3 reactions to this article

Francesco Sinibaldi posted: 2011-09-21 20:56:07

After the peal.

When a
settled memory
returns near
a sensible
meaning I call,
in the sky,
the light of
a fine bird.

Francesco Sinibaldi

well.. posted: 2011-10-30 19:49:20

Yeah but sadly the international schools are pricey and usually private. Catering mostly to kids who's families move around a lot in their occupation.

Beatrice posted: 2012-01-24 15:31:32

When children are arriving newly to the Netherlands they can surely opt for the governmental facilities, that are great and free, even if it is special (like Waldorf <aka Vrije School> but prior to that they "should" learn Dutch, and this is done in "opvangscholen" they are sort of new comers reception-care schools.
Nevertheless, I have a deep concern about those schools because some studies seem to point out that they tend to be found in neighborhoods that are somewhat problematic, with not too well integrated immigrants and from countries in which educational concepts and ideals are quite far from the one Dutch society (and other "developed" nations) is trying to promote.

Many of the children who attend those schools have not just to cope with learning a new language, and this is the point that worries me the most, they also have to cope with an extra load of stress from their social environment: lack of proper care, attention and emotional support due to the huge amount of hours the immigrants parents are likely to spend at work; lack of pro-active education at home due to the parents' concepts about education more similar to those we had ourself over 50 years ago, like authoritarianism, etc..

Those facilities are necessary, due to high-rise of children from abroad and it is hard to make it in a balanced way... It is also sad to acknowledge more and more gap between "the rich" and "the poor" in our society, where the ones who pay for it first are the most vulnerable, like in this case, the children. So children in those schools are sometimes more aggressive, and more disruptive than the more balanced ones.

Indeed, the section of the immigrant population of those belonging to "highly skilled" migrants those who come from similar educational values, tend to enroll their children in international (and expensive) schools or semi-sponsored schools (still expensive for some immigrants).
Somewhere in between are schools like the one who offer a special orientation in education, like Dalton, Waldorf, Montessori. Many foreigners with an interest for alternative or progressive education choose to enroll their children in such schools, but again, those are accessible once the child has some sound knowledge of Dutch.

I believe that it is indeed a problem that is hard to solve for the education department, not just in the Netherlands but in many more of the developed nations.