Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-324"
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"en.20050907.22.3-324"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, I would like first of all to thank our rapporteur, Mrs Honeyball, for her report and her frank collaboration.
The European schools system has proved its worth. Having paid particular attention to the Luxembourg school, I would like to congratulate the teachers and the management who have succeeded in bringing together, under the same system, children and teachers from the various Member States of the European Union. Multilingualism has also been able to prove its worth, just as one school system for the various EU nationalities has done, in spite of temporary overcrowding in the schools in Luxembourg and Brussels.
Should we not, Commissioner, evaluate in the medium term the European schools system and expand the multilingual education model, encouraging the Member States to become more involved in it by drawing on the experience of the European schools? Furthermore, I believe that any country that puts itself forward to house an agency should be required to commit itself to ensuring that the children of the officials it is accommodating receive a multilingual education. Ghettoisation of the schools by only admitting pupils whose parents are sufficiently wealthy to pay the fees already required in Category III should therefore be prevented. For the 2004 academic year, 32% of the overall pupil intake – that is to say a third of the children – belonged to that category, for which the fees are very high.
That is why I have tabled an amendment to reduce Category III fees for future pupils too. Our committee is calling for class sizes to be reduced, special needs pupils to be admitted and a technical baccalaureate to be introduced.
While the aim of the European schools system is to provide an education for the children of officials that does not neglect their mother tongue, this aim does, nonetheless, deserve a rethink in light of the mobility already achieved within the European Union and of what it will be in future. Mr President, although a British minister declared in 1998 that English would shortly be the universal language – the price paid by English teachers will perhaps be that of being in demand – I am of the opinion that multilingualism is part of European identity."@en1
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