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PRESENTED BY COPENHAGEN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

Futuristic learning: A glimpse inside one of Denmark’s most innovative schools

Over 50 years after the establishment of the International Baccalaureate, participating international schools continue to deliver excellence in education.

Published: 19 November 2021 10:48 CET
Futuristic learning: A glimpse inside one of Denmark's most innovative schools
Students in the CIS cafeteria space, Photo: CIS

Nowhere is this more evident than at Copenhagen International School (CIS), one of the 12 founding schools of the programme. Almost 60 years since the school’s founding, and 50 years after the first Diploma Programme exams, we examine how this trailblazing school continues to innovate and help students achieve excellence. 

From small beginnings… 

With an initial cohort of just 12 students, CIS was founded in 1963 to serve international families in Copenhagen, offering US high school correspondence courses. From 1968, the school began to offer the International Baccalaureate programme – one of a handful to do so.

Over the decades, as Copenhagen became more of an international city, student numbers grew and the Early Years Programme, the Primary School, Middle School and High School at the school took shape. This required larger and better-equipped facilities. From a humble beginning, using the classrooms of existing high schools, the school enlarged through the ensuing decades to encompass two bustling campuses.

Today the school has about 900 students, with 60 languages being spoken by students – a diverse learning environment that is the natural choice for those seeking to expose their children to the wider world.  

…emerge great things

Today’s CIS is a far cry from its original small block of classrooms. Bringing together the cohorts from the school’s former campuses, today’s school is located in the city’s new Nordhavn district. Designed and built by one of Scandanavia’s leading firms, C.F. Møller Architects, the campus is both environmentally and socially sustainable – built to last and to tread lightly on the earth. 

Encompassing four towers, the campus is full of classrooms and learning environments designed specifically to engage students and meet their specific learning needs. Located on its own promontory in the busy harbour district, solar panels across the building supply its energy demands. It is, in every sense, a building designed to meet the needs of the future. 

Explore one of Europe’s most innovative learning environments, and learn more about how Copenhagen International School prepares students for the future

Photo: Copenhagen International School

Future-forward learning

CIS‘ futuristic campus is only one of the school’s innovative aspects. As Ida Storm Jansen, the school’s Head of Community Relations, tells us: “The CIS approach to learning is designed to foster curiousity, tolerance and an apprecation of diversity. Understanding the challenges of the modern world is something our students must be prepared for, now more than ever.”

Within each of the school’s academic programmes, students are encouraged to become the champions of a just and a sustainable world. This is assisted by engaging students with modern challenges in a hands-on manner – ‘learning by doing’. Therefore, students are meeting, talking to and working with individuals and groups from outside the school community, earning valuable ‘real life’ experience. The many and diverse backgrounds of the student body are incorporated as a powerful learning tool on a daily basis.

Growing the whole child 

Outside of traditional academic programmes, the school’s philosophy places emphasis on encouraging the ‘thriving’ of the individual, across a wide number of areas. Physical education programmes and the membership of a number of sporting associations allow students to compete and excel in the physical arena, while a long-established music and theatre programme gives them valuable performance experience. Visual arts is also highly prized at the school, with students regularly winning competitions, displaying their work and having their artwork adorn the school’s halls. 

Students from CIS have gone on to study at some of the world’s most prestigious universities, including those within the Ivy League and Russell Group clusters. Others have built successful careers in fields as diverse as business, dance, research science and biology. The school also offers a powerful alumni network, that ensures that the school positively impacts the lives of students long after they have graduated. 

A world class education 

For those seeking a world-class education for their children in a city and country that already boasts many outstanding schools, CIS is an obvious contender. It achieves this through its dedication to growing strong, internationally-minded individuals who are ready to meet the challenges of the future head-on. 

Watch the video below for a look at what parents and students can expect from Copenhagen International School. 

Interested in giving your child a world-class education in one of Denmark’s leading schools? Learn about CIS’ admissions processes and scholarship programmes today

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LIVING IN DENMARK

IN NUMBERS: The foreign nationalities living in Denmark and where in the country they live

Which foreign nationalities are the most common in Denmark? Where are people from countries such as the UK, Ireland or the United States most likely to live? New data reveals where people with foreign backgrounds have settled across the country.

Published: 4 July 2024 13:46 CEST
IN NUMBERS: The foreign nationalities living in Denmark and where in the country they live

People defined in Danish statistics as “immigrants” and “descendants” of immigrants are more likely to live in certain regions of the country compared to others depending on their nationality, new figures from national agency Statistics Denmark show.

For example, Ukraine is the most frequent nationality for foreigners in central and northern Jutland, while Turkey is the most frequent in central and northern Zealand.

Foreigners who speak English as their first language are more likely to live in Greater Copenhagen than any other part of Denmark.

Statistics Denmark, as well as many authorities and public agencies in Denmark categorise people considered not of Danish heritage into two groups: ‘immigrants’ and ‘descendants’ of immigrants (‘efterkommere’).

A person is considered to be Danish if she or he has at least one parent who is a Danish citizen and was born in Denmark. People defined as ‘immigrants’ and ‘descendants’ do not fulfil those criteria. The difference between the two is that an ‘immigrant’ was born outside of Denmark, while a ‘descendant’ was born in Denmark. 

The data is based on the number of people of each nationality registered as living in each of Denmark’s 98 municipalities.

Around 952,200 people classed as either “immigrants” or “descendants” live in Denmark.

They are not evenly distributed across the country, in terms of either their overall number or the distribution of their nationalities.

The two groups represent some 16 percent of Denmark’s total population, with 12 percent being immigrants and the remaining descendants. The figures come from the second quarter of 2024.

Behind the national average is a marked variation in the proportion from region to region, however. Within each of Denmark’s five regions (Greater Copenhagen, Zealand, South Denmark, North Jutland and Central Jutland) there are further variations by municipality.

“The just under a million immigrants and descendants who live in Denmark are not evenly distributed between municipalities and regions. The largest proportion lives in the municipalities around the capital, as well in the largest municipalities outside of the capital like Odense and Aarhus,” senior consultant with Statistics Denmark Jørn Korsbø Petersen said in a press release.

Highest in Copenhagen, lowest in North Jutland

The Greater Copenhagen Region has the highest proportion of foreigners and their children with 23 percent – a figure that sets it aside from each of the other four regions.

On a municipal level, the municipalities with the highest proportions are similarly most likely to be located in Greater Copenhagen.

The municipality with the highest proportion of foreigners is Ishøj west of Copenhagen with 46 percent, followed by nearby Brøndby (40 percent) and Høje Taastrup (37 percent).

Copenhagen Municipality, the biggest in the country in terms of population, has a figure of 28 percent for foreign residents and descendants.

In North Jutland, which has the lowest proportion of the five regions, around 10 percent of the population has a foreign background. The municipalities with the lowest proportions are also located here — Morsø, Jammerbugt, Læsø and Rebild, each with 7 percent.

South Denmark has a foreign population of 14 percent, followed by Central Jutland (13 percent) and Zealand (12 percent).

Turkey and Poland are the most common nationalities

People who moved from or have heritage in Turkey comprised 66,693 Danish residents in 2023, making Turkey the country with the largest proportion of foreign nationals living in Denmark. Next is Poland with 56,760 and Romania is third with 46,163.

Ukraine has the fourth-highest number at 45,591, with a high number of that total having arrived in Denmark since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and during the ongoing war. There is a very similar number of Syrians – 45,375 – many of whom arrived during the mid-2010s.

The United Kingdom is the highest anglophone country on the list, with 18,370 Britons living in Denmark last year. There were 12,650 US nationals, 2,890 from Canada, 2,735 from Australia and 2,482 from Ireland.

India had 21,309 foreign nationals or their children living in Denmark last year.

Different nationalities, different parts of Denmark

While the nationalities are not spread evenly across Denmark, some trends can be observed when plotting the “dominant” – meaning, the country with the highest number of foreign residents – across a map of Danish municipalities.

As shown by the Statistics Denmark graphic below, Ukraine is the dominant country in parts of central and northern Jutland. In South Jutland near the border with Germany, it is unsurprising to see a high proportion of German (Tyskland) nationals.

Graphic: Statistics Denmark

There is also a high percentage of Germans in Copenhagen district Frederiksberg and on Baltic Sea island Bornholm, while there is a pattern for Indian nationals to settle in the municipalities of Gladsaxe and Gentofte north of Copenhagen.

It should be noted that the map only shows the dominant nationality and not the number of people of each nationality who live in the various localities. As such, there may be a higher number of Ukrainians (for example) in municipalities where Ukraine is not “dominant”, compared to municipalities where this is the case.

In Copenhagen, the dominant nationality, Pakistan, comprises some 8,161 people, while on island municipality Læsø it is just 29 Germans.

A search of Statistics Denmark’s database (see below screenshot) shows that that for six English-speaking countries — Ireland, the UK, Canada, United States,  Australia and New Zealand — there is a greater number of people living in Greater Copenhagen (Hovedstaden) than in any of the other regions.

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