high school

A pupil of the Corderius College in Amersfoort was suspended for making a Nazi video featuring one of the school's teachers. The pupil photoshopped the teacher's head into footage showing Nazi practices and the video ended up online, RTV Utrecht reports.

"It's a so-called joke", rector Egbert Boerma said to the broadcaster. "But there are jokes with far-reaching consequences. Pupils have to know that and sometimes they have to feel it too." For privacy reasons, the school did not say whether the pupil is a boy or a girl.

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.

The exams in high schools desperately need to be modernized, according to the VO-Raad, the council for high schools in the Netherlands. The current method of exams only test knowledge, while tertiary institutions often also look for other skills like team work and critical thinking, the council says, AD reports.

Last year the biggest proportion of Dutch couples consisted of two highly educated people, instead of one highly educated person and one less educated person as was the case in 2006, Statistics Netherlands reported on Monday. According to the stats office, this can be attributed to the fact that more people in the Netherlands achieve at least a bachelors degree.

Thousands of high school students across the Netherlands are still waiting for their school books. School book supplier Van Dijk Educatie is struggling with major delivery problems, De Stentor reports.

Schools calling Van Dijk to complain are met with an automated message in which the company acknowledges the problems, according to the newspaper. The supplier estimates that about 7,500 high school pupils do not have their complete learning package yet. Some haven't received any books. 

Criminals involved at least three school pupils in Den Bosh in prostitution and drug trading, mayor Ton Rombouts said in response to questions from PvdA city councilor Lisette van der Swaluw. The mayor believes that more kids may have been approached to become involve in illegal activities, but they wont come forward out of shame or fear for those who approached them, the Gelderlander reports.

Primary education teachers get significantly less respect and lower wages than their high school counterparts and other university graduates, according to a study by the research center for education and labor market ROA and Ecorys, NU.nl reports.

The Education Inspectorate for the first time compared Dutch schools and their students' results and found major differences. The Inspectorate concluded that a student's performance strongly depends on the type of school the child attends. Minister Jet Bussemaker and State Secretary Sander Dekker of Education call the situation worrying, NOS reports.

A teacher committed suicide at the Stedelijk Gymnasium in Den Bosch on Monday morning. The teacher jumped off the school building and died. A number of pupils saw the teacher jump, ANP reports.

The police would only confirm that there was a suicide at the school. The school management could not yet be reached for comment.

According to Omroep Brabant, the teacher jumped at around 9:45 a.m. as students arrived at school. Eye witnesses told the Gelderlander that the teacher jumped from the fourth floor of the building.

The Dutch government is investing 30 million euros into preventing dropouts and wrong study choices in universities, colleges and vocational schools. The money is intended for high schools to better guide their student in their choice of study and the jobs they hope to have when they're done.

Nearly all the high school students on the pre-university level (VWO level) passed the mandatory mathematics test. The preliminary results show that 97 percent achieved a 5 or higher, which counts as a pass. The final results will be announced after the summer, the Ministry of Education announced on Tuesday