Tilburg International Primary School
by Anne van Oorschot
It has been a longer wait than anticipated, but the Tilburg International Primary School (TIPS) has received approval from theMinistry of Education in Den Haag to begin enrolling students! The official approval arrived on August 8th and Tilburg International Club (TIC) met with representatives of the International School Eindhoven (ISE), the Jan Ligthart Huibeven (JLH) and the city on September 6th to discuss the next steps. Below are the groups’ responsibilities:
- ISE will be responsible for the curriculum and teacher,
- JLH will arrange their school building so that TIPS has a separate entrance and classroom space clustered together, and
- the City of Tilburg, owner of the school building, is offering the space TIPS needs, rent free. (Never doubt that the city values their international employees and tries to make their life in Tilburg better!)
This is all great, but unfortunately we are too late for a start in the fall of 2012 as we had originally hoped. The plan is now for a definite start in the fall of 2013, but all involved would like to start sooner – in January 2013, after the Christmas break. That is dependent upon having 11- 4 & 5 year old students, the minimum number needed to start the school.
As soon as a child is 4 years old, they are welcome to begin and from 3 yrs + 10 months on, they are welcome to come to school for a maximum of 5 days to get acquainted. If you have a child in this age category, and you would like to enroll them in good quality English language education with small class sizes and an international curriculum, they would be very welcome! In certain cases, 6 year olds can be accepted as well, so do ask about that. The school fee will be €3570/school year, but many employers help with the costs in some way, so ask your employer about that possibility.
The Director of ISE, David Gatley, was available at TIC’s Open House to talk with parents and other interested parties and is more than happy to respond to any future inquiries. When a more firm idea of the exact start date is known, we will pass that information on to you!
Tilburg International Club 