I’ve pondered how to begin this post for a while, but mostly I’ve just put off beginning a post at all. It’s a bit like when you lose contact with old pals; the longer you leave it, the more awkward it can be to spring up out of nowhere and say “hi, wanna know what I’ve been up to?”. So it feels a bit like that.
The sharper tacks among you will have already gathered from the title that we’re leaving Luxembourg -tomorrow actually – and about to repatriate back to England. Hubby will still continue to spend time commuting back and forth between the UK and Lux, but our family home and the bulk of his new professional focus will be in the UK.
It wasn’t entirely planned that way when we moved here – we planned to settle permanently as regular readers are only too aware. Actually it was a company decision, although it has subsequently taken months of quite stressful false starts and uncertainty ever since (their doing not ours and entirely typical – Hong Kong took a year of the same kind of shenanigans). However, once someone dangles the carrot of ‘potentially going home’ in your face, it’s a real truth potion; it’s surprising how quickly it forces you to either want to bury the notion, or – as in my case – chomp on it along with half the fingers of whomever is doing the offering. After ten years away, we realised we really just wanted to be ‘home’. It’s something quite primal I think – the urge to regroup with your little tribe – however quirky they may be.
One of the main reasons I stopped blogging here was simply I was juggling a lot of plates; trying to manage a part-time freelance writing gig is really nigh on impossible when you have kids at home for any part of the day and as regular readers may know, the kids started in local school here but my youngest only attended half days and my oldest came home at lunchtimes - all almost two hours of it – and so when I wasn’t scrambling to research and write, the rest of my days were spent going back and forth to school (that’s four times a day folks). Yes, I could have put them into Maison Relais at lunch, but that wasn’t something we were ever keen to do while the kids were adjusting to being thrown into a completely new, foreign school environment – the lunch time break was what Henry lived for. So the blog suffered as I simply had nothing very interesting to blog about!
The local Luxembourgish school system - our experience
That brings me onto to my synopsis of our experience with the local primary school system. Henry was transitioned into the first year of Primaire - he turned seven just after. Oscar went into Precoce. While I loved many aspects of the school itself (very friendly, international bunch of parents) and generally really nice teachers, I’m not sure that I was bowled over by the rather buttoned up system itself. Henry is smart, but very easily distracted, and the syllabus is very language intensive – beginning with German in his year. So he was suddenly confronted with learning a new language - i.e. German – but with instruction in Luxembourgish. So two new languages in one hit. He did his best, but to be honest he just never really got along with the system. Oscar enjoyed his time at precoce and from day one bounced in. I loved it too. Although he never really picked up any Luxembourgish, it was good for him and he settled pretty well overall (this was largely to do with finding out he was likely very hard of hearing for a large part of his early life due to the constant ear infections he’d suffered – but more of this later in post).
The school worked hard to accommodate Henry as best they could with the seemingly limited parameters they have been taught themselves, but the system here relies heavily on ‘negative reinforcement’ in order to ‘teach’ kids. i.e. it’s incredibly old school – really I’d liken it to going back to the 1970s. So children who are slow to finish exercises in class are forced to miss break time in order to ‘negatively reinforce’ the concept that they must speed up and ‘get with the program’. They really did try to help him – using English often to explain things – but he was largely clueless as to what was being said and simply got distracted. Quite a lot it seems. He had extra German tuition on Mondays and this really helped on the German side, but he was still grasping with understanding the general flow of Luxembourgish instruction and he just lost interest, and then confidence. He began having a lot of nightmares and was often in a panic about having to go back to school after lunch – something no parent wants to see.
He seemed to be constantly missing break times due to being forced to finish work he was slow to complete in class. I consider break times essential for all children unless they’ve been REALLY badly behaved and seems counter intuitive to limit the opportunity to let off steam and then expect the child to concentrate for the rest of the day? To compound matters he would come home with ‘punishments’ regularly too i.e. ‘lines’; the likes of which I only ever received in senior school and made zero difference to my behavior even with my far maturer brain, so goodness knows what on earth the system here is trying to achieve giving such punishments to a seven year old who is largely incapable of making the necessary ‘link’ between a perceived ‘misdeed’ and subsequent ‘punishment’ when it is expected to be completed hours and hours later at home, often when they’ve already got a mountain of other work to finish (we had on average an hour or so a day).
I went to the school several times to ask for better ways to engage him and keep him interested, but the system is pretty rigid, and the curriculum so language heavy that the teachers are simply doing their very best to ensure the kids achieve the necessary level by the end of the year. The teacher was very frank that it was essentially ‘conform of die’ (my words not hers) as I optimistically suggested things might get better the following year, she said it would only get worse as French is introduced intensively too (and the endless, repetitive use of worksheets is the same too). Henry was just spectacularly bored and increasingly frustrated because he wasn’t able to use English in class (understandably) and he was largely completely unable to articulate and express himself freely; not great for a very articulate and chatty child and something I’d not considered would be so detrimental to his, for want of a better word, spiritual wellbeing.
If your child is a natural ‘conformer’, or a ‘head down’, diligent kind of worker, I’d say it’s probably a good system for them – I see it would have worked far better for Oscar for instance and I can’t stress the importance of getting your kids into the system earlier rather than later. But our ‘out of box’, highly talkative and highly inquisitive child just hated the monotony of the endless worksheets, the lack of more engaging science, art and more creative outlets to mix it all up a bit – though it’s important to remember this is very much about his personality. He just needed more stimulus and the attitude of the teachers was honest, if unwavering, in that they had few parameters to bend the learning experience for any individual child because of the intensive, worksheet-led, language-heavy nature of the syllabus.
In short, it’s a system that’s admirably geared to churning out multi-lingual bureaucrats, professionals, financial experts and civil servants. That’s not a criticism, it’s essential what fuels Luxembourg’s wealth and economy after all (if you discount the enormous housing bubble). It’s physically impossible to incorporate the language element without sacrificing a wider curriculum in some way and so if you opt to go down the local school route, while I don’t think it’s in any way an inferior system to any other – actually i’d say it’s incredibly well geared to fit it’s purpose – in retrospect, I probably would have kept Henry in International school. This way he would be free to pick up perhaps one other language over time and would have more exposure to a broader - and frankly more fun - curriculum that would have kept him engaged and his confidence levels higher. Naturally we’ve only had limited exposure, but from talking to parents of all ages – and even the teachers themselves who were so frank – it was clear it was never going to get more stimulating for someone like Henry -and crucially they were never going to really go above and beyond to make it so for children such as him. That doesn’t mean it would be like this for your child. There are so many variables; the school, the individual teachers and your child’s own personality will all have a bearing and one person’s account should not influence your decision making process. That said, I felt it was important to detail our experience honestly in the spirit of openness.
Onwards and upwards – the positives
The positives? Well of course, ironically, the languages and the exposure to a diverse, international learning environment. The ancillary support and things like Maison Relais are wonderful too. I’ve also discussed the Cheque Service system in previous posts and why I rate that. Henry was surprisingly conversationally ‘playground’ fluent in Luxembourgish by the end of the year and only yesterday in Mamer Park was taught to ride his scooter down the Skateboard ramp entirely in German by a boy he met there. So while there was much pain, there’s clearly been a huge gain – we will continue with the German in the UK and I’ve no doubt he will always be able to pick up languages easily throughout life. I’ve no doubt that he would have overcome many of his issues as he progressed through the system, but would certainly have lost something from his soul in the process and I’m just not that keen on the idea of an autobot for a child so I think the opportunity to move home came at a very good moment for us.
We’ve loved living in Luxembourg and it really is a beautiful, clean, green and well ordered country and I’ll have a very heavy heart when we depart. I’ve made a couple of really special friends too (you know who you are). Some of my very top praise comes for the health service here – I’m silently weeping at the thought of going back to the UK’s NHS because we’ve been thoroughly spoilt here. Our experience at GP level, to clinics and hospitals has been tip top first rate, every time. Oscar very recently had his tonsils removed and we were blown away by the care and service. I wish every country could model their system on Luxembourg’s. The thing is, everything just kind of works so well here (yes even the school system!) and that’s not a bad thing when you think about it. There will always be a very, very warm place in my heart for this gorgeous little country and I hope it remains just enough of a ‘best kept secret’ to stay that way.
I’ve started a new blog that will detail our repatriation to the UK and then will mostly focus on discovering the local area: please do join me over on Cotswold Tales!
