Stronger impetus for an internationalization policy in Flemish schools (09/29/2016)

An internationalization policy in schools enriches the learning processes of the students. They expand their horizons, they acquire competences in other learning settings. Internationalization is at the same time a powerful lever to strengthen the policy within the school: the team can professionalize by reflecting on its own practice, through innovative projects, through contacts with policy experiences from other schools and other educational systems. This makes internationalization a unique opportunity to grow as a school team and to work on quality in the school.

A school policy for internationalization should be integrated in the regular school policy, so that there is the transfer of project work to regular school policy is guaranteed.

Internationalization can be realized in various dimensions: the curriculum, powerful classroom learning environments through internationalization @ home, mobility of learners, teamwork and dialogue in school about quality and about the policy choices that the school makes. In order to be able to manage and balance these dimensions, the Vlor insists on the importance of a strong support structure.

International projects provide a lot of learning opportunities for schools to shape innovations. It would be a missed opportunity if these insights were not adequately communicated to the various policy makers. It is thus absolutely necessary to seek a structural anchoring of the insights from international projects to education policy, both at local and Flemish level.