Internationalisation in the Brainport region: its impact on education
In the Brainport region, a great deal of work has been done in recent years to provide education for a growing group of international pupils. By joining forces: schools, childcare centres, local authorities, healthcare partners and the business community sitting round the table, over many cups of coffee. Education professionals Anne Marie van Lanen, Rutger van Deursen and Claire Arts are right at the heart of it all. When you speak to them, their enthusiasm and commitment are striking. Claire: ‘This isn’t just a nice-to-have; these are our pupils.’
Rutger van Deursen is director of the Regional Partnership for Inclusive Secondary Education in Eindhoven and Kempenland, overseeing forty schools. He sees internationalisation in the region growing year on year. ‘There isn’t a single school here that isn’t dealing with this now; there are nursery classes where more than half the children have an international background.’
The term ‘international’ is broad: ranging from refugees and children of migrant workers to the offspring of highly educated knowledge workers. What makes it particularly complex is that it is not a constant flow. The influx of refugee children, in particular, is difficult to predict. ‘One month a class is full, the next it isn’t, whilst staff and costs continue to run. That requires flexibility from schools, and above all: cooperation.’
Going the extra mile
Strictly speaking, internationalisation does not fall within the partnership’s statutory remit. Yet Rutger is taking it on. ‘You could say: just stick to that narrow remit. But this is the reality we see in the Brainport region, and we want to respond to it.’
Anne Marie van Lanen is the (interim) director of education and team leader of the ‘Wereldklas’ at Pius-X College in Bladel. She knows better than anyone what it was like before schools opened their doors to newcomers. ‘Schools for newcomers – the schools offering international transition classes – had a poor reputation in secondary education for a long time. Schools didn’t want these pupils, or didn’t know what to do with them. This also applied to the transition from primary to secondary education: a vulnerable moment in which the region has since invested heavily to improve the transition.’
Where are your pupils?
The turning point came with a phone call. A headteacher rang Anne Marie in May 2025. Not to complain, but to ask: ‘Where are your pupils? I’d love to have them.’ Schools that welcomed newcomers found that it made their school more attractive. Some now have a waiting list.
That progression does, however, require a certain commitment. After two years in a transition class, language acquisition is really only just beginning. On average, a child needs eight years to truly master Dutch. That is why the four newcomer schools in Brainport are making concrete agreements with the wider school community. ‘If the newcomer school says: “This child has HAVO potential”, then that is respected by all other schools.’
Claire Arts is headteacher of Eckartcollege, Van Maerlantlyceum and Nuenens College, and chair of the Brainport Schools Association. She recognised that schools needed professional development, but that the approach was in danger of getting bogged down in programmes offered by large institutions far away. ‘When ASML came up with the initiative to support the professional development of education professionals in the field of multilingualism, we thought: we can organise that ourselves.’
Multilingualism Coordinator
This became the Inclusive Teaching Academy, or ITA. Not a new knowledge institution with its own agenda, but a hub that brings together what already exists in the region. At nearly fifty secondary schools to date, a multilingualism coordinator has been trained: a teacher from within the school who takes on a role at the intersection of language and culture within the school.
Professional development is deliberately kept local: a colleague pops into the school to offer tailored support, tailored to specific needs. There’s no need to spend a day travelling to a conference centre or an external training institute; instead, the Brainport schools help one another. ‘It works brilliantly,’ says Claire. ‘It suits our region, where helping one another and growing together is in our DNA.’
What’s striking about this is that teaching international pupils more effectively automatically means that all pupils receive a more effective education. Claire: ‘If we work together to tackle this properly, the whole region will benefit. All the children who live here benefit from an education focused on language and citizenship.’
Working together, even when things get a bit rough
What holds all these initiatives together is a network of people who know and trust one another. That sounds obvious, but it wasn’t. Claire: ‘It took a lot of cups of coffee. Convincing boards, getting centres of expertise on board, and aligning the business community and the education sector. Everyone had their own perspective and interests.’
What helped is that the Brainport region has traditionally operated as a triple helix: business, government and education work together here. ASML plays an important role in this as a partner. Rutger: ‘Working with ASML is exceptionally pleasant. They also take society’s interests into account, not just their own perspective.’ At the same time, the balance is clear: the business sector thinks in terms of numbers and timelines, whilst education determines the content. Anne Marie and Claire consciously guard that boundary. ‘That’s the only way it works.’
Ready for the future
The foundations are in place. But all three are also looking ahead, and there is still work to be done. Rutger sees schools in the city centre that are already full. ‘You can’t build a school overnight. Nor can you find a teacher overnight.’ Anyone who wants to organise effectively for the future needs to start thinking about it now.
Click on the link below to read the report on the Regio Deal project ‘Internationalisation of education in the Brainport region’ (this report is in Dutch).
Regio Deal project ‘Internationalisation of education in the Brainport region’