Dutch education council: Improve education for child refugees

Refugee and asylum children in the Netherlands do not have the same educational opportunities as children born in the Netherlands, the Education Council wrote in advice presented to parliament on Thursday. "Children's right to education should be leading int he asylum procedure", said Henriette Maassen van den Brink, chairwoman of the council, Trouw reports.

According to the Council, there are three main problems. The first is that refugee children are often moved from one place to a next, and thereby their education is interrupted. The second problem is that refugee children are often placed at a lower school level than what they actually are, due to their language difficulty. And thirdly, there is a lack of direction. Schools and teachers do their best, but there is no cooperation, the council said.

"Between the 60s and 80s we constructed education for refugees. This whole infrastructure has broken down in recent years.", the Council writes.