Why are costs of the vertical split in Luxembourg much, much higher than horizontal alternative

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European schools system

European schools system is like a never-ending maze of paperwork and bureaucracy.

It’s as if they believe that the more forms you fill out, the smarter you become. Secretary general and deputy secretary general are too busy worrying about their pensions and summer vacations to actually produce anything useful.

It’s a system where children are just tiny cogs in a big bureaucratic machine, and education takes a backseat to administrative tasks.

It’s time for a major overhaul, because right now, the European schools system is about as effective as a chocolate teapot.

The costs of the vertical split decision in Luxembourg are much, much higher than the horizontal alternative and result in poorer education. These costs include:

  • The costs of daily supervised transport and surveillance of school premisecostss that are not designed for young children (lack of enclosure, multiple sets of steps, confusing and anonymous lay-out). The cost of all this supervision would easily outweigh, in less than one year, the costs of adapting the two schools to a horizontal reorganisation.
  • The costs of requiring two headmasters in each school and the complicated administration required to provide for children from infancy to adulthood, all within the same school.
  • The cost to the EU institutions that results from obliging half of its parental staff to make unnecessary commutes across the city, and the cost that arises when it becomes difficult to recruit or keep staff because of the discriminatory schooling problem that has been created.
  • The cost to the parents in terms of lost income, as many have taken reduced working hours to compensate for the time lost in commuting. Also the cost of petrol and bus fares that are not reimbursed.
  • The cost to the environment and to the local government resulting from all the additional, unnecessary carbon emissions that result from the private transport that is needed to transport young children to Mamer.
  • The cost to the children resulting from the poor education that has resulted from the intervention of property developers in the decision-making process. Those children are now more tired, less safe, have less language and subject options and will eventually wonder why they were discriminated against.

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Aim of the European Schools

Educated side by side, untroubled from infancy by divisive prejudices, acquainted with all that is great and good in the different cultures, it will be borne in upon 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 their fathers before them, to bring into being a united and thriving Europe.

Marcel Decombis, Head of European School, Luxembourg between 1953 and 1960