eighteen.
The children that attend the special needs school are also assisted in this way to find proper fully renumerated work in the standard workplace, which helps them to be fully integrated into the community. Sometimes they can get partially supported work through various special schemes but these schemes contribute to the local economy. A very good example of this is the Rainbow Cafe we visited during our stay.

One of the teachers at the school is a fully qualified mountaineer instructor and teaches the children some of these skills. Through his lessons he was able to put a rope across the local river and they were able to go across the river using the tightrope and the rope skills they had learnt from him. As you can imagine when the local paper heard about this they sent out a reporter and published an article about this achievement. It was the talk of the town for many months afterwards that the children from the special school had achieved such great independant skills. Below is a picture taken on a bridge over the Neckar right next to where they carried out their tightrope skills.

During our visit there was also a concert with singing accompanied with musical instruments that the children had learnt to play. The whole school festival was heavily attended by parents, teachers and other relatives and we felt priveledged to have been invited to a truly memorable event.

Taff-Ely Turtles Trip To Germany May 2003
Arrival at Hotel ......Meeting the Mayor
Tour of Stuttgart...Returning Home

Taff-Ely Turtles Trip To Germany May 2006
Visit to special school in Nuertingen....Photo Gallery of our trip
Nuertingen Market and Beuren Spa.....Tuebingen and castel Hohenzollern
English conversation group, Rainbow Cafe & Official reception