THE WEATHER was the first difference they noticed. Iwona Machon-Pluszczewska, an English teacher at Zespol Szhol Zawodowych in Swidnica, Poland, and her colleague, Aldona Liszka, spent a week in Ireland, visiting Arklow Community College in Co Wicklow: they left the snow-covered houses of Poland in late February to arrive in Ireland, where it was "spring, with flowers, daffodils, green leaves".

In Arklow they took classes, talked to the students and met all the teachers. Their students will come on a visit to Ireland next September and "Irish students are going to visit our school in April next year", they explain.

"Our schools are very similar, with similar problems," says Iwona. "The first thing we noticed was that both schools are repairing the roof at the same time," she laughs.

"Our students don't wear uniforms. We like the idea of uniforms very much. We've got more girls than boys in our school. Our students are in a similar age, only a bit older. They start at 15 and finish at 19 or 20. "They are very, very similar. They listen to the same music - we compared their taste in music," she says, as she racks her brain to remember the bands they listed, but to no avail. "I don't remember the names of the groups!

"Irish students wanted to know what our students in the evenings. They asked if they can smoke, if they can drink, if they go to discos, what sports do they play. Our students are not allowed to smoke or to drink if they are under 18," she says. "They can go to discos and they go quite often.

"What I liked was that the teachers from Arklow are very young and very friendly and get on well with each other. They are a great group of friends, like in our school. It was similar also because both head teachers are very young and enthusiastic."

Both Iwona and Aldona noticed one big difference in "time organisation". According to Iwona, "it's quite different in Polish schools. We start at 8 a.m. and we finish at 2.30 or 3.30 p.m. And we've got only one long break of 20 minutes at half ten." Each class lasts 45 minutes. "We don't have a one-hour break for lunch. We start and we finish early. We've quite different meals. We have our dinner about 4 p.m. "We don't eat lunches - and then in the evening we have a light supper." Aldona says the relationship between students and teachers in both schools is "very similar - there's a discipline but also a friendship because what we notice was Irish students like their teachers very well.

"We found more similarities than differences between our two nations. The difference was in time organisation, but we have the same habits, the same subjects, the same behaviour." Polish teachers, she adds, spend their free time doing the same kind of things: "We go out, we visit friends, we visit the cinema or the theatre. We spend less time in pubs because we don't have any. "There's only one Irish pub in Swidnica, but that is 30 kilometres away."