The Hague for Indian families: the international schools, Rijswijk, Voorburg, Ypenburg, Zoetermeer and Delft, and where children get help with maths

This Indian families The Hague schools guide starts with a fact that surprises most newcomers: The Hague has had an Indian face for over a century. The Surinamese-Hindustani community, descendants of families who went from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to Suriname from 1873 and came to the Netherlands in the 1970s, is the largest Indian-origin community in the country and much of it lives here. The temples, the shops on the Paul Krugerlaan and the Hindi film posters were in place long before the first Shell or embassy posting brought a family from Pune. That makes The Hague the easiest Dutch city to arrive in with children, and one of the more complicated to choose a school in, because there are more options than anywhere else. This is the guide we wish every family had in the first month, for parents of children aged 6 to 14.

Why The Hague

The Hague is the seat of government and the diplomatic capital: the embassies, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, the OPCW, Europol and Eurojust, and the international organisations that serve them. Shell's headquarters, TNO, KPN and a cluster of Indian IT and consulting firms that serve them bring the postings; TU Delft, the Leiden Bio Science Park and ESA's ESTEC in Noordwijk bring the researchers. The result is a mix we see nowhere else in the Netherlands: a three-year Shell family in Wassenaar, a TCS engineer in Rijswijk who has bought a house, a Delft PhD with a child in groep 4, and a Hindustani family in Transvaal whose grandparents spoke Sarnami. The school questions are different for each, and the maths questions turn out to be the same.

The international schools

The International School of The Hague (ISH), in Kijkduin on the western edge of the city, runs the IB continuum from primary to Diploma and is one of the Dutch-subsidised international schools, so fees are far below the private schools and the waiting list is correspondingly long. Parents ask us most about the mixed-ability PYP classes and about how to tell, from a PYP report with no marks in it, where their child's maths actually stands. That question is answered in IB PYP maths explained.

The British School in the Netherlands (BSN) teaches the English National Curriculum, with junior schools in The Hague and Leidschenveen and the senior school in Voorschoten, then IGCSE and the IB Diploma or BTEC. The question we hear from BSN families with a child from a CBSE school is nearly always the same: the maths in Year 4 or 5 feels easy and the writing feels hard. Both impressions are right, and the year-by-year picture is in KS2 and KS3 maths at a British school.

The American School of The Hague (ASH) in Wassenaar follows an American programme with the IB Diploma at the end; the European School The Hague gives priority to the children of EU institution staff and takes others where there is space; the HSV International Primary School is the small, central option for primary years; and International School Delft offers the PYP and MYP for families on the TU side of the region. Rotterdam's American International School and the Rotterdam International Secondary School are a reasonable commute from Delft. The general comparison of international and Dutch schooling for an Indian family, on cost, language, waiting lists and the return-to-India question, is in international school or Dutch school, and what to do while you wait for a place is in on the waiting list.

The Dutch-school route

Most Indian children in the region are in Dutch basisscholen, and for a family staying more than four or five years it is usually the right choice. The Hague runs a citywide registration procedure for children turning 4; for an older child you apply to schools directly, and schools take from their own neighbourhood first, so the address decides more than the ranking. Rijswijk, Voorburg (Leidschendam-Voorburg), Zoetermeer and Delft are separate municipalities with their own schools and their own newcomer classes; Leidschenveen-Ypenburg is inside The Hague. A child arriving without Dutch will usually spend up to a year in a taalklas first; how placement by age works and how to answer a school that proposes a groep lower is in which groep will my child be placed in.

The Hague also has something no other Dutch city has: Hindu primary schools, hindoe basisscholen, founded by the Hindustani community, which follow the ordinary Dutch curriculum in Dutch with a Hindu identity and Hindi or Sanskrit as extras. Some Indian expat families choose them for the familiarity; most do not, and either is fine. For secondary school, several Dutch schools in the region offer tweetalig onderwijs, bilingual education with half the subjects in English, which is worth knowing about for a child who will reach the brugklas with good but not native Dutch.

Neighbourhoods families choose

Leidschenveen-Ypenburg, the new-build district on the eastern edge of the city, has family housing, a BSN junior school, the RandstadRail into the centre and a large Indian presence. Rijswijk is the practical choice: older flats and newer developments, the tram to the centre, the Shell and TNO sites close by, and prices below the city. Voorburg has a village centre, good trains and the Voorburg cricket club. Zoetermeer is the most affordable, thirty minutes out on the RandstadRail, with a growing Indian community and plenty of school places. Delft suits the university families and has its own international school. Wassenaar is where the American School is and where the villas are. The central districts, Statenkwartier, Duinoord, Benoordenhout and the Archipelbuurt, are the embassy neighbourhoods, a tram from the ISH and expensive. Transvaal and Laak are the Hindustani heart of the city, where the Paul Krugerlaan sells everything from mustard oil to wedding saris.

A family choosing a Dutch school should choose the neighbourhood first, because the school follows the address. A family at an international school has more freedom and usually chooses by commute and by which junior school the child has been offered.

Life for children

The Hague is the cricket capital of the Netherlands, with clubs in Voorburg, at HCC and HBS in the city and across the region, and a child from India can be playing in a youth side within a week of arriving. The Museon-Omniversum is the science museum for this end of the country and Naturalis in Leiden is fifteen minutes away; Madurodam, the Scheveningen beach and the Haagse Bos fill the weekends. The central library at the Spui and the libraries in Rijswijk and Zoetermeer run children's programmes and Dutch reading groups that are the fastest route to begrijpend lezen. Every child will do the swimming diplomas A, B and C, and every parent will be asked about them. Hindi, Bharatanatyam and Carnatic classes exist in the city and in Rijswijk; ask in the WhatsApp groups and you will have three recommendations in an hour.

What Hague parents ask us

The questions arrive in a fairly fixed order. In the first month: ISH or BSN, and what to do about the waiting list. In the first term: why the BSN Year 5 maths is easy and the writing is not, or why the Dutch school in Rijswijk says "prima" about a child who was top of the class in Hyderabad, which is explained in my child was ahead in India and is now average here. In groep 7: what the provisional advice means and whether havo can become vwo. And for the Shell and embassy families, in the last year before the posting ends: how to make sure the child lands in the right class in India, which is the subject of how to keep your child CBSE-ready.

One family in Ypenburg brought us a groep 6 daughter with a level III for rekenen and a level IV for begrijpend lezen after two years in the Netherlands. The maths, tested in English, was groep 7 level. The gap was entirely the reading of the questions, and once the family knew that, the plan was obvious: Dutch reading every evening, the redactiesommen vocabulary, and maths in English kept a year ahead so that the score had somewhere to go when the reading caught up. By the groep 7 provisional advice she was at level I for rekenen.

Getting help with maths, science and English in The Hague

Classes at 4, 5, 6 or 7 pm in The Hague are ordinary working hours for our tutors in India, and a child at the ISH, the BSN, a Dutch school in Rijswijk or a taalklas in Zoetermeer gets a tutor who knows that school's system, in a 1-on-1 online lesson from the kitchen table. What that looks like for this city, and the schools and neighbourhoods we already work with, is on our Hague page. Bring the last school report to the free demo and we will tell you in thirty minutes whether the issue is the maths, the language, or the way the school grades.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →