Scan Magazine | Special Theme | Education in Denmark
Prepare for an international future It is no coincidence that as many as 97 per cent of students continue on to a postsecondary education after a year at SKALs Efterskole (SKALs International Boarding School). The school, which offers the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), strives to give its Danish and international students both a personal and an educational journey. The approach has earned it the highest grade average of its region.
fered by 14 Danish gymnasia, as well as numerous educational institutions all over the world. Furthermore, if students take the tenth grade IGCSE, the exam qualifies them to skip one year of the Danish threeyear version of the IB.
By Signe Hansen | Photos: SKALs Efterskole
The IGCSE subjects are taught in English and the course is attended by both Danish and international students with global ambitions. Others of the school’s growing number of non-Danish students, however, enrol in SKALs’ International Project Class, an exam-free, project-based class taught in English. “This transition year attracts students of high academic levels from both Denmark and abroad, students who want to explore other ways to work with their competences and improve their media, communication and presentation skills,” explains Primdal, adding: “Our aim is to prepare our students not just for their further education but also for their role as global citizens.” The different programmes all take annual study trips to Cambridge, the UK; Dublin or Belfast, Ireland; Hanoi, Vietnam; Nepal or Zimbabwe. Students from all classes travel together to Berlin.
Founded in central Jutland in 1990, SKALs Efterskole had the ambition to provide an alternative to the then majority of free boarding schools focusing on personal development and social interaction. The founders of SKALs wanted to combine these traditional efterskole ideals with more tangible preparation for students’ continued professional and academic lives. From this ambition the school’s current international profile naturally germinated, captured in the slogan “the world must be conquered every day”. “What we mean by this is that we have to relate to and choose how to relate to the world every day. As a young person today, you have to realise that you are part of a generation of people who, to a much greater extent than previous generations, 36 | Issue 82 | November 2015
must be able to conduct themselves professionally and socially all over the world,” principal Sven Primdal explains and adds: “A cultural ABC, the ability to move in and understand different cultures, will be essential and requires two sets of competences: the academic – the languages, knowledge and so on; and the social – the ability to interact as an individual with people different from yourself. We want to give our students both.” An international set of skills Of the 150 students enrolled annually at SKALs, 50 per cent choose to study and take the IGCSE examinations. The class, which is approved by the University of Cambridge, gives access to the International Baccalaureate (IB), which is of-