History of the BJR Student Programme in the UK

Mike Stokes first visited the Bayerischer Jugendring (BJR) 1987 when he worked for Strathclyde Education Department who had a close link with the BJR through the historical twinning between Glasgow and Munich i.e. the Glasgow Munich twinning was the first UK-German twinning after the 2nd world war. Since then he has remained in regular contact with the BJR and is well known to a number of their staff.  The BJR is a unique organisation within Germany, as Bavaria is the largest German region with over 600 schools, and it is the only region to have one organisation, in this case the BJR, coordinating all  international links and exchanges for schools and youth organisations.  The BJR runs a number of exchange programmes with many countries throughout the world, including English language programmes with Australia, Canada and the UK.

As a result of this ongoing contact, Connect Europ became involved with the UK One-Term School Placement programme in 1997 and has since then successfully hosted many hundreds of German pupils in the UK. Normally the pupils are recruited through the BJR who then passes their applications onto Connect Europ, but for a two year period the BJR were unable to do this and Connect Europ had to organise the whole programme from the UK.  This had the benefit of allowing Mike to make direct contact with all Bavaran schools and the organisations organising transport and insurance for the programmes.  German pupils aged between 14 and 18 now visit the UK for periods of twelve weeks each Spring and Autumn term.

Initially, pupils were placed in schools throughout Cumbria, where Mike Stokes used to work, but in recent years the placement area has gradually expanded to include most of the North of England and Dumfries and Galloway in southern Scotland (see "Areas" for further information).