Abstract

Assessment of the Complaints Board
10. In the opinion of the Complaints Board, none of the arguments put forward by the applicants is such as to invalidate the decision taken by the European Schools.

11.
On the first plea: incorrect or flawed language selection process
With regard to the correctness of the language tests, the Complaints Board finds that neither the procedure followed nor the results can be challenged. The applicants claim that a child is more relaxed and therefore performs better during the second test is not supported by concrete scientific evidence. Children\'s performance may vary from case to case. Initial shyness may reduce performance during the assessment of the first language, however, the same result may occur due to fatigue during the assessment of the second language. These variables, even if they exist, are inevitable in a process that must necessarily begin with the assessment of one language and end with the assessment of another.
As regards the results, it should be noted that the English teacher concluded by giving the test a score of 3/10 and stating that [...] would be able to join the English section “with many difficulties”. On the other hand, the Bulgarian teacher gave the test a score of 7/10, concluding that [...] could follow the Bulgarian class “without any difficulty”. Given that the language test is not intended to determine whether a child is able to join a specific language section, but to understand which is his dominant language, the result cannot be questioned.
The Complaints Board notes, furthermore, that in the application form, the applicants themselves state that the child\'s language skills can be described as “intermediate” for Bulgarian and “basic” for English.
Furthermore, as repeatedly stated, the Complaints Board is not competent to judge the merits of educational assessments made by the Schools, which can only be decided and carried out by competent teaching staff (see Decision 21/19 of 8 July 2021). In view of the arguments put forward by the applicants, the Complaints Board considers it appropriate to recall that the fundamental principle of the European Schools is to provide education in the child\'s mother /dominant language, with a view to giving him or her a solid linguistic and cultural foundation on which to learn other languages. Parents cannot therefore choose the language section, which must be determined on the basis of an educational assessment. Any other considerations, such as the nationality of the child or the country where he or she will hypothetically live as an adult, are not relevant in this context.
This approach does not deprive parents, as the applicants’ claim, of the possibility of making educational choices for their children, because these choices can be made by enrolling their children in schools that adopt a different language policy, such as the one that seems to be preferred by the applicants, according to which minority languages should be learned at home and majority languages at school.
The applicants\' request to have their son take a French test also appears to be flawed by the idea that parents have the right to choose their child\'s language, an approach that is not the one adopted by the European Schools. In this regard, the Schools’ defence rightly pointed out that the choice of test languages is made by the School Director, who bases his/her decision on information provided by the child\'s legal representatives. These are educational choices on which the Board, as already mentioned, has jurisdiction only in cases of manifest error. Now, considering that according to the application form [...] speaks Bulgarian and English with his father, [X] and English with his mother and French only at nursery, i.e. outside the family, the choice of the School Director not to give [...] a French test does not appear to be vitiated by any manifest error.

12.
On the second plea: violation of the principle of the best interests of the child
The second plea is based on the breach of the principle of the best interest of the child
In the Complaints Board\'s view, this principle has not been violated either. The educational policy of the European Schools is that, from a linguistic point of view, the best interest of the child is best served by placing him or her in the section of the language he or she knows best. Neither the length of the journey to and from school nor the fact that the sister/brother is educated in another language can call this conclusion into question. Furthermore, the fact that these circumstances are not relevant to the choice of school is expressly provided for in Article 8.5.3 of the Enrolment Policy, which the applicants had an easy access to. As for the fact that \'s mother, not having a perfect knowledge of Bulgarian, may not be able to follow her son\'s linguistic development easily, this cannot be attributed to the European School but to the life choices of [...]\'s parents. In any case, it seems counter intuitive that schooling [...] in English, which is not the mother tongue of either parent, could be in the best interests of the child. Finally, the applicants point out that the child\'s father, who works in the external action service of the European Union, is likely to be posted in the future to a third country where only international schools teaching in English and/or French are normally available. It would therefore be in [...]\'s best interests to be educated in English from now on. In that regard, the Complaints Board must point out that the European schools are not ordinary international schools but are established on the basis of a specific international convention and adopt an educational policy based on the best interests of the child, which is shared by the Member States and the European Union that are parties to the Convention defining the statute of the European Schools. If the applicants, in view of their specific career prospects, consider that the educational policy of the Schools does not meet the interests of their children, they may still enrol them in international schools of their choice.

14. In view of the above, the appeal must be dismissed.