Scan Magazine | Special Theme | Nordic Education Special – Danish Efterskoler
From retiring to robust – a teenage journey BGI Akademiet specialises in top sports facilities and personal growth, from those first timid steps after leaving home to maturity in just one year. It is the start of a journey closer to adulthood. By Thomas Bech Hansen | Photos: BGI Akademiet
“If your dreams don’t scare you, dream bigger.” So goes the slogan on the website of BGI Akademiet, a boarding school in Hornsyld near Horsens and Vejle in Denmark. To many of the school’s new 64 | Issue 94 | November 2016
pupils, aged 15 or 16, moving away from home is scary enough. “When we welcome them here, they have just left their families. They have lived
and gone to school in the same place. This is the first time they have to forge new relationships on their own and take care of practical things themselves, and all this can be a massive challenge,” says Helle Vestergaard, the school’s principal. If initial insecurity marks the beginning, enthusiasm and curiosity usually follow. Then arrive bouts of homesickness and co-habitation struggles before the students end up having grown immensely.