Luxembourg is to spend 71.7 million euros building a secondary school for migrant children in Differdange as part of Luxembourg's proposed fee-free international school.

The price tag for the new secondary school was revealed at a press conference on Tuesday along with an artists' impression of the school to be built on the plateau du funiculaire.

The site was originally earmarked for a Luxembourgish lycée but plans were amended by the Education Ministry in response to an exploding demand for international schooling.

Speaking at the press conference, Education Minister Claude Meisch said that currently 60 percent of students in secondary schools were of non-Luxembourg origin and the proportion was considerably higher in some areas. He said this trend would only increase as more migrant families flocked to the south, particularly with new developments at Belval.

800 places

The four-storey secondary school will have capacity for 800 learners, and will include 19 standard classrooms and 11 smaller classrooms, eight specially adapted rooms, a music room, a theatre workshop, administrative space, a hall, restaurant, library, sports hall, chaging rooms, athletics track and multi-purpose sports field.

If the current proposal is approved by early autumn, construction work will begin mid-2016 ensuring the school opens for the start of the 2020-2021 school term. Before it reaches completion, however, learners will already be able to use the new school facility.

Secondary school classes will be housed in temporary “pre-fab” buildings in Differdange. Here, learners will be organised into French and English streams, starting with two classes for the first year of secondary from 2016.

Students will be able to study four languages, including Luxembourgish in the first three years.

Primary school

An international primary school facility, the first of its kind to be offered by the Luxembourg state, is to be housed in the former “Haushaltungsschoul” building in Differdange.

Here, the school will begin with a single French and single English-speaking class for the first year of primary education. In addition to English and French, learners choose to study one additional language from French, Germany, English and Portuguese. They will also learn Luxembourgish.

The minister said that eventually, there would be one class for each year group and each language stream, over five years, up to a ceiling of 200 pupils.

The curriculum for both primary and secondary will follow the European Schools structure. Minister Meisch said that under the current proposal, the language criteria for state school teachers would be relaxed, ensuring that good quality teaching staff can be recruited in time for the school opening.

“A lot of teachers have contacted us already,” he said, adding: “We've also the opportunity with the law as it is written to recruit teachers that don't speak the three official languages. It may be a problem for English speaking teachers for example to speak French, German and Luxembourgish.”

Preparatory classes

In addition to the primary and secondary offering, the free international school will offer a sixth-form type college with five “preparatory classes,” of which two will be integration classes for new arrivals.

This facility will be housed in prefab buildings similarly to the secondary school.

The project is expected to be voted on by the Luxembourg Parliament in the summer or early autumn.

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