Stop the dismissal of locally recruited teachers in the European School of Varese

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and the Europeans School(s), if any, to which you are, were or will be affiliated.

Introductory Arguments

Having regard to the Quality Assurance and Development in the European Schools (see: 2000-D-264-en-2 ), particularly in relation to:

1. the Schools’ philosophy in:
1. encouraging all pupils to reach their full potential;
2. creating a democratic ethos, in which all members of the school community can play their parts,
2. the responsibilities of the school management to:
1. ensure the effective planning and coordination by the school management of pedagogic developments, monitoring their implementation of plans, and evaluating their success;
2. establish effective communication between all elements of the school community including parents, and with the outside world,
3. the resources for learning: that their distribution is fair, rational, and transparent,
4. the links of the school with parents that:
1. parents are well informed about the school and their children’s education;
2. parents play a full part in the life of the school,

Having regard to the responsibilities of the Secretary-General of the European Schools that include:

1. coordinating the implementation of the autonomy of the European Schools;
2. guaranteeing the coherence and smooth operation of the European schooling system and of the European Baccalaureate;
3. ensuring the transparency and efficiency of the procedures and the quality of the services,

Having regard to the Financial Regulation applicable to the Budget of the European Schools (see: 2017-12-D-21-en-3), particularly in relation to Article 2 concerning the use of budget appropriations in accordance with the principles of economy, efficiency and effectiveness – namely:

1. The principle of economy requires that the resources used by the Schools for the pursuit of their activities shall be made available in due time, in appropriate quantity and quality and at the best price;
2. The principle of efficiency concerns the best relationship between resources employed and results achieved;
3. The principle of effectiveness concerns the attainment of the specific objectives set and the achievement of the intended results,

Having regard to the action undertaken by the management of the European School of Varese (ESV) to replace a substantial number of its teaching staff on local contracts with teachers seconded from the Member States (25 new secondments to replace 25 full-time-equivalent positions currently covered by more than 25 teachers on local (part-time) contracts, amounting to more than 70% of the local teachers at secondary level),

Whereas

1. The salaries and allowances (standard and contributory) of seconded teachers are shared between the Member States and the European Commission. For the great majority of the secondments required by ESV, the overall costs for the European Commission are substantially higher for seconded teachers than the salaries of locally recruited teachers and as a consequence represent a greater tax burden on the European tax-payer.
2. The safeguarding of jobs, especially of those who have provided valuable service over many years, some as many as 20 years, when ESV had difficulty in securing teachers seconded from certain Member States, is an important principle to uphold.
3. The school management has shown little regard to the livelihoods and welfare of locally recruited teachers. Moreover, the process to replace teachers on local contracts has been performed in an opaque manner and contrary to the principles of transparent procedures and quality of services expressly assigned as a responsibility of the European Schools’ Secretary-General to ensure.
4. No communication was provided to parents by the school management at the outset regarding this action and no satisfactory justification has been provided to them since, particularly in view of the likely negative impact on pupils’ education. Many parents who wrote to the school’s local and central management, after learning of the action by rumour, have received no assurance against the disruption of their children’s education – especially those in the critical transition to the European Baccalaureate.
5. The positions of teaching staff on local contracts were awarded by the management of ESV in the first place and agreed by the Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools (OSGES) at the time on the basis of the difficulty of securing seconded teachers. There is no guarantee that the difficulties in securing seconded teachers will not happen again in the future. Even for many years prior to Brexit, ESV had few seconded teachers from the UK and yet never entertained the idea of recruiting seconded teachers from non-English native-speaking Member States to take on the role.
6. The replacement of staff on local contracts will remove the possibility of securing the necessary contingent of English native-speaking teachers following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union.
7. The replacement of the current locally recruited teachers will result in the loss of a generally excellent calibre and quality of teaching that is not guaranteed to be replaced by the like. A number of exceptional teachers stand to lose their jobs. These teachers are highly respected by pupils and have served to motivate and influence them in a strong and positive manner. Furthermore, many are active in both school and community life and bring significant kudos through these activities to ESV and the European Schools in general.
8. In comparison with other European Schools, ESV has an average number of locally recruited full-time-equivalent teachers equating to 48% and below the average of 50% across all European Schools (where the overall range is from 42% to 68%), as published by the report of OSGES (see: 2020-10-D-18-en-2).
9. ESV has a peculiar set of needs that requires circumspection in implementing measures of this kind. ESV is a large school catering for some 1300 pupils, 22% of whom are categorised as Students Without A Language Section (SWALS). Local contracts are a necessary instrument to overcome the difficulties of seconding teachers who would not otherwise have enough working hours in the eyes of the Member States to justify their secondment.
10. An extremely high level of the vehicular language is needed for teachers of all subjects, and especially where specialist vocabulary is needed, such as in maths, the sciences, economics, and philosophy. Furthermore, SWALS pupils require a near perfect grasp of their vehicular language in order to study their core subjects, which cannot be assured by L2 tuition taught by non-native speaking teachers.
11. The replacement of English native-speaking teachers on local contracts will introduce an inequality of provision of English L2, L3, and L4 language standards compared with the language standards in the other vehicular languages and will impact on all those subjects taught in L2 within the Secondary cycle. A total of 80% of ESV pupils study English at some level and 73% up to L2 level. Moreover, there are grounds to suspect that the requirements of language level of seconded teachers may be lowered in the near future due to pressures from the Member States (currently, the level of C2 of the common European framework of reference for languages is required for most subjects; see: 2018-01-D-65-en-3).
12. The quality of teaching and education, as well as the choice of optional subjects for the Baccalaureate years are of the utmost importance to promote and safeguard since they relate critically to the career choices and possibilities open to ESV pupils. Furthermore, a school offering a high level of educational quality is of paramount importance to the attractiveness of employment by the European Commission’s Ispra site as well as the many internationally-oriented companies in the area, and to the attractiveness of the school to private families leaving in the Varese region.
13. Now is not the time for the introduction of these types of changes. The outbreak of Covid-19 towards the beginning of 2020 has resulted in sufficient disruption to children’s education to warrant no further disruption. Furthermore, the continual introduction of draconian measures over the last few years imposed unilaterally on schools has already served enough to compromise the quality of educational provision within ESV.
14. The higher real costs of this exercise contradict the justification for introducing previous cost-saving measures that have led to deteriorating provision of education, including:
    1. SWALS L1/L2 timetable changes in the primary cycle – impacting on the level of tuition in the vehicular
       language;
    2. enlarged class sizes; increased minimum numbers for classes;
    3. reduction in the number of L1 lessons to SWALS;
    4. vertical groupings of classes in different language sections;
    5. vertical groupings of SWALS L1 tuition in both secondary (S1+S2) and primary (P1+P2 and P3+P4).

    In addition, all these measures were implemented without any systematic effort to measure their impact on educational quality.

15. In contrast to previous practice within ESV, new measures should be phased in according to a well-orchestrated plan to manage the change and avoid unnecessarily stressing the system currently in place. Evaluation and impact of the changes should thereafter be carefully measured and analysed.