More money promised to primary schools after strikes

The Dutch government will give primary schools and schools for special education more money next year to reduce teachers' workload. The Ministry of Education will divide 236 million euros among the 7 thousand schools next year. And that amount will increase in the coming years, RTL Nieuws reports based on figures from the Ministry.

The extra money is in response to mass teacher strikes over the past months. One of the teachers' demands was a reduction in workload. That demand is now being met.

Each school will receive 155.55 euros per pupil. So the more pupils a school has, the more money they'll get. The Eerste Nederlandse Montessori school in The Hague, the largest primary school in the Netherlands with 1,700 pupils, will therefore get over 250 thousand euros extra this coming school year.

A full time teacher costs a school an average of 63 thousand euros per year. A total of 614 primary schools will receive enough extra money to hire another full time teacher.

The Ministry of Education expects that this amount will be further increased in the coming years, to 285 euros per pupil in the school year 2021-2022.