The State conducts the school-leaving examination (called the Abitur, the equivalent of A-levels in the UK) and proposes the subjects of instruction.

Lodging, food, and boarding run about €14,000 per year, while students from impoverished families are sponsored by the Jesuits or by the charge for other boarders.

The Aloisiuskolleg (AKO) ranks high each year at regional, national, and even international school competitions in sports, as well as in subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics,[1] music, art, and computer sciences, and has won several awards.

On 12 August 1900 the German province of the Society of Jesus opened the Aloisiuskolleg in Sittard, Netherlands, as an all-boys school with boarding facilities.

[3] From early 2010 the school was at the centre of investigations into the abuse of pupils, resulting in the resignation of Chairman Theo Schneider who was accused of complicity.

The progress report by the commission investigating cases of abuse counted 45 victims and 18 perpetrators, 15 of whom were members of the Jesuit order, since the 1950s.

The interim report highlighted the "latent psychological violence" in the punishment methods,[4] the compulsive exhibitionism,[5] and crossing the line with paedo-erotic acts of the late chairman, P. Ludger Stüper, S.J.

A 2011 report concludes that "only in one case can a co-operation of religious, provincial, and school leaders be recognized to cover up sexual abuse... at the beginning of the sixties.

Prior to this, boarding schools with the youngest pupils were accommodated on the two upper floors, which gave the building the nickname "boys silo".

In 1891-1893 the Elberfeld banker Baron Karl von der Heydt commissioned the "Castle on the Juniper" by the architect Heinrich Plange[7] in neoclassical architecture and gave it the name "Stella Rheni" (Latin for "Star of the Rhine").

The "Jägerhaus", formerly belonging to the Heydts, is a highly romantic miniature version of a hunting castle and lies about 200 meters below the Stella.

The girls' house was finished in September 2005 after a year of construction on the former fruit orchards opposite the school, by the office of architects Pilhatsch & Partner.