OUTRES

Vrije Basisschool “De Wijzer” is a catholic school situated in Zonnebeke, a municipality located in the Belgian province of West Flanders. Most people speak Flemish at home but the official language is Dutch, which is the language used in our school. At the age of 10, children learn to speak French. They learn English in secondary school but a lot of students have some notice of the English language due to television, internet, computer, videogames, music, etc.

 

Children from the age of 3 to 12 can join our school (Nursery and Primary school).  We have approximately 270 children, and the total number of teachers is 28. Most of the families live in the village of Zonnebeke, what means that most of the children come to school by foot, by bike or are brought by car. The school has no school bus.

 

The local economy is a balance between agriculture, small business and work in the neighbouring towns. Its major industry is the brickworks in the village of Zonnebeke itself, which extracts the local blue clay. Situated in the centre of the Ypres Salient, World War I destroyed the whole area. Left abandoned until the early 1920's, people slowly returned and rebuilt the villages. The many scars of World War I, which you can still see present day, brings a lot of tourists to the region, including to the town of Zonnebeke. Most of them are British, Australians or New Zealanders.

 

The project of the school is to develop the head, the hand and the heart in every child. It means we do not only teach maths, languages and knowledge (by means of cognition), but we pay a lot of attention to affection (heart) and practical skills (hand). Every class has one teacher who is responsible for the group during one school year. Children with special needs are held in the school as long as possible. Every teacher tries to organise several activities outside the school. We find it important that pupils experience the real life and learn as much as possible by seeing things and doing things, instead of learning from books and computers.