Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro
The Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro is a traditional private school in Brazil with a total of five locations in São Paulo and Valinhos . With around 10,000 students, it is the largest private school in the country and the largest German school in the world. The Porto Seguro school (Portuguese for safe haven ) was originally a German school. Even today it is attended by many pupils with German mother tongue.
history
The school was founded in 1878, according to a concern of the Germans in São Paulo , under the name “Deutsche Schule” (Olinda School). Their sponsoring association was a stock corporation, the shareholders of which were mostly the parents of the school children. The lessons were held in both German and Portuguese. Thanks to the foresighted management, who knew how to adapt the concerns of the school to those of the host country, the school survived the First World War , the subsequent internal revolutions and the Second World War . During the Second World War, when Brazil took on Germany, the school was named "Colégio Visconde de Porto Seguro", named after the famous historian of Brazil, Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen . From then on, lessons were given in Portuguese; German lessons were prohibited. The steadily growing number of pupils from the 1960s onwards made it necessary to enlarge the school. New buildings were built, and there are now four school units in São Paulo. The industrial growth of the 80s in the direction of the Campinas area justified the building of a school in the locality of Valinhos.
In 1966, a school train was founded for the less well-off population in the surrounding area, which offers the children and young people living there free high-quality education from pre-school to upper school. The children also receive clothing and food, and medical care.
A total of 10,000 pupils attend the school (s), 800 to 900 of them on the free school train.
structure
The school is supported by the “Fundação Visconde de Porto Seguro”. Its board of trustees consists of 64 advisory boards, which elect a board from among their ranks, whose task it is to manage the foundation's business. The teaching staff consists of 750 members, 40 of whom come from Germany.
Unit I (Unidade I) has been in the Morumbi district since the 1970s . Unit II has existed in Valinhos since 1983 with around 2,500 students, and since 1998 a third unit in São Paulo - Panamby. A bilingual kindergarten for children aged six months and over has existed since 2006 on the premises of units I and III.
Three curricula are offered:
- the Brazilian curriculum, in which the language of instruction is Portuguese. The foreign languages taught are German from the 1st school year, English from the 5th and Spanish from the 8th school year;
- the German curriculum, which is taught in both languages (German and Portuguese). English and Spanish are added as foreign languages;
- a vocational curriculum, upper level with training as a foreign trade clerk.
Certificates of completion
The final exams lead to the qualification for university entrance with the Brazilian certificate . In the vocational trade curriculum, the degree leads to a foreign trade diploma. After twelve and a half years on the German train, the Abitur exams are taken in accordance with the German examination regulations.
Furthermore, the exams for the certificates of the ZDP (certificate for German as a foreign language) and the language diploma I and II are taken, as well as those of the DELE (Spanish) and CAMBRIDGE (English).
Student exchange
The student exchange between Brazil and Germany has existed since 1978. The most prominent sponsor of this program was the then Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, Dr. Lothar Späth . The offer exists for the students of the Brazilian curriculum in the 10th grade and, more recently, also for younger participants in the German train. Today the student exchange is led by Matthias Holtmann, the German headmaster of Morumbi and Panamby.
One of the German partner schools is the Max-Planck-Gymnasium in Dortmund , which is the only gymnasium in Germany that offers Portuguese up to the Abitur.
Known students
A famous pupil of Porto Seguro was Queen Silvia of Sweden .
Web links
- Official website
- The school is presented on the website of the German Consulate General in São Paulo
Individual evidence
- ↑ Interview with the school principal from September 5, 2008 ( Memento from February 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive )