PROJECT FOR CULHAM EUROPEAN LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE ACADEMY
The European School Culham is the only UK example of the network of European Schools in the European Communities. All existing European Schools are inter–governmental bodies, providing a curriculum that leads to the European Baccalaureate, an academic qualification fully recognised by all EU governments and beyond and unique in examining bilingually across subjects. Although the school is highly successful in terms of parental demand and pupil achievements, the governing body of the European Schools has determined that the Culham school no longer meets the restricted priority purpose for which it was founded (i.e. education for families of European Commission employees), now that the Culham JET/Taurus nuclear fusion project is being transferred to France. The English Trust for European Education (ETEE) was at the forefront of the proposal to transform the school into a state-funded European Academy, serving a wider sector of the local population, and therefore opening up and projecting its wider vision of trans-European education.
A new school
The future European Academy will be an all-age inclusive, multilingual, co-educational school compatible with the English national curriculum, as well as the European Schools curriculum preparing pupils for the European Baccalaureate. The Academy will form part of a family of schools both in the local area and with other bilingual specialist language Academies and Schools in England and Wales, across the European Communities and across Europe as a whole. There is much interest from Ireland to the Urals in widening the vision of European education, enabling families to move across Europe without educational disadvantage.
Europe-wide links
The new Academy will forge links with the nearby academic and scientific institutions that have already expressed an interest in the school, and which could assist in setting up a Culham European Academy Trust and its own Governing Body. We expect the synergies of these links to turn the Academy into a centre for innovation and support for other schools in Oxfordshire. The ETEE envisages that by virtue of the Academy’s distinctive position at the forefront of bilingual education, a resource for multicultural, multilingual European education and the in-service development of teachers could also be created, in co-operation with existing training institutions in the region. Regular trans-European conferences are envisaged to create a network of schools with similar vision, and the first of such events planned by ETEE took place in June 2009.
A timetable for change
The UK government had intended to transform the existing school into an Academy by 2010, with the commitment to existing ‘Type-1- school' year groups phased out over seven years. However, this milestone has now slipped to September 2011 to allow for extensive talks at European level in relation to the contracts of currently seconded teachers and other similar administrative matters. The new Academy will be an all-age institution with initial numbers between the current 850 pupils and 1050, and with a capacity to accommodate around 1200 pupils by 2020 if desired according to demographic needs and bilingual demands of the area. In March 2009 a new charitable company was set up (CLASS), headed by Lord Jay of Ewelme. This new company will later on set up the governing structure of the new Academy, following government's guidelines. In the meantime, the complex process of setting up an Academy is continuing.
ETEE offers a charitable framework to carry forward its vision of a trans-European network of schools committed to multicultural and multilingual education, with the transmission and projection to future generations of the European heritage.
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