The quality of Dutch primary education is declining. Thus wrote economist magazine ESB. This can be seen from the decline in educational performance, increased inequality of opportunity and a large shortage of staff. According to education system special designation professor Inge de Wolf of the University of Maastricht, good teachers and school leaders are needed to turn things around.
According to De Wolf, the Netherlands has long been an international example because of its happy students, great freedom of choice and relatively good performance, but the quality has deteriorated and academic performance has fallen over the last 20 years. ‘So our students knew and were able to do it less than twenty years ago. And on top of that growing inequality, we were also recently named in a World Bank report as one example of a country where things are not going well.’
‘Most of those rookie teachers, one in five, have left the profession after three years’
De Wolf points to the quality of teachers and school leaders as the main cause. According to him, there was too little targeted follow-up training for teachers and principals. ‘Novice teachers are not supervised intensively.’ For good teachers and school leaders, education is the only way to reverse that trend, he thought.
Read also | Radboud University will implement AI in education
‘You can see that most of those rookie teachers, one in five, have left the profession after three years. That of course does not bode well,’ said De Wolf. He believes better pay and longer training, learning ‘on the job’, are important.
Targeted incentives
Financial incentives are not only important, according to the professor, their targeted use is also relevant. Because the distribution of teacher shortages is also uneven. “If you pay teachers more in schools where they are needed the most, it also helps and even leads to better student performance there.”
What the Netherlands also lacks, in contrast to other countries, is ‘a kind of Dutch educational institution with a lot of knowledge’, says De Wolf. Such agencies then collect ‘best practices’ as to what effective approaches are, ‘what you should and shouldn’t leave out’. ‘Where actually scientists and practitioners, professionals from educational practice, work together on a knowledge base.’
Basic knowledge
As an example, De Wolf cites the Education and Download Foundation in England, which was founded 10 years ago. ‘Now you can see that 70 to 80 percent of teachers use it, but teacher training programs are also starting to use it as a kind of knowledge base. In England they managed to reverse the downward spiral. So that knowledge base has really done a lot of good there in terms of quality of education.’
Read also | Wiersma: ‘I didn’t start it, but I saw how hard people work in education’
“Falls down a lot. General tv buff. Incurable zombie fan. Subtly charming problem solver. Amateur explorer.”
