Three great places to get an education in Munich
Renate Bock has a story she likes to tell. It seems that on warm, sunny, late afternoons in spring when the wind is rustling through campus trees, life for one caretaker at the Bavarian International School becomes challenging. He is, after all, responsible for locking up the school and its grounds at the end of the day. The problem, though, isn’t the rather routine act of policing the grounds and turning the keys in their locks, but that the students don’t want to leave.Most of them have reasons for staying late. Perhaps they belong to one of the many school sports teams. Or maybe they play in one of the school bands or sing in the choir. Some students, however, stay just to mingle, talk and enjoy the park-like atmosphere that characterizes their school, located in Schloss Haimhausen not far from Oberschleissheim. Sometimes, she says, students and their families will even climb over the fence on the weekends for a barbeque. “Students and their parents feel at home here,” says Bock, assistant to the school’s director, Christopher Bowman. “We are like one big family. Students like spending their free time here and sometimes it’s difficult to get them to leave.”
The Bavarian International School does indeed have a stunning campus. Its classroom buildings are scattered among the trees at the edge of a large, green meadow, whereas the castle itself, which belongs to the school and also contains a number of classrooms, stands nobly off to one side. Bock, though, could have been referring to any one of the three international schools in and around the Isar city. After all, the Munich International School in Starnberg boasts a castle of its own, Schloss Buchhof. Its grounds are, if anything, more idyllic than those of its competitor to the north, with athletic fields surrounded by a thick forest and a nature trail winding around classroom buildings and alongside the track. Even the European School, located in Neuperlach, manages a distinctly non-urban feel, with trees and flowers dotting its campus and surrounding the modern classroom buildings.
Yet it is not just the settings that attract students and their parents to these institutions. After all, Munich has plenty of parks and greenbelts. Rather it is the learning environment that sets them apart. All three have low student-teacher ratios. All of them are well equipped with modern science labs, spacious music rooms and numerous computers. They also all have incredibly diverse student bodies with pupils of up to 40 different nationalities, making each school day a cultural immersion. And perhaps most importantly, students receive a diploma, called the International Baccalaureate—or European Baccalaureate in the case of the European School—that is transferable, and recognized around the world by prestigious universities and a growing number of employers. “Essentially,” says New Zealander Raymond Taylor, head of the Munich International School, “the international school system has tried to put together a curriculum that can meet the demands of school systems in nations around the world and that provides transferable credits. Judging from the number of top universities that recognize our degree, we have been fairly successful.”
Both the Munich International School (MIS) and the Bavarian International School (BIS) belong to the European Council of International Schools and as such conduct all classes in English. The organization was founded in 1965 and, despite its name, includes schools from around the world—over 550 in all. Germany itself boasts 27, of which MIS, with its total of 1,120 students from first to twelfth grade, is the second largest, surpassed in size only by the International School in Frankfurt. This vast network of schools provides great advantages for families that are regularly forced to relocate to new countries. In order to become a member of the European Council of International Schools, a school must meet a number of accreditation requirements designed to ensure well-rounded and culturally-aware graduates. Thus, not only do parents know what to expect when enrolling their sons and daughters in a member school, but also the coursework of the students themselves is compatible with the educational programs of other international schools.
The system was set up to meet the needs of an increasingly international world with a growing number of families moving frequently from country to country. In practice, says Taylor, most of MIS’s students, only 30 percent of whom are German, come from families attracted to Munich by the growing information technology and biotechnology industries and have since put down roots in the city. “Increasingly though,” he says, “we are seeing transfers from other schools. I think that shows that the original concept remains the correct one.”
The Munich International School
The difference between the Munich International School and the Bavarian International School is primarily size. MIS, as the larger of the two, is able to offer a full range of programs and almost every one of the courses available in the International Baccalaureate curriculum. In addition to offering schooling in grades 1 to 12, they also have a program for younger children, between the ages of 4 and 6. The curriculum at MIS offers all the traditional subjects, including an in-depth science program and foreign language instruction. Older students can choose from a number of electives, such as art and design, film studies, information technology and a new business and management program designed with Boston Consulting and intended to prepare students for further study at business schools around the world.
In addition, the school offers a number of extracurricular activities, including jazz and traditional bands, language clubs, dance courses, a chapter of Amnesty International and a number of different sports teams that travel to destinations as far away as the Middle East to compete. And then there is the drama program. “We place a particular emphasis on drama,” says Taylor. “We try to ensure that there is a theater production available to each one of our students to participate in no matter how old they are.”
The Bavarian International School
With 600 students, likewise from grades 1 to 12, the Bavarian International School prides itself on its small class sizes—no more than 24 students in each with classes for students in grades 11 and 12 often as few as 6 students. The school also encourages the use of computers, with each classroom having at least two, and some students, in a pilot program, receiving laptops with which they can log on to the Internet from anywhere in the school with a wireless connection.
After-school programs at BIS are also seen as an important part of students’ education and they can choose from a range almost as wide as at MIS. Here, though, music is the emphasis, with a number of new music rooms recently built among the rafters of the castle’s attic, including individual rehearsal rooms. The school also intends to enlarge its outdoors program to include kayaking, camping and mountain biking to complement the climbing wall that already graces one wall of the gymnasium. “We want our school not only to have high standards of learning,” says Bowman, “but also activities for students to develop in other areas. And, of course, activities that allow them to learn from each other.”
In fact, the only weakness the two schools seem to have is the price tag. Tuitions cost up to € 12,000 a year, entrance fees could add up to more than € 7,000 over the first three years and no financial aid is on offer—international schools are certainly not for everyone.
The European School
Similar to the international schools, the European School is part of a larger association of 10 schools in Europe and offers education for pupils from grade 1 to 12. The schools were originally created to provide high-quality instruction to the children of the employees of the European Union, although others are welcome as well.
As befits the school’s role as part of the glue that holds the European community together, the strength of the European School lies in its language instruction. The 1,400 students begin with all classes conducted in their mother tongue when possible, but must begin studying a second language right away. Students of different nationalities are eventually mixed together as they begin to do coursework in their second language. Moreover, students study up to two additional languages.
At between € 1,500 and € 2,500 per year, the European School offers a much cheaper alternative to the international schools. As a result of a recent increase in demand and a long waiting list, however, they will not be accepting applications from new students until 2004.
Munich’s robust economy coupled with the city’s recent drive to attract more high-tech firms has meant that all three international schools are growing and building. Both MIS and BIS hope to increase their student bodies by 200 pupils in the next two years and both plan to make the portable classrooms that dot each of their campuses a thing of the past. The European School is also struggling to keep up with demand and they, too, will be adding a number of new classrooms in the coming years. As they grow, however, they will all seek to maintain the unique atmosphere that makes these three schools among the best in Europe. “After all,” says Bock, “having students who don’t want to leave at the end of the day is a unique problem for a school to have. It is one that we want to encourage.”
