IT is an impressive classroom.

So it is no surprise that the schoolchildren huddled in the centre of Worcester’s majestic cathedral look small.

Instead of four walls around them they have vast openness flanked by intricate archways.

Above their heads is a magnificent rose window and dozens of invaluable historical artefacts are a step away.

Fortunately, the unusual venue does not stop them giggling and chatting as they would in any other classroom.

It probably helps that some of them are dressed as bishops and will soon be throwing themselves into a drama workshop.

This is just one day in the education programme run by the cathedral and used by thousands of schoolchildren from Worcestershire and beyond every year.

The idea started 10 years ago after it was noticed that the many schoolchildren who visited the cathedral were given much the same tour as the adults.

According to Sue Adeney, the cathedral’s education officer, at one time a trip was seen as a summer term jolly but now thanks to the work she and others are doing it has evolved to offer a valuable source of curriculumfocused activities.

RE and history are the subjects that might lend themselves most easily to the cathedral setting but they are not the only ones on offer.

Mrs Adeney said: “The cathedral is an amazing resource.

“There isn’t a subject you couldn’t teach in here.

“We are here to translate that for the teachers into activities.

“The programme was designed around what teachers said they wanted.

“RE and history are obvious activities and we do have a lot of visits specific to that.

“They look at the building as a church because that’s what it is.

“They might put on a bishop’s mitre, light a candle, wear monks habits and process in silence.

“They might meet a real-life monk – they love that.

“The things we do that are unexpected are maths or numeracy, geology or art and we do quite a lot of language groups so we get overseas pupils who are coming to study with other schools.”

Maths pupils, for example, are encouraged to think about estimates and problem solving.

Mrs Adeney said: “We’ve got some tiles where they’ve got a pattern and if you put them in multiple groups they make a bigger pattern.

“That’s called tessellation.”

She said they look at the tessellation patterns of mediaeval tiles while another exercise gets children to estimate the distance across the rose window by using problem-solving techniques without getting up a ladder.

“For little ones it can be as basic as counting the pairs of arches,”

she said.

“It’s doing the subject rather than just sitting and learning.”

The theory is that encouraging youngsters to visit, enjoy and make use of the cathedral will help reach out to more of the community.

Cathedral staff hope in turn the little ones will spread the word to their families.

While Mrs Adeney is keen to stress that the service is not about preaching the Christian faith she does believe the visits have a role to play in teaching youngsters about it.

She said: “It’s not evangelical. It’s outreach.

“Almost without exception they enjoy the experience and they become comfortable within the building.

“But we also hope they will be more comfortable to look at the Christian faith in the way they might look at any other faith.

The trouble with RE now is there’s a lot of comparative work so they go to mosques and Sikh temples and so on but many teachers can lack confidence in Christianity.

“There’s an assumed confidence in Christianity they haven’t always got.

“It’s also part of our Christian heritage of the country.”

The majority of Worcestershire’s schools take part in the cathedral’s education programme including schools of all faiths.

Mrs Adeney, herself a teacher, is the only paid member of the team but she has the backing of 25 volunteers and is always on the look out for more.

She said: “The building speaks for itself and so we really don’t have any problems with the children.

They assume a reverence for it.

They are also surprised by how much they enjoy being here and the feedback I get from the kids and the teachers is overwhelmingly positive.

“We quite often meet parents and grandparents at the weekend who have been dragged along by their children who want to show them the things that they’ve seen.

“Then, we’ve achieved what we’ve set out to do which is to open the doors of the cathedral to everybody in the community.”

􀁥 Education reporter Claire Fry is on holiday.