After school, more and more children receive additional and enriching education to help them develop better. This sector is growing rapidly, but still lacks supervision of the quality delivered. That has to change, says Jeroen Paul Nijmeijer.
Jeroen Paul Nijmeijer is director of SKB Netherlands, the Partnership for Equality of Opportunity & Citizenship Education.
At more and more schools, the school day does not end with the last bell. Students receive extra guidance, play sports together, meet role models or work on their self-confidence. For many children, additional and enriching education is not a luxury, but essential for their development. Yet we allow this sector to operate virtually unregulated.
During today’s debate on educational opportunities in the House of Representatives, a lot of attention will be paid to basic skills. But anyone who only looks at language and arithmetic is missing an important part of reality. Precisely because schools have to focus more and more on this basis, the importance of additional education is growing. Here, students are given space for citizenship, social skills and talent development: skills that partly determine whether a child can successfully participate in our society.
Many teachers and school leaders recognize this added value. It relieves teams, increases the offering and helps students develop more broadly. It is therefore no longer a side issue, but a structural part of education.
No view
At the same time, there is a lack of insight into quality. The market for additional and enriching education has grown strongly, partly thanks to the School and Environment subsidy. For the period 2025-2028, 709 million euros is available for this purpose in primary, secondary and special education.
There are many good organizations out there. But there are also parties that excel in attractive pitches, subsidy applications and rapid growth. Schools have to find their way with the limited time they have and without clear quality standards.
That leads to an uncomfortable situation. Where childcare is supervised by the GGD and regular education is assessed by the Education Inspectorate, supervision of additional and enriching education is limited to matters such as time registration and a Certificate of Good Conduct. Attention to the quality of programs is growing, but there is not yet a clear lower limit for the quality and reliability of providers.
If schools have to work on equality of opportunity, we must ensure that supplementary education is of demonstrable quality.
In recent years it has also become clear that the sector is not immune to opportunism. Organizations such as the Weekend Academy Foundation, Dare to Dream and the Learning for the Future Foundation were discredited. These are incidents, but they show how vulnerable a system becomes when public money, education and commercial interests come together without clear quality standards and supervision.
Good providers have to prove themselves again and again, while new initiatives have difficulty building trust. That is why it is time for a national quality framework. Not to regulate everything tightly, but to establish a lower limit. A framework that offers transparency about providers, sets minimum requirements for pedagogical quality, safety and reliable business operations and helps schools make choices.
If we expect schools to work on equality of opportunity, we must also ensure that everything that happens around it is of demonstrable quality.
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