The OKAN and continuation schools expressed a great need for expertise around 1) language skills, 2) dealing with diversity and multilingualism, and 3) continuing literacy in continuation education. As they did not find the necessary expertise in their network and in Flanders, they decided to start learning from and abroad. Also because they wanted to shape internationalisation as a means of professionalisation and their international operations more concretely. Their needs resulted in 4 objectives: (1) Strengthen language skills and use language as an engine for making school together by e.g. increasing interaction opportunities. (2) Learn to deal better with diversity and multilingualism, e.g. to achieve greater inclusion. (3) Continue literacy in further education, e.g. through better alignment. (4) Improve policy-making capacity and development of international key competences. The touchstone for measuring whether the objectives were achieved and whether this consortium was successful was 'an optimised pedagogical, didactic or organisational approach to language teaching in schools that results in better learning outcomes and stronger student and teacher well-being'.
This consortium consisted of 5 OKAN (newly arrived students) and continuation schools. Since 2016, the schools have formed a learning network supported by pedagogical guidance, which together seek solutions to the challenges faced by OKAN and continuation schools. Indeed, they observe that language-impaired and foreign-language learners perform below their potential, experience low study success and thus fall into the waterfall system. To develop the full potential of these pupils, they want to invest in a strong language policy and accompanying practice. This should formulate effective responses to the needs these teachers experience. These include, for example, how to create more practice opportunities for language-impaired and foreign-language learners (in subsequent education) or how to better support foreign-language learners who are not or differently literate. These schools experienced a lack of new input within their learning network and in Flanders. They felt they were 'copying and polishing old methodologies' and making little progress. At their request to help shape their foreign professionalisation plans, Eekhout Academy (EA) realised this consortium.