More kids held back after a year of Covid, Education Min. expects

Minister Arie Slob for Primary and Secondary Education expects that more school pupils will have to repeat a year or follow catch-up programs after a year of school closures and distance learning due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said to NOS Radio 1 Journaal.

"We are working on a large national program when it comes to education after corona. But across the board we are now seeing delays and I do not think it is realistic to clear those blacklogs this academic year," the Minister said. "It is also good to take some pressure off the children themselves."

According to Slob, kids do not need the extra pressure of living with the idea that they have to catch up on everything they missed during this pandemic before the summer.

The Minister hopes that central final exams in secondary schools can be written this year, unlike last year when kids failed or passed mainly on their school performance and school exams. To facilitate this, he already gave schools more time and space to conduct school exams. "But we are now looking into whether anything additional is needed," he said to the broadcaster.

Slob hopes that there will be more clarity on this next week. He's having lots of consultations with school umbrella organizations at the moment, he said. "We have to look very specifically for each student: what should we do the most with? Otherwise they might run into problems at a later stage. So we have to look at what is responsible."