The Hague to offer free pre-school education to toddlers from struggling families

Next year, The Hauge will offer free preschool education to all toddlers with a language delay, who come from struggling families, or who don’t speak Dutch at home. Education alderman Hilbert Bredemeijer (CDA) decided not to wait for the national government to make childcare basically free, which was recently postponed to 2027. Immediate action is needed because more and more children are reaching school age without being ready for primary education, he told NRC.

The preschools in The Hague are currently only free for children of parents with the lowest incomes - up to 30 percent above the social assistance level. And this municipal subsidy is only an addition to the national childcare allowance, which parents have to apply for themselves. According to Bredemeijer, this has created an “enormous administrative burden” that scares parents away from using the scheme to send their kids to preschool.

Bredemeijer will remove that threshold by offering sixteen hours of free preschool to all toddlers with an “indication” from the Youth and Family Center. The Youth and Family Center gives such indications to kids who may need extra help, for example, because their language development is behind, their parents have a low education level, or Dutch is not a home language.

Parents entitled to the national childcare allowance will not have to apply for it. From September, toddler consultants will inform parents that they have access to free preschool and help them register their children. And to make it even easier, all children in the Laak district and a large part of Zuidwest will receive an indication for free preschool. These neighborhoods house many struggling families, Bredemeijer said.

The measure covers about half of all children between 2.5 and 4 years old in The Hague. According to the alderman, preschool education is essential to help children prepare for school. In recent years, Bredemeijer has increasingly heard from teachers that more and more children start primary school without the basic skills they need, like learning to share or play with other children or even potty training. “That makes it more difficult for teachers to guarantee the quality of education,” he said. “And the workload in schools is already so high.”

Childcare organizations in The Hague see the need for this plan and are enthusiastic about making preschool accessible to more children, Zoe Kwint, director of the childcare foundation 2Samen and vice-chairman of the local association for preschool providers in the city, told NRC. But staff shortages remain a problem, she said, pointing out that this was why the government postponed its plans to make childcare basically free.

“We will have to deal with that,” Bredemeijer told the newspaper. According to the alderman, the shortages in The Hague are partly a distribution issue. “The people are there, but they are unfairly distributed across the city.” He is working with childcare organizations on a solution.

The municipality of The Hague earmarked money for this plan up to and including next year. But if it is successful, Bredemeijer plans to extend it.