InterParents is the federation of the thirteen Parents Associations of the European Schools that represents the parents in the Board of Governors and its subsidiary bodies.

Each Parents Association elects a team of maximum four delegates to InterParents. Our team for the 2024-2025 school year is Reet Escribano (InterParents vice president), and two newcomers Marieta Colera and Judith Martinez Wisbar.

Since the 2022/2023 school year, internal InterParents meetings have been again organised in person. InterParents met in October 2024 in EEB4 for preparation of the Joint Teaching Committee (JTC) meeting. Marieta and Reet participated in situ, Judith online. In these preparatory meetings, parent representatives are discussing and agreeing on interventions on various topics and documents presented for the JTC meeting. Reet was one of the four delegates representing all parents of the European Schools at the JTC meeting on 10-11 October in the OSG office in Brussels.

The InterParents preparation meeting for the Board of Governors meeting at the end of November will be held in the European School of München. Reet and Judith will participate in situ, Marieta will follow the meeting online. Reet as InterParents vice president will also represent parents at the Board of Governors meeting in Brussels on 3-5 December2024 where the decisions on proposals presented to JTC will be taken.

Some of the topics discussed at the JTC were the following:

Proposal for revision of the current sentence “The school year must consist of 180 working days for pupils (181 in leap years)” in Annex I of the General Rules of the European Schools

This topic was raised and presented by InterParents to the JTC back in October 2022. Parents were concerned about S1-S6 pupils losing every year 10 days of lessons in large schools and 5 days of lessons in smaller schools due to the organisation of BAC oral exams at the end of the school year. Now, 2 years later, the work of the OSG WG on “Suspension of lessons during BAC oral exams” has finally ended. The changes were discussed at OSG WG where OSG, directors, European Commission and parents are represented. Parents find this a good compromise. We will inform you about the final changes once the document will be approved at the BoG meeting in December.

Revision of the Guidelines on Organizing Student’s Mobility from and to the European Schools

InterParents raised serious concerns on the revised document, especially regarding the legal obligations put to parents associations (request families for recent criminal record extract) and pupils (use of alcohol and drugs and driving vehicles).

Further points raised by parents were:

• Data sharing between schools and PAs
• Acceptance letter sent to the pupils should be harmonised between all schools
• Mentoring in the host school
• Who is responsible for finding a new family in case of the host contract can not continue
• SMS for mobility pupils and their families
• Difficulties to find hosting families in case of not one-to-one exchange.

We also had a 1,5 hours ad hoc meeting with the Head of Pedagogical Unit, Mr. Fartusnic (he just started his career at OSG) where we explained parents’ concerns in detail and later also provided written feedback.

At InterParents request, the WG meeting (OSG DSG, OSG head of Pedagogical Unit, OSG DPO, OSG legal specialist, directors representatives, schools mobility coordinators representatives, InterParents representatives, AES parents representatives, COSUP – Pupils representatives) was called for 04/11/2024 to clarify all the details before sending the document for approval to JTC by written procedure.

We will inform you about the final document once approved.

Further topics discussed were BAC 24 results; Italian Presidency (2023/2024 school year) priorities; Cypriot Presidency (2024/2025 school year) priorities; Guidelines for L2 teaching and learning in Primary school; Proposals for a new structure for all syllabuses, Proposal for updating the teaching standards; 4th round of the WSI; Guidelines for parents on determination of the dominant language; and of course, Revision of the Mission and Vision of the European Schools. We will inform you about these topics in our next newsletters. If you have any questions, please send us an email to interparents@ampaescuelaeuropea.com

OSG – Office of Secretary General

JTC – Joint Teaching Committee

BoG – Board of Governors

ESS – European School System

ES – European Schools

AES – Accredited European Schools

CY – Cyprus (holds ES presidency 2024/2025)

PA – parent association

WSI – Whole School Inspection