Today Roskilde offers a truly wide selection of educational opportunities, from a world-renowned university and teacher training college, to high schools and a business college. Now the privately-run Skt Josef’s School, situated in the heart of the city, plans to open Roskilde’s first international department, primarily targeting the children of the expat families who live and work in the region.
For a long time, the board of trustees at Skt Josef´s School had been aware of the need for an international school outside Copenhagen. So they decided to take the initiative, and the new department will open its doors this August.
“It’s obvious that Roskilde should have an international school,” explained the city’s mayor Joy Mogensen. “With the exciting new research park planned at DTU Risø and the internationalisation of Roskilde University, it’s the perfect place. Roskilde is also home to a broad range of big international companies such as Rockwool International and Nycomed Takeda, so this international school makes a lot of sense.”
The new pupils will be taught the internationally-recognised Cambridge University Examinations Programmes. With more than 160 countries already using this programme, it makes the mobility of expat families much easier, since children can start a new school knowing they will be at exactly the same stage of the curriculum that they were at their previous school.
“Skt Josef’s School has more than one hundred years of experience in running a successful school,” said the headteacher Thorsten Dyngby. “We wanted to establish an international department because we believe that we have something important to offer: solid learning processes, tolerance, global understanding, and a strong set of values that all make an important contribution to child development.”
The international school and department is to be incorporated into the existing school, which today already has 700 pupils. This coming school year, primary children will be included in the first phase of the development, and over the next couple of years the plan is to offer a full syllabus to all 5-16 year-old pupils.
“Right now we are also looking for new teachers who have the right qualifications, so things are pretty hectic,” said project manager Line Lorentzen.
“We have started enrolling pupils and we have had contact from families all over the world. We have had a lot interest from the UK, the US and Europe but also from Africa and Asia. In the future, we expect to accommodate many more children from the Asia-Pacific region too, because of the strong position Roskilde holds with its upcoming research park within the cleantech industry.”
But for the time being, the focus is on the here and now. “We have planned the first school year,” added Lorentzen. “But we want to get things right because this is the first step of a long-term plan towards offering primary and secondary schooling and IGCSE exams in the region of Zealand.”
