A-Level students from Swanlea Secondary swap Whitechapel for Barcelona for four days

Sixthform pupils from London’s East End have returned from a four-day trip to Barcelona to experience Spanish culture and learn about fishery subsidies in the EU for their economics A-levels before heading off to university.

The highlight for the students from Whitechapel’s Swanlea Secondary was sailing around the harbour of northern Spain’s busiest port to see at first hand its trading capacity in full swing.

“Its capacity to process large number of containers was significant,” A-level student Madeha Ahmed recalled. “The port was a remarkable infrastructure in size and you could get a real sense of it being the heart of Barcelona.”

The port covers 527 hectares and has 16 miles of wharves and moorings specialising in steel products, chemicals, petrols, gas products and fruit, the students learned.

But the trip also had its academic side for their course study, with the Super Computing centre on their itinerary to see how data is manipulated for research purposes.

They learned about the economics of trade and job creation, subsidies paid to trawlers and the inefficiencies created by such payments, to help them on the school’s A2 Economics course.

The students are all ‘high fliers’ with several already receiving university offers from the Russell Group.

But it was also an opportunity to experience another city with its culture before they leave secondary education.

Teacher Tarikur Rahman said: “The trip gave them a chance to explore a city outside London, to benefit them academically and culturally.”

The sixthformers also saw the massive Sagrada Familia church, a Unesco World Heritage site designed by famed Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí which was declared a basilica by the Pope in 2010, and the Nou Camp football stadium—the two most-visited tourist attractions of the Catalonian regional capital.