Parents can do little about discriminating school advice

Discrimination and bias often have a role in too-low school advice for ethnically diverse children heading to secondary school. And parents who suspect this to be the case can do basically nothing against it, according to a study by the Knowledge Platform for Inclusive Society (KIS). There is not a single institution that has the authority to act against a school on this matter, KIS concluded, NU.nl reports,

KIS looked at the system for school advice for secondary school and its complaints procedure through a discrimination lens. The knowledge center did literature research, spoke to parents and teachers, and asked a sounding board of education experts to check and confirm the conclusions.

“It now depends too much on your school and teacher whether you receive unbiased school advice,” senior researcher Suzan de Winter-Koçak told the newspaper. “It is very traumatic if your teacher underestimates you. Teachers say more than average to ethnically diverse students: ‘Just take it easy.’ They often do this with the best intentions, but they are unaware of what their lack of encouragement does to their student.”

A too low school advice at primary school can harm a child’s development for years to come. “It is very difficult to switch to a higher level of education. Due to too low school advice, you have to ‘stack’ courses in practice to get where you want to be. That costs you extra years of teaching.” It could also harm a child’s self-confidence and affect their career decades later.

Parents who suspect that their child’s school advice is lower than it should be due to bias or discrimination can do very little about it, the researchers found. “Our research shows that you can ask for help from, for example, the Educational Disputes Foundation, the Children’s Ombudsman, or Parents & Education,” said De Winter-Koçak. “But the school retains the sole right to adjust the advice or not.” Previous research showed that a third of schools never give students the benefit of the doubt when they complain about the school advice, and nearly half try to convince parents that the advice is correct.

“There is no objective party that can give a binding opinion on school advice that is subject to discussion,” De Winter-Koçak said. Even reporting the possible discrimination to the police or the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights won’t help because they don’t have the authority to address the educational institution on school advice in individual cases. “The school is completely untouchable in providing school advice. And as a parent, you cannot change anything about it. When we discovered that, it became clear to us how problematic the situation really is.”

The Ministry of Education and the association for primary schools PO-Raad recognize the problems. A spokesperson for the PO-Raad told NU.nl that the association wrote to parliament last May warning that the current school advice system “has a particularly negative impact on students with an immigration background and students from a less favorable socio-economic environment.”

The Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science revised its School Advice Guide in January. It warns schools against “structural under-advice” for ethnically diverse children and girls, among others. But the schools remain the only ones that can adjust school advice, and there are no plans to change that.