2016 april

Recht op educatie in Denemarken #2: Deense inclusieve basisschool

Today one of the things we were shown was a regular primary school. In Denmark the classes have a maximum of 27 (or sometimes 28) students. Since some years now the policy is based on inclusion; they try to keep all children with any kind of problems in school. To this purpose, at this school they have “period classes”, or “p-class”. The space they work in is just a classroom in the regular school. When there are children with externalizing problems (anti social or agressive behavior etc), they can go to this special class. There are 11 students currently, two teachers and a social worker. Some students are there for a few months and slowly re-integrate into their regular classes, some children are there for years and might only follow gymnastics for example with their regular class. On the left you see some of the kids working on a group assignment (the older kids help the younger kids). The children create their personal learning schemes on which together with their teachers they set up personal goals. On the right you see one of these forms. This boy, Rasmus, has three goals: 1. work conscientiously every day 2. come to school every day 3. not to distract other pupils Every day at the end of the day he and his teacher will evaluate whether he reached his goals. He will get a score between 0-5. As soon as he reaches 200 points they celebrate and he can pick a reward, such as having 2 hours of football matches outside. I thought this was a very ingenious and positive system for encouragement and making school fun, especially for children with personal, social or learning problems. Another teacher explained that in her higher class sometimes a student is misbehaving for some time, and she will go and say “I have to score you now”. They work with the same system, and it makes students feel a little embarrassed because it is considered childish. They then get 5’s every day. Another thing that I thought was very interesting, is their playground. It looks very nice, spacey and natural. They told me that actually the design was a democratic process, where they let children participate in the decision how the playground should look. While the adults wanted to have only sand, the children suggested to have some concrete places so that they could play there with a ball. And so they did.

Recht op educatie in Denemarken #1: productie school

Via een Erasmus programma heb ik de kans gekregen om op een studiereis te gaan en het Deense educatie systeem te bestuderen. Ik zal hier op deze blog verslag van doen – maar in het Engels zodat hopelijk zoveel mogelijk mensen het kunnen volgen en ik niet elk bericht in 2 talen hoef te schrijven. Mocht iemand vragen hebben: voelt u vrij om die hieronder in een reactie te stellen!

—————–

An Erasmus+ program offered me a last minute chance to join a study trip to Denmark to learn about the Danish educational system. I am especially interested in the solutions they have for inclusion/ exclusion of pupils. Today we visited a production school. This is a special facility where students between age 15-25, who are “school tired” (meaning they are having a hard time staying in school for different reasons, such as low IQ, difficult family situation, psychological problems, etc) can go. They follow practical education for  maximum one year, where they work on (in this order): 1. personal development 2. social development 3. practical/technical skills The main goal of the program is for them to find an answer to the question “what is the way for me?”. They get help getting their life on track. How does it work? There are several workshops, which you can see below. They perform work, in part for customers. The financial model involves in part government funding, in part profit from the work that is done. Students are payed about € 1 per hour for the work they do.                  On the left there’s a little part of the “pedagogical workshop” where students are training to work on creative things with children (for example in daycare), to do hairdressing, sewing and art. On the right you see the music studio where students learn to make music together and record their music, sometimes working with local bands. On the left you see one of the school’s bands. Because they have only been together for a short time I did not expect them to be so good but they were!! They make money by performing during parties, school parties, etc.       In the woodworkshop students train to be carpenters and do woodworking. They are hired by local companies for production work. The house below is a house they are currently building.               In the garage students do mechanical work on cars. Local people bring their cars in that need reparation, like a normal garage really. One of the Danish teachers accompanying us said he brought his car in recently and it still works well :-).     In the television workshop they produce 2 hours of tv material per week, for the local television network. They use professional equipment and are paid, as long as they reach a minimum amount of viewers of 15.000 per month. Luckily, they have 30.000 and another 20.000 online per month.     In the IT workshop, students learn programming, building websites and 3d printing. They create about 10 websites per year for companies or individuals.       Lastly the kitchen workshop. Here students learn to cook etc. We had cake and coffee that they had prepared. Every day they provide breakfast and lunch for the 100 students in the school.     All in all it seems like it is a successful project – students find fun again in learning. They build confidence (many come from broken homes and very negative social and educational experience). Whenever they start, they start by setting personal development goals with a counselor. They might work on building confidence, being less shy, learning to be on time in the morning – even though they have a drug problem, etc. Internal research shows that students are happy in the school and there is NO bullying, which is amazing seeing the selection of students and their backgrounds. I spoke to quite a few students – whose level of English was amazingly high – and they were very friendly, happy to show their work and explain what they were doing. They all said how much they liked the school. On the downside: what happens to these students when the year is over? The school counselor spoke about how hard it is to find a subsequent placement for these children. The requirements for technical educational programs are sometimes linked to high school grades, which these students sometimes don’t have. There is a shortage of work and so they cannot always start to work. However a teacher mentioned that about 75% of the students continue into further education.