secondary education

Teachers of all levels of education are striking on Friday for more investment in education, because the quality is under pressure. More than half of primary schools are closed today. The teachers will gather on the Malieveld in The Hague to protest, NU.nl reports.

The correct education level for girls in the Netherlands are more often estimated lower in their school advice than that of boys. In the 2017/2018 school year, girls were more often at a higher school level in the third class of secondary education than their school advice said. Boys less often did better than their teachers had expected, Statistics Netherlands reported on Tuesday. 

In the coming school year, Amsterdam will tackle the teacher shortage in primary and secondary education with a team of over 60 municipal officials, four of whom have a teaching qualification. The team will support schools with administration or a class assistant. The four qualified officials will teach where necessary, the Volkskrant reports.

Kids in Dutch primary- and secondary schools are achieving poorer and poorer results. The average results on subjects like reading, mathematics, science and physical education gradually declined over the past 20 years, the Education Inspectorate concluded in its annual report, the Volkskrant reports.

"On average the Netherlands is doing well", Inspector General Monique Vogelzang said to the newspaper. "But if you look at the long term, you see that we are slowing drifting downward. I'm worried about that."

This year 248 schools in the Netherlands can call themselves excellent, 49 more than last year, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science announced on Monday.

A school is considered excellent if its quality of education is very good and it excels in some way, such as its lessons fitting very well with the situation in its neighborhood, or its way of teaching being inspiring, innovative and motivating. An independent jury assess whether a school deserves the recognition, and the Inspectorate of Education awards the predicates, which are valid for three years.

Teachers in secondary education are dismayed by the mistrust evident in Education State Secretary Sander Dekker's plan that the central written exams first be marked by a teacher other than the teacher giving the class. Some teachers have started a petition to stop this plan. The petition already has more than 3 thousand signatures, the Telegraaf reports.

The number of students in high school education increased from 13 thousand in 1900 to almost a million today, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) revealed on Thursday. Currently, 80 percent of the Dutch population between the ages of 12 and 18 are enrolled in a secondary school. The current percentage has largely held over the course of the last four decades.

The quality of education has further improved, according to the Education Inspectorate. The number of weak and very weak primary and secondary schools has decreased again.