On Eindhoven’s Rector Baptistlaan, Global College opened its third school in Eindhoven on Tuesday. At the school, children who have landed in Eindhoven from all corners of the world prepare to enter regular education.
It was announced earlier that due to the influx of foreign children, the city government assigned the school building on Rector Baptistlaan to Global College. “To do that, we had five weeks to get the building ready for use”, department head Robbert Pieschel said.
“That was largely accomplished. There are still construction workers running around, but the major work is done”, Pieschel said. “Ceilings had to be replaced because they were rotten, the fluorescent tubes had to be replaced for LED lighting, here and there a wall had to be taken out and there was a lot of painting. But the result is worth it”.
Waiting list
And that’s convenient, because at the new location, 130 children started taking classes on Tuesday. One hundred more students are expected to join them in the near future. “We have a hundred intake interviews scheduled next week”, Pieschel informs. “Those children are now on the waiting list; they enrolled just before or during the summer and can get here as soon as possible”.
Autumn
There is also space for them on Rector Baptistlaan, which has room for about 250 students in total. But the limits of this new location are quickly coming into view again. “We have just scheduled intake interviews, but new applications are already coming in. I expect that by the fall we will again have about two hundred students on a waiting list”.
With that, the next challenge soon presents itself, the department leader observes. “By then another new location will be needed, which will also require new staff. Then the search begins all over again. Because we also had to recruit new staff for this location, quite a challenge. Last Friday we met 60 new colleagues”.
‘A lot that connects them’
But Pieschel sees daily what he and his colleagues are running for. “The great thing about foreign-language education, is that you see how all these children from different cultures come together here. Here children of migrant workers, expats and refugees join together. They are all different, all have different backgrounds, but there is also a lot that connects them. They all find it exciting, going to school in a new country, making new friends”.
Not going home
“It’s great to see how students land here, and how at home they feel at school. We also have a programme after school where kids can relax with each other for a while. Those kids really find each other then, they don’t want to go home. That’s a big reward for us”, Pieschel said.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
