Rob Van der Sande

In Den Helder we have the first certified Blue School in Europe, the Jac P Thijsseschool. Their certificate was presented in our city by Euro commissioner Sinkevičius in May 2021 during the European Maritime Days. Located in a coastal city this preliminary school has the ocean in their DNA. For the last four years they have been applying one of the five ocean theme’s to their classrooms tailored for the age of these children. The activities of this school made other teachers in Den Helder enthusiastic. This resulted in the certification in 2022 of our secondary school, Scholen aan Zee (Schools at Sea) of which students joined a national solar boat race competition in a boat they build themselves. And in 2023 of our vocational school, VONK where students joined a Hackathon on sustainable fishing. Last year on UN Water Day, 22 of March, we held our first national Blue School congress in Den Helder. Aim of the congress is to inspire teachers in our country about the Blue School program for them to also start these theme projects with their students.This year on 22 March we did the same. Challenge Our most commonly faced challenge is that national and regional ministries are only responsible to test the quality of the schools and defined results of the children/students. And a municipality is only responsible for the housing of the schools. Therefor no government is responsible for, or involved with, facilitating children’s education on the importance of the Ocean. From the perspective of freedom of education this is great. However teachers are limited by the teaching materials that are available. They don’t have access to funds to create special projects on an important theme like the Ocean. The Blue Schools in Den Helder create these projects in their own sparetime. Our current practices to implement the Ocean into the classroom: Tailor the project for the appropriate age-level, make more teachers enthusiastic and foster co-operation between different schools.