a multicultural school with extra attention for children
“Let go of what everyone can hear and only then will it appear here by chance a new sound.” The text by poet K. Schippers is written in gold letters on the facade of Sweelinck College on the border with Museumplein. The text beyond the school – in retrospect – perfect: now that the school board has decided that the school should close, it is becoming clear what the school dies in 2024 means for children in the city.
Pupils from other schools are sent or ‘simply’ do not intervene because they do not have an outstanding list of grades for behavioral problems, but are welcome at Sweelinck College. The school receives more than fifty distributed lateral entrants each year. A teacher who has worked at the school for almost ten years says that the school specializes in pupils who ‘need extra attention’.
“We specialize in that target group. We have students who have been evicted or have a moving home situation or have no success experience at other schools. Our teachers bite their teeth and ensure that these students leave school with a diploma. It is difficult that this target group will soon no longer have a school.”
This teacher, like other teachers who want to tell their story, will not have his name in the newspaper. The reason: “If you announce that you are closing a school in the middle of a year, then I don’t know what else you as a board are capable of.”
creative school
What is now called Sweelinck College, started in 1910 as Christian HBS-B. The new school building in Moreelsestraat and the gymnasiums and caretaker’s house in Gabriel Metsustraat still have to be completed. With 41 pupils, two classes and six teachers, the first lesson at Sweelinck College started in September 1910 in a temporary classroom. In 2013, the monumental school building that stood empty next to the Sweelinck will be renovated and merged. The stained glass windows and characteristic features are retained. In brochure language: It has been restored to ‘old glory.’
The school, father of composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, developed into a multicultural school in the chic South. Not only the student population is mixed, but also the teachers. “Students have representative examples here,” says a history teacher.
For a long time, the school management of the creative school, which for a long time only served secondary school students, knew what the city needed. In 2016, a period in which children were increasingly advised to have havo or higher, the school is responding to the handicap by opening more havo places in the city. The school does want to retain its artistic character: you can only choose two of the four subject profiles: Economics & Society and Culture & Society. Beta profiles are not offered.
Heyday
The school went well. Students of Sweelinck College have won a KidsWise Award for their campaign plan to draw attention to children’s rights. In its heyday, the Sweelinck housed more than five hundred students. The school is always partial because of its small scale, but now that there are still 354 children at the school, it is finished. The registration has led to few and insufficient results leading to the decision to close Het Sweelinck College as of August 2024. Barbara Dijkgraaf, chairman of the Zaam school board, which includes the Sweelinck, says that the school is ‘insufficiently profiled and sufficiently attractive to students’.
Parents, teachers and students denounce everything about the closure: the expectation, the abrupt decision and what they consider unfair. “The exam results are indeed disappointing. Instead of children and teachers helping, the board pulls the plug. This is not a store that you can declare bankrupt, these are teenagers, individual Amsterdammers,” says the history teacher. “The board sees that three schools are destroying each other and ensure that the schools do the best on paper to preserve.”
Ivory tower
The teacher strives for the merger of two secondary schools in the area. The Zuiderlicht College and the Gerrit van der Veen College are located next to the Zuid district. Two years ago, there was first talk of bringing the three schools together, but it was recently decided that only Zuiderlicht and Gerrit van der Veen will form a new school together: Creative College Amsterdam (working title). The new school will be located in the building where the Sweelinck has to leave.
Incomprehensible, sad, ‘a decision from an ivory tower’, these are all terms that have been used by parents, teachers and students after the closure became known. Teachers sit down together to see what they can do to stop the closure.
Parents started a petition on Wednesday: ‘The Sweelinck College must remain open’. Do you want to find the parents, ‘Sweelinck College is one of a kind. It is a multicultural school that you will not find anywhere else in Amsterdam South. It’s the school where Badr from East and Daan from South have the greatest fun together and work together to get their diploma.’