Polytan Poligras Platinum GT in the Basque Ikastola Ekintza educational centre
Focusing on values
In Spain, Ikastola are educational centres where pupils are taught either entirely or predominantly in Basque. These schools are part of the Basque education system; they are found in the Spanish and French Basque Country. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren in the autonomous community of the Basque Country attend such Ikastola schools.
Basque is considered one of the most difficult languages in the world, partly because it is not related to any other known language. In the meantime, it has become widespread again at regional level thanks to targeted promotion. Basque is spoken by around 1.2 million people in total.
The self-imposed mission of the Ikastola Ekintza centre in the Basque city of San Sebastian is to comprehensively educate people from early childhood education to the baccalaureate (bachillerato) in the context of Basque culture and its values – while still remaining open to other cultures. Lessons are taught in both Basque and Spanish. The aim is to strike the perfect balance between students’ knowledge and use of both languages of instruction.
The Ikastola Ekintza in San Sebastian also offers its students numerous activities outside school hours as part of its comprehensive educational mission yet with the same pedagogic perspective as in class, i.e. internalising social values. The school has several sports facilities, including paddle tennis courts and a swimming pool.
We laid our unfilled synthetic turf system Poligras Platinum GT at the school sports facility in spring 2023. The surface was primarily developed for hockey stadiums. Its greatest asset: thanks to its dense, uniform surface, the rolling behaviour of the ball is not negatively affected by directional effects, enabling a fast, precise game of hockey. Since a special texturing process not only gives this surface exceptional volume but also enormously high resistance, it is also used in multifunctional facilities for football and other ball sports. This is the case in San Sebastian, where several linings have been incorporated to make the pitch versatile for physical education. Despite its robustness, Polytan Platinum GT is very soft and pleasant to the touch for the students playing on it.
The special Polytan CoolPlus function ensures the surface does not heat up too quickly or intensely in strong sunlight. This ultimately also reduces water consumption – an increasingly important ecological argument for the use of synthetic turf systems in view of climate change causing hot and extremely dry summers.
