The European Schools are official educational establishments controlled jointly by the governments of the Member States of the European Union. In all these countries they are legally regarded as public institutions.
Originally, they were governed by the Intergovernmental Protocol incorporating the "Statute of the European School", signed by the six founder Member States in Luxembourg on 12 April 1957 and ratified by the national authorities of the signatory countries. The present Convention defining the Statute of the European Schools, which has replaced the previous agreements, entered into force in October 2002. Following the latest wave of EU enlargement on 1 May 2004, the accession to the Convention of the ten new Member States is in progress.
The mission of the European Schools is to provide a multilingual, multicultural and multidenominational education for nursery, primary and secondary level pupils.
There are currently thirteen Schools (Alicante, Brussels I (Uccle), Brussels II (Woluwé), Brussels III (Ixelles), Frankfurt am Main, Mol, Bergen, Karlsruhe, Munich, Varese, Culham, Luxembourg I & Luxembourg II), in seven countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain and Luxembourg), with a total of approximately 20,000 pupils on roll.