Teacher shortage: Union wants to reduce school hours for secondary school students

Teacher union AOb and the council for secondary education VO-Raad want to lower the hour standard for students in secondary education. Teachers spend too much of their time in front of the classroom, and that is only increasing due to the teacher shortage. “There is a huge danger that they will burn out and leave education,” AOb chairman Tamar van Gelder said to NOS.

Schools in the Netherlands are obliged to provide students with a set number of hours of education. For VWO that is 5,700 hours throughout the entire school period, for HAVO it’s 4,700 hours, and for VMBO it’s 3,700 hours.

Schools are bending over backward to fulfill this commitment with the growing teacher shortage. And that means the existing teachers work harder and harder, rushing lessons and risking burnout, the AOb and VO-Raad said to NOS.

“Teachers should be given more time for lesson preparation, development, and professionalization. Now they have half an hour to prepare, speak to a student, and do the marking,” Van der Gelder said.

Henk Hagoort of the VO-Raad added: “If the work pressure decreases, job satisfaction increases. It is essential to retain teachers. Otherwise, we’re mopping with the tap open.” He added that the number of compulsory teaching hours in the Netherlands is “considerably higher” than in other European countries.

According to the organizations, reducing the mandatory education hours will not lower the quality of education. “A teacher with a full-time appointment now gives about 25 hours of lessons per week. Think of 20 hours of lessons, so you have more time to prepare. Lessons will happen less on autopilot and get better,” said Hagoort. It will also allow more customization in the classroom, he said. “There has to be time for that. If the workload goes down, the quality goes up. That’s good for the students.”

According to the AOb, “it is better to have one hour of teaching from a licensed teacher who has had time to prepare than two hours from an unqualified teacher.”

Minister Dennis Wiersma for Primary and Secondary Education told NOS that schools already have a lot of freedom to decide how to fill in the teaching time. “It doesn’t have to be in class. It can also be self-study, making a presentation, or doing an internship. There is room to fill in the time. Make use of that.”

Wiersma thinks lowering the hours standard is going too far. “I think that’s a risk to quality,” he said, expressing concerns about basic skills. “Good reading, math, writing, knowing how to interact in the Netherlands. Those scores have plummeted in recent years. If we send children to school less, those skills may become even worse. I don’t have a good feeling about that.”

The Education Inspectorate added that the hours standard is not enforced strictly at schools. The Inspectorate only intervenes if there are signs that the quality of education is at stake.