The European Schools re-invent themselves

Following the presentation given by the Swedish Presidency of the  Schools, the Commissioner responsible for administrative affairs, Siim Kallas, welcomed the positive outcome of the ambitious reform process begun in 2005 at the instigation of the Commission and Parliament, and urged the Member States to disseminate the curriculum and the European Baccalaureate as widely as possible in their national schools.

The lynchpin of the reform is the opening-up of the European Schools system so that national schools can be accredited by the Board of Governors of the European Schools to offer the European curriculum and award the European Baccalaureate, subject to clear pedagogical requirements and strict controls. Vice-President Siim Kallas welcomed the fact that Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland and the Netherlands had taken the lead on this opening-up and expressed the hope that other countries would soon follow suit in promoting European diversity and openness.

The national schools set up close to the headquarters of agencies and other EU bodies and already accredited are: the Centre for European Schooling in Dunshaughlin (Ireland), located close to the Food and Veterinary Office in Grange; the School of European Education in Heraklion (Greece), located near the European Network and Information Security Agency; the Scuola per l'Europa di Parma (Italy), located near the European Food Safety Authority; and a school in Helsinki (Finland), close to the European Chemicals Agency. Other schools are in the process of being accredited, such as the school in Strasbourg (France), located near the European Parliament and the International School of Manosque (France), linked to the ITER Research Centre at Cadarache. For these schools, the reform provides for a pro-rata Community financial contribution for pupils who are the children of staff of European agencies and bodies. All the conditions are also now in place for setting up pilot schools accredited by the Member States concerned in locations other than where agencies and other EU bodies are sited. The first pilot project is going to start in September 2010 at a secondary school in The Hague (The Netherlands).

The other key aspects of the reform concern:

• improving governance of the European Schools, with a simpler decision-making process and more clearly defined responsibilities and tasks for the different actors and organs;
• greater autonomy for each school in return for increased responsibility;
• fairer cost-sharing among Member States, for example by allowing non-native speakers to teach in one of the procedural languages of the system (currently English, French and German).

Background
The European Schools system is an inter-governmental system based on an international convention dating from 1953. The European Commission is a member of the Board of Governors of the European Schools, representing all the European institutions. The 14 existing European Schools are sited in seven countries and currently have a population of over 21 000 pupils.

For more information:

• on the European Schools www.eursc.eu/
• on the role of European Commission ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/kallas/work/european_schools/index_en.htm