Dear  Mr Mersch, Mr Montalvo, Mr Feldmann, Mr Muller, Mr Kivinen,  School Directors and Teachers, Invited Guests, Parents Representatives and Student Representatives

On behalf of the ESF Parents' Association I would like to say a special thank you

  • To Mr Mersch, we are grateful to the ECB, for its support and for providing the funding for this building.
  • We are also grateful to Mr Rennpferdt who has always been a good and reliable partner to the Parents Association.
  • To Mr Feldmann and the City of Frankfurt, we are grateful for the additional piece of land you have provided on which this building now stands.
  • We are also grateful To Dr. Pritzl and his team from the Hochbauamt, for all the hard work you have all put into this project.
  • To Mr Krawczyk, and the company Kaufmann, we are very grateful to you, for the great design, quality and realisation of this building.
  • To the child minders and staff of Global Education, we are grateful to you all for your  support and flexibility in moving the child minding services for Primary 1 and Preprimary classes, from the PA container village across the road to this new building.
  • We are also grateful to the Children of the ESF who have taken time out from their important studies to welcome and entertain us today.

Now, although today is a joyful day I would also like us to reflect a little, on the history of the ESF:

 

The original school buildings of the ESF were built around 12 years ago to house 800 students. With the growth of the ECB, the coming of EIPOA and the SSM in the ECB, the number of employees working for European Institutions in Frankfurt has almost tripled. Consequently, the number of students that are eligible to attend this school has grown without a proportionate increase in facilities due to the non-provision of required additional land and funding by the German Authorities.

The school population currently stands at 1420 plus students, and for the school year beginning September 2015 will most likely exceed 1500 or even 1600 students. Furthermore it is foreseen that the student population will reach 2500 plus in the very nearest future.

In September 2014 the Parents’ Association was proud to open our container village, across the street, to house all the Pre-primary classes. This prevented the European School Frankfurt from becoming the first school, in over 60 years of the European Schools system’s history, rejecting Category 1 students that were entitled to attend the school.

Today, we have now received the key to this temporary building that will house our child minding activities as well as the P1 and Pre-primary classes for a number of years to come. This building has a dual use which is very difficult to manage on a daily basis. For example how do you tell a 4 or 5 year old that they can play with some Lego in the morning but are not allowed to touch the same pieces of Lego in the afternoon? This is only one of many such issues that the child minders and teachers deal with on a daily basis. The quality of both services suffer as the teachers and child minders swap in and out, keeping to  strict timelines with little or no time for daily preparations.

This building and the orange containers on the school yard are temporary solutions for the increased number of students in pre-primary and primary school. They are both the results of discussions by the school stakeholders with the German Authorities that started as far back as 2008.

The former pre-primary school classrooms that were vacated in September 2014 are gradually being converted to secondary school classes. However, some of the classrooms still need to be fitted with the necessary equipment to become laboratories for the secondary school science students. We hope that the German Authorities will provide all the required funding so that our students can have the facilities that they need to learn before the start of the 2015/16 school year.

Children grow up very fast these days, and the days are flying by. The first of the children attending classes in this building will start Secondary School in 5 years’ time, and the number of new children admitted to the ESF on an annual basis will continue to increase, due to the continued growth of the European Institutions in Frankfurt. Temporary solutions  provided by the PA, financed by the ECB and the City of Frankfurt on this plot of land can only stall the problem for a limited period of time, unless – as recently pointed out by the architect in a feasibility study – all the school buildings are converted into a 16 or more storey, high rise building. We talk not only about space for classrooms, but also for canteens, sports facilities, playgrounds, laboratories, libraries, parking facilities etc. for 2.500 plus students.

We, the parents of the European School Frankfurt, seek your understanding of how urgent the situation is – and I say urgent because: As nice as this building is, it is only a good solution for the short term. Hence, we once again ask all stakeholders to come together, take up your responsibilities and find a permanent solution to the infrastructure problems for the whole school. Here we mean talking about options with a plot of land that can realistically host the required infrastructure for 2500 students, with the capacity for further expansion of the school if required.

The German Government, the City of Frankfurt, the State of Hessen, the surrounding communities and of course, the European institutions themselves, reap huge benefits with the migration and integration of highly educated professionals and their families into the City of Frankfurt and its surroundings. Let us also not forget that the European School system has been created to promote European awareness and to educate the future European citizens, who will contribute to the future goodwill for Europe.

We therefore ask all of you, to urgently fulfil your obligations to provide a school that not only fulfils the needs of our children, but also contributes to the future European goodwill and to Frankfurt as a financial Centre of Germany and Europe.

This cannot wait any longer. Please act now.

Thank you.