education

A tense few weeks lie ahead for Dutch high school students. The final exams start today for 211,550 high school kids in the Netherlands, RTL Nieuws reports.

VMBO pupils are kicking off the exams with English and Dutch on Monday. HAVO pupils are starting with physics, and VWO pupils have mathematics on the agenda. 

The final exams end on May 29th with more exotic language subjects like Russian, Spanish, Arabic and Turkish. Frisian is also on the program for the last day of exams.

On average 1 in 3 Dutch workers stay with the same employer for ten years or longer, according to figures Statistics Netherlands released on Monday. This happens especially often in the government - 58.9 percent of officials work for the government for at least 10 years.

Dutch girls in HAVO, VWO and MBO increasingly chose to study in a technical direction, though the increase is minimal in VMBO and higher education, Statistics Netherlands reported on Thursday.

Parents who feel that their children received a too low advice on which level to continue secondary school, are increasingly having their children take an intelligence test to pressure primary schools into giving their children a higher advice, RTL Nieuws reports.

The Education Inspectorate is not investigating the Avatar ideology in Dutch schools, because it has not yet received any reports regarding the ideology. Only if reports are received will the Inspectorate investigate whether Avatar poses a threat to the three main elements Dutch schools must guarantee, the Telegraaf reports.

The three elements all Dutch schools must guarantee are quality of education, good citizenship including respect for those who think differently, and safety. Schools are allowed to teach from an ideology, as long as it does not threaten those elements.

The Dutch cabinet appears poised to cut the cost to attend universities by half in a bid to make higher education more affordable for the first year of study. If approved tuition for public universities and hogeschools, or applied sciences universities, will fall to €1,030 for the freshman year starting in September.

Those wanting to become teachers can get the discounted price for two years, which the government hopes will address the current teacher shortage in the Netherlands.

In an attempt to reduce the teacher shortage in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam is allocating 100 homes for which new teachers will get priority, the city announced on Friday. The city hopes that easier accessibility to housing will make it more attractive for starting teachers to teach in Amsterdam. 

All students in the Netherlands studying to be a teacher will only pay half of their tuition fee for the first two years of their studies, Minister Ingrid van Engelshoven of Education, Culture and Science announced. With this measure, the government hopes to combat the growing shortage of teachers by encouraging young people to chose the profession, NOS reports.

Employers in technology, healthcare and education will have an increasingly difficult task filling vacancies in the coming years, according to the University of Maastricht's research center for education and labor market RAO. Over the next five years, the number of jobs in the Netherlands is expected to grow by 520 thousand, with the largest number of vacancies expected to be in technology and healthcare, according to the researchers, NOS reports.

The Public Prosecutor donated a boat seized in a money laundering and drug trafficking investigation to the Scheepvaart en Transport College in Rotterdam. Usually seized goods are sold through the Ministry of Finance's department Domeinen, and proceeds go toward the Dutch treasury. The Public Prosecutor is now experimenting with putting some seized items back into society, the Prosecutor said in a statement.

The Netherlands has seen a massive surge in the number of international higher education students, with over 80 thousand enrolled at Dutch universities and applied sciences universities during the 2016-2017 academic year. This figure is double the number of foreign students in the country just ten years ago, according to new research from international student organization Nuffic.