Registration for secondary school admissions starts this week, and the education event by Eindhoven News and Microlab on Thursday helped many families decide. The event focussed on bilingual curriculum and whether it suits international children.
International parents whose children grow up in the Netherlands are often at crossroads about the education path of their children. Should the children be global and attend an international school or follow a bilingual curriculum or switch to a Dutch way of education? The choice of internationalised bilingual education is a recent addition and hence adds to the parents’ challenge of making the best choice for their children.
Mayor of Veldhoven
Mayor of Veldhoven Marcel Delhez opened the event. In his speech, he stressed the importance of internationalisation as well as learning the Dutch language. Standing there as a Brainport representative, he said he believes in the importance of Brainport for all. The audience expressed their enthusiasm that the mayor found the time to attend the event to make internationals feel included.
The event started with a presentation on the secondary education system in the Netherlands from Natascha Zijderveld- de Vries of Istart international school. The next segment of the event was the presentations from three secondary schools with specialised bilingual curricula. A big thank you to the participating schools, Heerbeeck college (Best), Stedelijk college (Eindhoven) and Sondervick college (Veldhoven). Thanks to the SKPO group of schools and the SALTO group of schools for actively encouraging the participation of parents.
Robert van der Vorst of Heerbeeck college, Terrance de Vries of Stedelijk college and Patricia van Berkel of Sondervick college presented the highlights of the bilingual curriculum in their respective schools. However, Patricia van Berkel also outlined features of the international stream starting this fall. Beena Arunraj, the director of Eindhoven News, moderated the panel discussion that followed. The questions to the panellists Robert van der Vorst, Patricia van Berkel and Terrance de Vries shone light on the various aspects of the secondary education system. Please watch our features column for more detailed informative articles on this topic. Many questions were put forth by the internationals to the panellists and other education sector leaders who attended the event.
