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The European School Culham is a unique all-age centre of excellence delivering a European primary and secondary curriuclum through at least two of the official languages of the European Union. Most children aqcquire literacy not only in their mother tongue or dominant language but also in one of three vehicular languages: English, French or German.
The school campus is nestled in a large meander of the River Thames near Abingdon only ten miles from the historic and beautiful university city of Oxford. Much of the school is housed in charming listed buildings erected in 1852 as a Church of England teacher training college. Its founder was Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and third son of Sir William Wilberforce, the famous slavery abolitionist.
Although the all-age school has currently 835 pupils, these are spread over 14 year groups. Consequently, pupils benefit enormously from small scale education within a very closely knit school community, organised in Language Sections, which is very supportive, both academically and pastorally. This may provide one reason why ES Culham has achieved a 100% pass-rate in the European Baccalaureate for the last three years and also scored the highest Baccalaureate average of all the other European Schools.
Second Languages: From Nursery to Secondary School
There are three Nursery classes within the school: English, French and German. The Primary and Secondary Schools have five language sections: German, English, French, Italian and Dutch. Pupils whose first language is not one of these may be considered for admission to one of these sections. However due to the gradual phasing out of the Italian and Dutch sections, there will be no Italian or Dutch classes in Year 1 and 2 Primary and only Italian and Dutch Language 1 lessons in Years 1-4 Secondary in September 2008.
All pupils from Year 1 Primary onwards are taught a second language, which may be English, French or German.
After the 2-year Nursery and the 5-year Primary courses, pupils may be admitted to the Secondary School, the 7-year course of which leads to the European Baccalaureate, a recognized qualification for admission to Universities throughout Europe. The course includes, from Year 2, a third language and, from Year 3, certain subjects studied in the second language. A fourth language may be studied as an option from Year 4 onwards.
Beyond 2017: Becoming an Independent Academy
In 2010 ES Culham will be setting course to becoming an English maintained but independent Academy. This is because the school’s intergovernmental Board of Governors took the decision in 2007 to phase out the school as a Type 1 European School by 2017. This has to happen because for years the school has had insufficient numbers of children of parents either working for the European Commission or seconded by it to work at the Joint European Torus nuclear fusion project established over 30 years ago at the Culham Science Centre. As such, the European Union is no longer able to continue subsiding the education at the school.
There is the exciting future ahead of the school.
The school operates now and will continue to operate until 2017 unless a transformation to an Academy is possible before that date. Planners have been working towards a target date of September 2011. Click here to find out more.
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