A DELEGATION of students from China have visited a local primary school.

Fourteen students and three teachers from Qingdao have agreed to visit Paidlam Green CE Primary School this week.

Quingdao, in China's eastern Shandong province, is a port city of skyscrapers, parks and beaches bordering the Yellow Sea.

Headteacher at Padiham Green CE, Mark Dixon, said: "It all started when I went to China with a group of headteachers went to Qingdao, China in October 2015."

Mr. Dixon said: "There was a formal ceremony and we agreed to set up a cultural exchange programme in which Chinese students come to visit our school. "

"The education bureau in Qingdao, a political body similar to our local government system in this country, had a vision to learn from different cultures including in our country."

Last year the first group of students from China came to visit but Padiham's head said students from the first school would not be able to attend because they are going to South Korea for a similar venture.

Instead pupils from Quingdao's Yongning Road and Beishan Road primary schools will be visiting.

He said: ""One of the teachers said 'we have to love our children from the bottom of our hearts'.

"The philosophies of our schools are similar and this helped us to build a relationship and strong ties with the school.

The school, based in Burnley, have arranged a number of special events for the week.

A spokesman for the school said a specialist artist will be coming in three times a week to work with the children.

Chinese teachers will be teaching Chinese calligraphy and paper cutting too.

Taster sessions will also be available for Padiham students, whilst the Chinese visitors will be taken on a walk around Padiham to learn about the town's history.

Mr. Dixon said that the the chief executive of Burnley Council, Pam Smith, has supported the school in the week's initiative.

The school's headteacher also hopes the programme will allow children from the primary school to travel to China.

He said: ""In the future I would like to find a way to get some of our children from Paidlam to the street where I stood in Tiananmenn Square."

"I won't have it so that just the affluent students take part in the experience, I want all the kids to get involved."

Tiananmenn Square is a city square in the centre of Beijing, China and well known for the student-led protests in the capital in 1989.