The students of Het Aventurijncollege need extra support in the field of behavior and / or social emotional development. This extra support is also the reason that the students are in secondary special education and not in a regular secondary school. The goal at Het Aventurijncollege is that the students obtain a VMBO diploma and then move on to regular further education.
That is why Het Aventurijncollege has chosen to connect as much as possible with the educational program of regular secondary education.
In regular secondary education, music is often part of the curriculum. Especially in the lower secondary education. That was one of the reasons the school chose to integrate music into the educational curriculum. A second reason for integrating music education is because the school has noticed that the students benefit greatly from the subject of music. It is a way for students to learn to express their emotions and encourages students to step out of their comfort zone. The last and third reason is that music education strongly encourages students in the development of executive functions. The problems faced by the students at Het Aventurijncollege are often accompanied by less developed executive functions. Because the students at The Aventurine College obtain a diploma after four years of education and move on to regular further education, the executive functions must be sufficiently developed to be able to cope in regular further education. This means that the students at The Aventurine College must take significant steps in the development of the executive functions in four years. Because there is still a big difference between them now, the students at Het Aventurijncollege often feel that they are thrown into the deep end after the switch to further education. In terms of executive functions, something very big is expected of the students in regular further education, than compared to Het Aventurijncollege The school is already doing something about this in many areas, but the school believes that this is still too little, which means that the transition from Het Aventurijncollege to regular further education is still enormous.
At the moment, music lessons at The Aventurine College are very much stuck to the goals set by the government for music education. These goals are on the exam and the completion of the music subject. The students at The Aventurine College take state exams. This means that the students do not take an exam in the subject of music. The school has the desire to stimulate both musical development and the development of executive functions in music lessons. The development of executive functions only varies greatly between individual students in a class. The school does not yet know how to meet all the needs of individual students in a lesson. A great deal of differentiation will have to be made here in order to encourage all students in a class in the development of executive functions (Interview with Lyssa Thielen; full interview transcripts are included in Appendix ???).