A connected community of learners and world travellers
Meeting place for the international community. Local community. Twente… Welcome to our community!
Everyone should feel welcome at International School Twente. We want our school to be a meeting place for the international community. This promotes international-mindedness, and supports new families to settle and feel at home.
At IST we cultivate a school community to provide our students with an inclusive and caring environment within which they can build strong friendships that will last throughout their international lifetime.
IST is a ‘community’ school that connects between the international and the local community. As a community school, IST has a role to play in the local community. We see it as a priority to work alongside the Dutch departments at Prinseschool and Het Stedelijk Lyceum. Both schools’ bilingual programs and their emphasis on internationalisation of their Dutch programs set them apart and make cooperation with IST an obvious development. Beyond this, Het Stedelijk Lyceum is a Top sport Talent school, where promising sporting talents are given the opportunity to combine their sports careers with education. International School Twente will also seek to provide this program for international sporting talents.
The development of the school also includes increased cooperation with the University of Twente as well as the vocational institutions in the region.
By making the Dutch language and culture part of our curriculum, we encourage and enable our students to participate in the local community. IST cooperates with local cultural organisations, sports clubs and child care providers.
We see the diversity in backgrounds and values of our community as an opportunity for international-mindedness and a stimulus to connect. This way, everyone feels part of the IST community.
Our school is a very happy, safe, and inclusive environment for children of many different cultures to meet, learn and grow together in a unique Dutch context. We want our children to be excited to learn and to become confident in sharing their cultures, experiences and ideas. We strive to learn with and from each other and welcome parental involvement to broaden our cultural awareness. The IST is a close knit community supporting each other and forming life-long friendships from around the world.
Our school calendar is packed with fun activities for our community members. Most of the activities take place within the school, but we also host bigger events for which we invited parents and other friends of IST. Two great examples are our Meet & Greet BBQ at the start of the year school year and the New Years Reception in January. Both events are fun ways to learn more about each others culture and cuisine as everyone brings in food and decorations. With events like these we aim to connect our community within which expats and locals meet each other.
Our community is also strengthened by the support of parents. The IST Parents Council and IST Parents Support Group play an important role in developing our school. You can learn more about these platforms at their respective pages, including how you can support IST by signing up.
Our students are also encouraged to provide service to the local community. The collaboration with the Stroinkshuis offers regular CAS opportunities for IST students to contribute to the wellbeing of others.
And then there is also our house system. All IST students are members of one of the 4 houses who compete over the title House of the Year. The competition is linked to all our events and extracurricular activities. Students can score house points by competing in knowledge, creativity, sports and service. But all of these is ultimately to challenge oneself and build lasting friendships.