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Welcome to the website of the Department of Education of Aruba (DEA).
The DEA developed this website [ea.aw] to provide a central information point for Education in Aruba. For your convenience the most important information are included in english:
- Organizational structure
- Employment
- Education System
- Primary Education
- Secondary Education
- Higher Education
- Compulsory Education
Language
- Dutch and Papiamento are the official languages of Aruba, but most Arubans speak at least four languages, including English and Spanish.
- The Aruban education system is modelled on the Dutch system.
- Dutch is the language of instruction in most schools.
- The Prisma project: launched in the early 1990s with the aim of familiarising non-Dutch speaking lateral students with the Dutch language as soon as possible to enable them to follow the regular school program. Prisma started as a pilot program at a public primary school and was later extended to all public primary schools in Aruba. Now the Prisma project is running in all primary schools, supporting all children who need help with the Dutch language, including Aruban children. A group of teachers attended special training for the program.
- The 1999-2008 Strategic Plan for restructuring pre-primary, primary and special education includes a proposal to restructure language use in schools to reflect the current sociolinguistic situation in Aruba, where nearly 70% of the population have Papiamento as their mother tongue (Censo 2000), while still recognising the fact that Dutch is the language of instruction in secondary education and that this is likely to remain the case for some time to come. This has led to a proposal to introduce Papiamento as both a language of instruction and a school subject in primary education, retaining Dutch as the second language of instruction.
- The government approved introduction of Papiamento as a language of instruction up to and including 4th grade. The project started and has been implemented in three pilot schools for pre-primary and primary education.
- The EPI (secondary vocational) and the UA (higher education) have programs that are given in english.
Strategic National Education Plan (2007-2017)
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In late 2005, the then Minister of Education, Mrs. Drs. Marisol Lopez-Tromp, supported the need indicated by the Department of Education Aruba (DEA) for a national plan for education.
The minister subsequently initiated a participatory strategic planning process to create a national education plan - the first of its kind in the history of Aruba’s education:
[National Education Plan "The Learner 2007-2017"]
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