Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
PRESENTED BY STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

School trips help expat students feel at home

Building relationships in a brand new country can be tough – and expat children who switch schools frequently can have a hard time settling in. But Stockholm International School has a recipe for success that makes every student feel at home.

Published: 18 September 2015 08:00 CEST
School trips help expat students feel at home
Photo: Stockholm International School

Walking through Stockholm’s idyllic St. Johannes church yard at 1pm on a Monday, one hears church bells blending seamlessly into chiming laughter.

There’s a playground nestled into one corner of the park, and dozens of children are cheering on their peers in a fervent but friendly game of kickball. Everyone is involved – there are kids playing rock-paper-scissors on the side, but no one is alone.

It could be an ordinary day at an ordinary school. But there’s something remarkable about the atmosphere here, an air of warmth and inclusiveness, despite the variety of languages flowing from their lips.

Indeed, the student body at Stockholm International School represents 64 nationalities – and all of them are friends.

“There are always a lot of new kids here,” says Matthew Schulte, a grade 6 advisor and science teacher from Australia.

“So many families come and go through Stockholm, and some of the students only arrive in Sweden a week before school starts.”

But rather than struggling to get to know each other, it’s clear that these kids are already totally comfortable in one another’s company.

It’s no coincidence. Stockholm International School has a tried-and-true formula for helping students and teachers alike feel at home, whether they attend the school for one year or ten.

“The first week is orientation week, where we have a significant advisory programme and use a buddy system,” Schulte says. “We pair up the new kids with a group of kids with the same language skills, so they’re able to communicate at least in some way.”

And then it’s time for the real kickstarter, perhaps the highlight of the year: the school trips.

All students in grades 6 to 10 go on an annual ‘Sweden trip’, a journey which is part of the SIS curriculum and teaches students about the nature, geography, history, and culture of Sweden – but above all, giving them a chance to get to know each other.

“We do it at the start of each year, and it’s a great way to build relationships by immersion,” Schulte says.  

“For many of the sixth graders it’s their first time away from home. The students get the chance straight away to develop friendships, get to know their teachers, and build good student-teacher relationships before the school year even really starts.”

In grade 6, students visit Öland, and in the years following they visit Gotland, Smögen, and Lassekrog, ending with a trip to Åland in 10th grade.

“We started the trips to enable our students to get in contact with Swedish culture, history, and geography,” says Barbro Ahl, Dean of Students.  “That’s why we go to different places in different grades as well, so they can see several parts of Sweden.”

For sixth graders Misa and Saruul, the trip was an opportunity to explore with old friends while making new ones.

“It’s very exciting,” Saruul exclaims. Her brother also attends the school and she says she has been waiting to go on such trips “for a long time”.

“Because like, when you’re a sixth grader, you don’t really know what you want to do because you haven’t done it before. And then you get to go somewhere new.”

Misa, who has attended schools in both the US and New Zealand before moving to Sweden, agrees.

“We didn’t have trips at my other schools,” she says. “So it’s really fun that I get to do them now. I get to know my classmates better now. You are able to work better with your new friends since you got to know them.”

Students stay in cabins on the trips, and are generally assigned a room with an old friend or two as well as students they don’t know – yet.

“They try to put us with some new kids and some old too,” Saruul explains.

“It’s fun and very satisfying. I was placed with an old friend and two new friends, two people I was imagining I would become friends with. And I did, it was very nice!”

And while the girls have a lot to say about the educational benefits of the trip – including a petting zoo, campfire nights learning about constellations, strolls through the forest and a visit to Kalmar Castle – they agree that the best part of all is getting to know their classmates.

“We mostly make friends on the bus and in the cabins,” Misa says. “The bus rides and all the activities we have together are the best.”

Nicolas, a tenth grader who just returned from his fifth ‘Sweden trip’, says the programme has been a transformative part of his education.

“Since we go on trips at the beginning of each year right after summer break, it really helps you refocus on the school year,” he explains. “It’s like a chance to wriggle into a new mentality and prepare for school – yet in a fun, social way.”

Of course, staying up late in cabins with your friends can lead to some rough morning museum visits, Nicolas admits – but the relationships built on the programme are well worth the temporary sleep shortage.

“You get to meet a lot of new people, and you get closer to your teachers as well,” he says. “You get to talk to them in an informal way and get to know them.”

Science teacher Schulte says the trips are his favourite part of the job, giving him an opportunity to teach kids in a unique learning environment.

“It’s a great way to start the programme, with something so significant for the kids,” he says, keeping a watchful eye on the playground as he goes through scribbled notes he’s been given by doting students.  “Providing new experiences for the kids, it’s great.”

His own favourite experience from this year’s trip was the teachers’ spontaneous decision to treat the kids to a walk through the forest followed by building a massive fire on the beach and roasting marshmallows.

“We threw that together because we felt the kids needed something different, something authentic – and it was a highlight for many of the kids as well,” he says.

And the results of the four-day trips have far-reaching effects, echoing throughout the school year and setting the tone for future experiences.

“The main thing is to start the year by developing good, strong teacher and student social relationships, straight away,” he says. “With all kids, if you have good, clear expectations, there are no behavioral issues. It’s effective learning.”

This article was produced by The Local in partnership with Stockholm International School. All pictures from Stockholm International School.

For members

LIVING IN SWEDEN

What you need to know about owning a second home in Sweden

In most countries owning a second home is a luxury reserved for the wealthy, but in Sweden it's very common to have a summer home or 'fritidshus'. Here's what you need to know.

Published: 8 February 2024 15:25 CET
What you need to know about owning a second home in Sweden

What is a fritidshus? 

In Sweden, second homes are generally either classified as a fritidshus, literally a “free time house”, or a permanenthus or permanentboende.

A fritidshus is defined as “a house which is not set up for all-year-around living”. Rather confusingly, this does not mean that you can’t live all-year-round in a fritidshus, or, indeed, that you can’t use a permanenthus as your summer house. 

The difference comes down to how the two types of property are treated in Sweden’s building code, with fritidshus allowed, among other things, to have lower ceilings, smaller bathrooms, more basic kitchens, worse accessibility for disabled people, a lower standard of insulation. 

If you decide to live permanently in a fritidshus, you do not need to get approval to do so, but the building committee at your local council can, if they learn of what you are doing, demand that the building be changed to meet the requirements of a permanenthus (although this rarely happens).

There is also a subgroup of fritidshus, kolonilott, which are houses with a small amount of land which should be used for growing food (although lots of people just use them as attractive gardens). This is different from an odlingslott, which is just an allotment, essentially a kolonilott without the house.

These are usually in designated kolonilott areas close to or in cities, and are not intended for year-round living. In most kolonilott areas, water supply and drainage is cut off outside of the growing season, and you’re not allowed to register them as your permanent address, for example.

Relaxing outside a summer house. Photo: Doris Beling/Imagebank Sweden

How much does a second home cost? 

The average price of a fritidshus fell by about 6 percent in 2023, following a 1 percent fall in 2022, and now lies at about 2.2 million kronor.

But a search on the Hemnet website for fritidshus under 1 million kronor shows that many sell for a lot less, particularly outside the most popular areas. 

As a rule of thumb, anything within an hour’s drive of Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö is likely to be more expensive, as is anywhere on the coast (particularly on Gotland), next to a lake, or near one of Sweden’s more popular skiing areas. 

A report from Länsförsäkringar Fastighetsförmedling, out in mid-2023, found that summer houses were cheapest in Kronoberg country (the southern bit of Småland), followed by Örebro, Värmland, Norrbotten and Västernorrland, and most expensive in Gotland, Stockholm County and Halland. 

What’s the point of having one? 

Despite its vast expanses of unspoiled nature, Sweden is very urbanised, with nearly 90 percent of people living in built-up areas and 63 percent in the biggest few cities. It’s much more common to live in an apartment in a city than in the sort of suburban sprawl of houses with their own gardens so common in countries like the UK and US.

This means that most urban Swedes leave any gardening to their summer houses or allotments.

Given the cold, dark winters, that probably makes sense. 

Fritidshus and other second homes are also at the centre of the long Swedish summer break, when people often take three, or even four, weeks off back-to-back. If you don’t have your own fritidshus, you can spend much of the summer visiting people who do. 

What’s the downside? 

Aside from the cost, it’s a lot of work. Owning a fritidshus means weekends spent at out-of-town building supply shops, and brings a whole new list of chores like cleaning the gutters, mowing, trimming hedges, raking leaves and chopping wood.

If you like foreign travel, and have a lot of other passions and hobbies, you may find owning a summer house squeezes them out. 

A summer house in the Stockholm archipelago. Photo: Sara de Basly/Imagebank Sweden

How common is it to have a fritidshus? 

There are about 607,000 fritidshus in Sweden, and according to Statistics Sweden, about one in three children (35 percent) have access to one.

It most common to have access to a fritidshus in the north of Sweden, with more than half of children having access to one in 51 municipalities north of Dalarna, and it is least common in Skåne, where in some municipalities only 10 percent of children have access to a fritidshus. 

Is it best to have a second home in a fritidsområde or on its own? 

Many municipalities in Sweden have set aside areas, often near a lake or by the sea, specifically for the building of fritidshus, selling off plots, or tomter, on which people can either build a holiday cottage themselves or get a builder to do it.

According to Statitsics Sweden, about a quarter of fritidshus are in such an area, with Stockholm County boasting the most fritidsområde, or holiday home areas, followed by Västra Götaland (near Gothenburg) and Skåne (near Malmö and Helsingborg). 

If you are building your own summer house, the advantage of doing so in a fritidsområde is that electricity, water and sewage has normally already been run along the edge of the plot, making these services cheap and easy to connect. 

If you want to get a summer house near the coast or a lake, it is also cheaper if you buy one in a fritidsområde. 

On the downside, they can feel a little like living in a housing estate, you have to be careful not to make too much noise, and can end up getting complaints from the local neighbourhood committee if you don’t maintain your property in the way they expect. 

As many fritidsområde were set up the 1960s and 1970s, with a lot of the houses then built by enthusiastic amateurs, they can also be in desrepair and have structural problems. 

The plots that have yet to be built on, meanwhile, are often the worst, for instance with ground that is damp or prone to flooding. 

Renting out your second home

One of the advantages of your second home being classed as a fritidshus is that – so long as you’re only renting it out short-term — you are not covered by Sweden’s strict rental law or hyreslagen.

This means whatever rent you agree with the tenant is valid, there is no requirement to ask for a “reasonable” rent, and tenants cannot contest the rent with the regional rent tribunal.  

Airbnb makes renting out your fritidshus extremely easy and on the other side makes it a lot cheaper and easier to rent a summer house for three weeks in the summer than to own one all year around.  

If you earn more than 40,000 kronor in a year from renting out your fritidshus, though, you are required to declare it to the Swedish Tax Agency. 

You can then subtract a 40,000 kronor ‘standard deduction’ from your rental revenue and a further 20 percent deduction for rental income, before it gets taxed. See the guide from the Swedish Tax Agency here. 

This means if you receive 60,000 kronor in rent, you subtract first 40,000 kronor, then 20 percent of the 60,000 kronor, which comes to 12,000 kronor.

This leaves you with 8,000 kronor to be taxed as capital income at 30 percent, leaving just 2,400 kronor in tax due. 

SHOW COMMENTS