School attendance of traveling children (Germany)
Even children of occupational travelers are subject to compulsory education . This includes both the obligation to attend general schools and vocational schools. Business travelers used to be referred to as traveling people . Today, the term business traveler has established itself, not only in Germany. It not only includes members of circus and showmen companies , but all professional groups who are dependent on travel in the course of their employment.
definition
Business travelers are people who earn their living in different places (this can be regional, national, national or even Europe-wide) (mobile sales of services and goods). Not only permanent facilities such as markets, fair events, circus events, etc. a. are visited by professional travelers and used as a commercial platform, but also companies with a permanent seat are regularly contacted by professional travelers (see representatives , commercial travelers, pharmaceutical representatives , etc.). With regard to business travelers - mostly - without a permanent address , in contrast to the occupational group just described, a distinction can be made between the following groups:
Showman
Circus members and artists
Inland skippers / seafarers
( Usually , both parents do not go on sea shipping )
Subgroups
Comedians / jugglers / puppeteers
Groups of people who are entertainers have existed since the Middle Ages. They mostly belonged to the lower class or were outside the structures of the sedentary society. Their goal was to be able to make a living by entertaining and amusing people. A distinction was made between comedians and jugglers.
Comedians are among the forerunners of a modern theater company. They roamed the country and entertained their audience by performing - mostly self-invented - stories that were supposed to amuse the visitor. These so-called comedies are dramas with an exhilarating plot that usually end happily. The entertaining mood arises from an exaggerated representation of human weaknesses, which can also have critical purposes in addition to amusing the audience. The audience feels drawn to the characters on stage either because they recognize themselves in them, or they look down at them and laugh at them because they have weaknesses that need to be avoided or because they belong to a lower social class. If this attitude fluctuates towards the comic characters, one speaks of a tragic comedy.
Jugglers, on the other hand, saw their performance less in the performance of a play than in the representation of their art.
Puppeteers cover a sub-area of the travelers described above by moving from place to place in order to set up their stage in larger rented rooms and to present a children's story.
Stunt shows
In stunt shows, daring to dangerous tricks are performed in special performances ( stunt comes from English and means something like "particularly skillful or daring feat") in order to attract and inspire audiences. These events often take place in the parking lots of larger shopping centers.
Scissors grinder
Compulsory schooling
If the traveling family also includes school-age children who have to go to school en route, i.e. at the locations where the family has settled for a short time, this results in a situation that will be described in more detail below.
Regular schools (terminology NRW)
In many German federal states there are schools that accept children from families of business travelers. These schools, beschulen what the revolving returning students are, in North Rhine-Westphalia regular schools called. Usually this is the school that is close to the location to which the family keeps returning, be it because they maintain a building / apartment there or family members have a place of residence there. This school keeps the traveling child in his or her files and is responsible for the educational support on the trip as well as for the certificates and transfer / non-transfer. A certain number of traveling children have a regular school, other children of business travelers do not come back to the school they went to in the course of their school days and therefore do not belong to a regular school.
Support schools (terminology NRW)
Schools that take in children of business travelers during the travel season are called base schools in North Rhine-Westphalia . The main focus is on the schooling of traveling children for a few days, mostly as part of the fair , the folk festival or a circus performance . The support school should refer to the documents that the traveling child has with them (especially in the educational sense - see school diary) and enable the schoolchild to work on their own, individual learning plan. Support schools are often visited by traveling children at regular intervals, as they are in the immediate vicinity of the travelers' caravan sites.
Accompanying schools
An alternative to constantly changing schools is to attend school with you. Business travelers always have to decide which is the best form of schooling for their child. They have the alternative between schooling on the road, schooling in a boarding school or permanent schooling in one and the same school near a fixed location. This location is then either used daily for schooling, or the child lives permanently with relatives or in a foster family. There are different concepts for the accompanying schools, which are explained below.
School for circus children in North Rhine-Westphalia
The Evangelical Church in the Rhineland has decided to set up a school for the schooling of children from circuses in the 1994th Since 1994, children whose parents are on the road in North Rhine-Westphalia as part of their work in the circus have been able to register their children at the school for circus children. With the care provided by this form of accompanying school, there are no deficits for the students due to the constant change of school, they have a permanent contact person throughout their school career and have the opportunity to acquire all school qualifications according to their skills.
School for children of professional travelers in Hessen
This accompanying school was founded recently. It builds on the model of the school for circus children and has been training children of professional travelers since 2010 under the direction of the Evangelical Association for Inner Mission in Nassau (EVIM). The Hessian Ministry of Culture entrusted EVIM with the task of establishing and operating this type of school in Hesse. In contrast to the school for circus children in North Rhine-Westphalia, the Hessian School for Travelers trains all children of business travelers in Hesse.
Stichting Rijdende School in the Netherlands
A school for children of business travelers has existed in the Netherlands for over 50 years. During the travel season, the students are taught in mobile classrooms by teachers from the Rijdende School. The school year is divided into a compulsory number of days on which school must be attended and days on which there are no classes. This can be handled flexibly by the respective family depending on their travel behavior. This type of school is open to all children of business travelers up to the age of 12 (corresponds to attending the 6th grade). After that, travelers' children can only be cared for in an advisory capacity and have to attend a stationary school.
Accompanying private teachers
Some large companies, mainly in the field of circuses, employ teachers on a private basis to accompany the circus during the travel season and to teach the children who live there. In this case, travel routes can be designed flexibly and the students are not dependent on visiting constantly changing schools.
professional school
Business travelers of course have the option of completing a vocational training course of their choice if the entry requirements are met. However, there is no apprenticeship profile for the profession of showman, so that young people who want to work in their family business or in their own business without further training have to attend vocational school as students without an apprenticeship. In a school trial in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein, vocational school courses that have emerged from the EU projects BeKoSch and eLVET are being offered.
Support systems
In order to be able to help children on their travels, different support systems have been developed over the decades, a selection of which is presented here.
Area teacher
In some federal states of Germany, departmental teachers support children traveling to school and advise their parents. They help to find suitable schools on the trip, register the child there, help with homework or provide support through targeted remedial instruction. If necessary, they hold discussions with teachers, help with school problems or give tips for a school career. These tasks vary depending on the federal state and the time quota of the individual teacher. However, the common goal of all is always to support the children affected by the constant change of school.
e-learning
For some years now, electronic learning has played an important role. There are now different systems that can offer school children support in learning school material. Schools such as the School for Circus Children or the Stichting Rijdende School help their students through specially tailored forms of online learning. Other platforms such as LARS can be used as a supplementary school offer (e-learning never replaces school attendance).
BeKoSch and eLVET
As a result of two EU projects "Development of professional skills for showmen through block-by-block lessons" ( BeKoSch for short ) and e-learning for the vocational education of travelers / e-learning for the vocational education of professional travelers ( eLVET for short ) have students who are required to attend vocational school subject to the opportunity to learn appropriate content for their profession. The specialty of this vocational school offer lies in the form of the lessons, which are offered as block or distance learning. Through the combination of block lessons in times of limited travel activity and distance learning, which was developed in the EU project eLVET, compulsory vocational schooling can be fulfilled in two years, which suits the travel behavior of circus and showman families.
School diary
Another component to support school attendance on the trip is the school diary. The Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) of the federal states has worked steadily over the past few years on a uniform documentation system for the school career of traveling children and has approved a school diary for traveling children for nationwide use. It can be obtained by parents through the departmental teachers, whereby parents are obliged to keep a school diary for their child and present it there every time they visit a school.
In addition to the school diary, there is a handout “Living and learning on the journey” approved by the KMK. It is primarily used to provide information to teachers at home and base schools and should be found both in the school that looks after traveling children and in the school diary. Parents can also find important information in this guide. A third area of the school diary concerns the version of the learning modules approved by the KMK school committee. They specify binding course content and are tested over a period of five years and then evaluated.
The school diary accompanies the child during the entire school period, it helps the teachers on the trip to provide the appropriate teaching offer and enables the parents, the teachers of the support schools and the departmental teachers to have an overview of the child's learning progress. It remains with the student at the end of school.
Innovation approaches
Life on the journey is subject to constant change processes. Structures in cities and districts are changing, the habits of the population are subject to constant upheaval due to innovations and the travel behavior of professional travelers is also becoming more and more different. In order to do justice to this constant change, projects have been brought into being over and over again in recent years to take account of the changed conditions.
EVIS
Over a period of two years, EVIS is investigating the effectiveness of school support systems for traveling children on both the Dutch and German sides. The project was started within the framework of COMENIUS of the European Commission in the Comenius-Regio campaign, which was launched for the first time in 2009. In the course of the project, innovative approaches are to be determined and tested in order to create better school conditions for children of professional travelers.
For the district government of Arnsberg , the Stichting Rijdende School from the Netherlands is an ideal project partner with a long tradition and experience in caring for showmen and circus children. In particular, the consistent use of IT and mobile teachers offers suggestions for the further development of the German school support system for traveling children.
The project was successfully completed on July 31, 2011. Results and products can be viewed via the itemization.
Germany-wide school for traveling children
The project of a Germany-wide school for traveling children is still in the future. It would accept all children of business travelers and offer the opportunity to attend school while traveling. This means that the children of travelers would no longer be forced to change schools or live separately from their parents in order to have a continuous school career.
Schoolchildren would be looked after by school cars at every major event, would have a permanent contact person for all questions regarding school attendance and would certainly have better conditions and opportunities to pursue their dream job and thus secure their livelihood in the course of changing society.
ETT EDU (European Transfer of Travelers Vocational Education)
On August 5, 2011, this project was approved as part of the EU program “Lifelong learning, Leonardo da Vinci innovation transfer”. The project started on October 1, 2011. The duration is two years. The project essentially uses the results and findings of the previous projects BeKoSch and eLVET.
ETT EDU makes the diverse skills that showmen acquire within the family network transparent and supplements them with new job-relevant qualifications in a concept of lifelong learning. Within the project, this sustainable learning system is to be transferred and further developed for vocational education and training.
The target group of the project are young people from showman and circus families from the participating countries Germany, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom.
ETT EDU is coordinated by the Herne vocational college. The composition of the partner group, in which the implementing educational institutions could be brought together with politically responsible institutions, with scientific actors and in particular with the associations that are extremely relevant with regard to the target group of showmen, guarantees the project sustainability.
As a sustainable result of the project, the partnership is striving for a European job description for the profession of showman according to the EQF / EQF.
Individual evidence
- ^ School for circus children in North Rhine-Westphalia
- ^ School for children traveling on business
- ^ Stichting Rijdende School (ned.)
- ↑ Learning while traveling school
- ↑ BeKoSch
- ↑ School on the way
- ↑ EVIS: "A Comenius Regio Project of the EU"
- ↑ European Transfer of Travelers vocational Education (Eng.)
- ↑ BERiD