In order to define the role of the parents is the European School’s  system, one has to go back into history – and well as far as the founding of the very first European School in 1953 in Luxemburg.

At that time, the first steps into our European Union of 27 member states were made and a group of six countries (the three Benelux countries and France, Italy and Germany) formed the European Coal and Steel Community worked together on a common market for these goods since 1951. This was a big step towards a better understanding and well being in Europe after the horror of World War II. For the first time in the European history people from different countries and with different languages worked together to build the Europe we all know now.

People from Italy, Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands came to Luxemburg and they brought their families. Soon those parents realised that their children would need a different education, because they had to learn new languages and still keep their own language so that eventually they could be reintegrated in their home countries. Nevertheless, those “pioneer” parents wanted their children to be educated together, so that they could also learn from each other and would become real Europeans – not fighting against each other ever more. We are all reminded of these firstdays of European Education when we read the text of Jean Monnet, sealed in stone in every European School:

“Educated side by side, untroubled from infancy
by divisive prejudices, acquainted with all that is
great and good in different cultures, it will be
borne in them as they mature that they belong
together. Without ceasing to look to their own
lands with love and pride, they will become in
mind Europeans, schooled and ready to complete
and consolidate the work of the fathers before
them, to bring into being a united and thriving Europe.”

Since there was no such school in Luxemburg, some parents took the initiative to build a
school conform to this new model of teaching and learning in a completely new way. And
because it was a parental initiative, the parents got quite a big role in the new school: it
became manifest in the General Rules of the European Schools. Therefore the Parents’
Association in every single European School, but also in the whole system of actually
fourteen European Schools in six countries still has a big say on all levels of the
administration. Parents have not only access to all kind of information, they also have to
be consulted on various issues. They have voting rights on local and system wide level in
administrative and pedagogical boards and thus influence on the way their own children
are educated.

This is a very big opportunity, which is not given to parents in national schools – but it is also a duty. Parents – and by the Statutes and the General Rules that means “members of the Parents’ Association as only legally recognized representatives of the parents at each school” have the obligation to send representatives to the different bodies and committees. And this is why the Parents’ Association Committee of our school is so desperately looking for new members for the Committee. It has always been the ambition of the Parents’ Association Committee over the past years to have representatives from different back grounds regarding the language, culture and age of their children and therefore, there are nine seats inside the committee. For the moment, only six of them are taken. You are welcome to put your name forward, if you want to have your language, culture or age group been represented and if the education of your child/ren is important to you!
Don’t hesitate to contact the Committee members on a Wednesday morning in room 39 or send an e-mail to info@europeanschool-parents.nl .

So come on and put your name forward, if you want to have your language, culture or age group been represented and if the education of your child/ren is important to you!

Andrea Stadthalter (President of the Parents’ Association – European School Bergen)