The chairs, desks and smart boards are already ready. Teachers and students are already there. The only thing missing are walls and a roof. Promes educational foundation and Stad & Esch secondary school are ready to set up a language school in Meppel. It is currently being investigated where the lessons can be given, and Promes and Stad & Esch want to start there from the new year.
At a language school, also known as newcomer education, children from abroad learn the Dutch language, so that they can then progress to primary or secondary school. In 2021, this involved a maximum of eight students in Meppel, mainly children of expats. Last year there were 110. “We have a waiting list,” says Peter de Visser, director of Stad & Esch. “You never want to tell children that they cannot go to school. Especially because they really want to.” But it is the truth now. The increase can be attributed to the war in Ukraine and the large flow of refugees from other areas.
The children have been at language school for about a year. The spoken language at the school is Dutch, which they learn in the beginning with, among other things, pictograms. “The younger, the faster they learn the language and the faster they can progress to primary school,” Strolenberg experiences. “Some need a year and a half and sometimes it takes longer.”
The language school is not new to the Meppel region. In the municipalities of Meppel, Staphorst and Westerveld, children already receive lessons at such a school. But according to Niels Strolenberg, this spread is not desirable. Strolenberg is chairman of the Promes educational foundation, which includes several primary schools in Meppel and Staphorst. For example, in Diever there is one class with fifteen students. Strolenberg: “One teacher works there. Fifteen students may not sound like a lot. But as a teacher you also have to be able to spar, especially for this education.”
After all, it is not just any students who are being taught. This includes many refugee children. Strolenberg tells the story of an 8-year-old Iraqi girl. “She came to Istanbul with the family, then she was on a boat to Greece and two months later she is in class here. She has had to go through a lot.” That is why a language school is not just a school where Dutch is taught. But attention is also paid to their traumas. They cannot just sit in a normal classroom at primary or secondary school, apart from the language barrier. “It is specialist education,” Strolenberg describes it.