It’s only as you get older that you realise that summer school is like winning the lottery for American adults who spend so much of their lives up to their eyeballs in work that they simply don’t have the resources to look after their children.
But your sympathy levels for Americans plummet somewhat, when you realise that as kids they got three full months of summer holiday.
In Denmark, the kids get just six weeks, and like in the US the parents have to work, normally for half of the holiday.
So there is a great need for some sort of organised school – more like the dolphin kind, with more fun, longer breaks and fewer rules – where children can gather to spend the days that their parents need to work.
Services in English
The public schools provide such a service, of course, which normally involves activities held at their premises, the after-school clubs and sports centres in the neighbourhood. But most will be in Danish.
That leaves international schools as the main providers of English-language summer schools, and there are close to ten offering their services this summer break – in both the capital region and further afield.
Other vocational enterprises also organise them. The long-established musical theatre school SceneKunst runs several summer camps for its students, for example.
Expat poster-boy
Now, it’s not a huge secret that summer schools are often credited with being a turning point in the life of a creative.
In our feature on pages 10-11, we recount how hundreds of famous Americans nurtured their talents at such schools, often under the tutelage of teachers who went on to achieve fame themselves.
And we’re pleased to include in this supplement an interview of one such person who benefited from attending many summer schools during his upbringing (see pages 12-13): an X Factor runner-up who went on to win the Danish Melodi Grand Prix.
With a German mother and Madagascan father, and as somebody who attended both Copenhagen International School and Rygaards, Benjamin Rosenbohm is something of a poster-boy for the international community in Denmark – it was high time that we interviewed him!
Enjoy the summer!
So, corona withstanding (see pages 6-7), it promises to be a great summer.
We hope this special section will arm you with all the information you need to ensure your children are in safe hands while you clock up the necessary number of hours to earn yourself a well deserved summer break.
