An Ilkley head teacher and his staff will be wrapping up warm and leaving playground duty behind them as they jet off for a fact-finding tour in Canada.

The headmaster of All Saints Primary School, Peter Marsh, and three of his staff have been chosen to represent the Bradford district on a two-week trip to Calgary, Canada.

The trip involves learning about how Canadian schools do things differently to their English counterparts.

Mr Marsh will head a team of nine teachers, who have been hand picked from All Saints Primary School, Leeds Road, Ilkley; St Anne's Catholic Primary school, Keighley, and St Francis Catholic Primary, Bradford.

The trip is part of the Teacher International Professional Development which sends more than 2,000 teachers to observe teaching methods in foreign schools every year.

Mr Marsh feels the experience will help to bridge the gap between the results which Canadian and British schools get.

"It is about showing best practice internationally, in terms of methodology, teaching and learning strategies," he said.

"We will be looking at how Canada does things differently to us, in terms of methodology and teaching. They command better results than us so we will be looking at how they do this."

"We are all really looking forward to it, but we will have to wrap up warm because it's -33C over there at the moment. None of us has visited Canada before so it will be a great experience for us all."

The teachers will leave Manchester Airport on Saturday for London Heathrow, before commencing a seven and a half hour flight to Calgary.

Mr Marsh believes All Saints is the first school in Ilkley to take part in the TIPD trip and feels that it was chosen because of its different approaches to learning.

"The education officer knows that our school likes to look at different ways of learning so perhaps that is why we have been chosen to represent the area," he added.

"An adviser from Bradford Education Authority came to ask if I could find three members of staff to take part in it along with myself and I was appointed the Primary Head Officer for the LEA for nine teachers from the district."

Whilst in Canada the teachers will be working in a school and observing the Canadian teachers in their classrooms, as well as attending conferences.