General information

Stip Hilversum is a foundation for 16 public primary schools, including an authorised IB Wold School for international education in English and two schools offering bilingual education. The schools are spread over 21 locations in Hilversum and one in the nearby town of Huizen. Stip stands for quality, pluriform education for all children.

Every child deserves an education

Every child deserves an education in which he or she can fully develop their talents. To realise this, in addition to cognitive knowledge and skills, attention is needed for the personal, social and emotional development of each child. Students attending Stip schools are independent, show initiative, and are creative and resilient.

A quality education opens up an entirely new World

At our Stip schools, children gain knowledge and master skills that will help them throughout their whole lives. They learn to see the world in all its variation and complexity. They develop themselves as individuals in a rapidly changing world. To facilitate this, Stip schools help children acquire and develop 21st Century skills so they may become collaborators, communicators, effective and responsible users of information technology, creators, critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Continuous improvement

The continuous improvement of the quality of education is a significant tasks for the board and the schools. Not only do the Stip schools fulfil all the requirements of the Dutch inspectorate but they have higher ambitions that stand in direct relation to society, its expectations and requirements. We have given ourselves the ambition to guide our students in developing all their talents in preparation for the society of the 21st Century. We focus not only on cognitive, intellectual talents but also on practical, social emotional and creative talents of our students. Most significantly, we offer our students a safe educational climate in which children – with respect for each other – can be who they want to be.

Excellent and inquisitive educators

Quality education requires excellent and inquisitive educators, both teaching and support staff. Within their schools, and the foundation, the employees work together to learn from and with each other. Learning with and from each other, (‘Leren met en van elkaar’), is a motto that can be used at student, teacher and school level. We encourage and stimulate staff and school leaders to actively look for new ways of working, new educational visions and new opportunities. Collaborative problem solving, sharing knowledge, but also learning from personal research. In these ways, we give form to professional dialogue within our foundation.

Innovation

Quality education requires innovations. For this reason, Stip Hilversum has initiated a number of innovation projects including high gifted students and language development in young children. This has led to a policy within Stip schools for gifted students in which these students attend a ‘Stipklas’ for one or more sessions a week to follow a special education programme.

Primary Schools for newcomers

At Taalschool Hilversum children from abroad learn the Dutch language in twelve months.

Quest Lectures

At the Dubbeldekker students from groups 7 & 8, aged 10-12 years, have quest lectures from experts in, for example, presenting, debating and work study skills to improve their confidence, boldness, motivation and future prospects.

Bilingual Primary Education

At two of the schools, the Violenschool and the Gooise Daltonschool, in addition to regular Dutch education, we offer bilingual primary education (TPO) wherein 50% of the instruction is in English. We are proud that these two schools are of only 20 schools chosen by the ministry of education to pilot this innovation.

Full Englisch Educationprogram

At International Primary School Hilversum, which has been authorised as an IB World School since 2000, English is the language of instruction. Dutch is taught as the host country language.

Special concepts

Finally, Stip Hilversum recognises a number of schools with specific educational concepts such as the Lorentz school (Dalton), Gooise Daltonschool, and Waldorfschool De Windkanter.

Are you looking for a public primary school in Hilversum? Under the heading ‘Our schools / onze scholen (at the bottom of this page)’ you can find further information on each of our schools. The map of Hilversum on the homepage shows where they are located and clicking on a location links you to each school’s website.

Bilingual department at De Gooise Daltonschool

Children nowadays grow up in an international society and therefore come in contact with the English language much more often. Since young children pick up a second language relatively easily De Gooise Daltonschool started a bilingual department, TPO ( Tweetalig Primair Onderwijs), in 2014-2015. This division is covered by a five year pilot commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture & Science to which nineteen other Dutch primary schools have prescribed. TPO is an excellent addition to the high quality education our school has to offer.

The start of TPO

We started our first TPO Kindergarten group in August of 2015, alongside our regular Dutch Kindergarten group. This was followed by a second TPO Kindergarten group a year later. In the schoolyear of 2017/2018 the first group of TPO children will be going to group 3, so within 8 years we will have a full-scale bilingual department at De Gooise Daltonschool.

(Near-)native speakers in the classroom

As we think it crucial for our students to be taught a correct English pronounciation, they are educated by (near-)native speakers, to whom English is either their native tongue or whose control of the English language is of a very high standard. Kirsten van Haver, Marion Stein, Wendy Bakker, Myriam van Dis and Saskia de Groot are TPO-teachers at De Gooise Daltonschool.

Bilingual practices

TPO-students follow the same curriculum as the children in our regular Dutch classes. However 30% to 50% of the class time is preserved for English. In an easy accessible and playful manner the teacher helps the children to master the English language by for instance teaching them polite social communications, the days of the week and everyday words, which helps increase their vocabulary rapidly. The TPO-curriculum is internationally oriented. Not only do the children learn English, but they are also taught English customs and culture, which helps bring the language to life. Ofcourse there’s still also ample room for Dutch culture in our bilingual groups.

Dutch language skills remain on par with those of other Dutch students

A bilingual education has shown no negative effect on the development of the Dutch language. As a matter of fact scientific research shows that learning a second language is highly beneficial to the development of the native tongue. One of the main conditions set by the Ministry of Education, Culture & Science is that TPO-students’ Dutch language skills remain on par with those of other Dutch children. We will be making allowances for group 3/4, where children first learn to read and write in Dutch, by restricting English to for instance gymclass and arts & crafts.

Onze scholen

STIP Hilversum heeft 15 openbare basisscholen op 18 locaties in Hilversum. Deze verschillen op vele punten. Gelukkig maar, want zo kunt u als ouder uit een breed aanbod kiezen. Waarin alle Stip-scholen gelijk zijn, is de kwaliteit van onderwijs en de bevlogenheid waarmee onze leerkrachten de talenten van uw kind naar boven brengen.