At camp with group 8: ‘Whoever sleeps first gets pranked’

Even before the pancakes and the forest game on the first night of the school camp, students fight against sleep. They were on the bike for hours today. First from primary school De Witte Vlinder in Arnhem to the camp location in the woods near Oosterbeek. Then to the swimming pool in Ede, ten miles away, and back to camp. A hundred kilometers, Christiano thinks.

Not everyone can ride a bike well. Master Berrie van den Bovenkamp and teacher Irma Schouten, who will accompany the group for the next two days and nights, literally had to push some students forward. Fortunately, Berrie says, he now has an electric bicycle.

Outside, on the camp site of the local scouting, a few boys and girls are playing soccer. Inside the darkened ‘chill room’, the rest hangs languidly in a light show of flashlights and disco lights. Whoever enters has to bend down to see flying slippers.

The girls’ room is cozy in the main building. Clothes and towels hang neatly over the wooden beams, mountains of candy next to the sleeping places. In the boys’ beds, air mattresses, chips and sleeping bags are scattered all over the place.

It smells different here, thinks Qwendolyn, who provides the tour together with Saleisha. “In our room it smells like flowers, here…”

“…it smells weird,” Saleisha says. She is “tired and hyper at the same time”. But there is no way to sleep for the time being. “Whoever sleeps first gets pranked,” says Qwendolyn.

Saleisha: “So we stay awake until seven o’clock.”

The last weeks of group eight have arrived. A few more days of lessons, some last scenes practice for the final musical on July 20th and then the inevitable goodbye. From the school, from Master Berrie and from each other.

After the summer holidays, the majority of the class goes to VMBO, one pupil goes to HAVO, two to VWO and one to Gymnasium – almost a quarter of the total. Nationally, about fifty percent go to HAVO or VWO.

The class scored better than expected on the Cito test in April. Nine students achieved a whole level higher than the school recommendation in February. In theory, this allows them to go to another secondary school. To HAVO instead of VMBO. Or to vmbo-t, instead of to vmbo-framework. Four out of nine students opted for this, after discussions between their parents and the school. The others stick to the choice they made in February. Their parents don’t want to switch anymore, says Berrie van den Bovenkamp. “They think it’s fine that way and think: show it first, you can always go to a higher level. They look much more at the intrinsic motivation of their child and are afraid that they will have to chase it all the time in secondary school. They think that creates stress for both parties.”

High expectations

Would these children have done differently if they had attended a different school, Van den Bovenkamp asked after the school recommendations in February.

Probably yes, say almost all experts to whom NRC the question in recent months. Although, they warn, there is no unequivocal answer.

Student performance depends on many factors. Their intelligence, motivation and attitude, of course. But the education and origin of their parents also play a role. Is Dutch spoken at home? Are they helped with their schoolwork and encouraged to do their best? Is the bar high or is school not considered as important?

High expectations are a crucial factor, said Trudie Schils, professor of educational economics at Maastricht University, in the first episode of this series. “If little is expected of children, they will behave accordingly.”

And then there’s the segregation factor. If parents can choose, they prefer to send their children to school in their own social bubble and in their own neighbourhood. “The school segregation by parental education level and income of parents is greater and is not decreasing,” the Education Inspectorate signaled this spring in the State of Education. In practice this means that there are almost only students at the White Butterfly from the Geitenkamp, ​​where people live who usually have not studied, are more often unemployed and have less income on average. While the two primary schools in the immediate vicinity of De Witte Vlinder have a relatively large number of students from the more prosperous districts of Paasberg and Angerenstein, with higher educated parents and a higher income.

That makes quite a difference for school results, says economist Bastian Ravesteijn of Erasmus School of Economics. He has been researching educational segregation for years and via the website OpportunitiesKaart.nl he can show how strong it is at postcode level. Take the difference in the so-called target levels of schools, the level that pupils in group eight should ideally achieve. “You can see on our map that about 32 percent of the children from the Geitenkamp achieve the target level for math on the final test in group 8,” says Ravesteijn. A few kilometers away in Rozendaal – one of the richest municipalities in the Netherlands, more than 90 percent achieve this target level.

Children from socio-economically weaker neighborhoods benefit from attending more mixed schools. They benefit from the ‘peer learning effect’, says Paul Leseman, professor of remedial education at Utrecht University. He investigated this for the municipality of Utrecht, mixing children from different neighborhoods with different economic and cultural backgrounds. Result: pupils from deprived areas performed better in the mixed class. “It clearly had a positive impact on their language and grammar.” And: “It had no negative consequences for the more disadvantaged children.”

The latter is a persistent misunderstanding, says Eddie Denessen, professor of socio-cultural backgrounds and differentiation in education. “Parents are afraid that their child will perform less well if it is in the classroom with children from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Wrongly. The point is: teachers tailor education to the group. If they have a class with only children from deprived areas, they often lower the bar. We see students grow when they are in more mixed classes. Ultimately, the students with the lowest socio-economic status benefit the most.”

balloons

However, a school in a disadvantaged neighborhood can also make a difference for students. On the other side of the Rhine, in Arnhem South, balloons and streamers hang at the entrance of primary school Het Mozaïek. The school, located in Immerloo, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Netherlands, has a heavy school weight, just like De Witte Vlinder. This weighting, a score between 20 and 40, is calculated on the basis of socio-economic factors, such as the education level of the parents, country of origin, and whether parents are undergoing debt restructuring.

There are almost six hundred students at the Mosaic, together 45 nationalities, who often speak little or no Dutch when they come in. But here almost 60 percent achieve the target levels and half of the students go to havo or vwo after group eight.

Last month, the school was declared an ‘excellent school’ for the eleventh time, a designation that the Education Inspectorate recently awarded to fourteen regular primary schools. Director Carola Peters sits in one of the classrooms with five people from her team to explain their secret. Most importantly: a clear vision on education that the entire team shares and propagate. “We firmly believe that these children are no different from other children and can do just as much. And that they need knowledge to move forward.”

Stacking knowledge is what they call it here. The team uses learning methods that are based on scientific knowledge, consults each other a lot and observes each other’s lessons.

“Knowledge is important,” says Peters. “When children receive help at home, the gaps in their knowledge are filled in. This applies to a lesser extent to these children, because they originally have a different cultural capital. We also teach them: if you want to understand something, you have to practice a lot and learn to make connections.”

Parents are “very actively” involved in the school. Once every three weeks there is a meeting where the team explains topics such as vocabulary, or how young children’s brains work. “We teach parents what they can do at home,” says teacher Lisa Soleimani (group 2).

Peters: “Most parents really want that.”

“But you have to take them with you,” says Soleimani. “Building a bond.”

Also important: the school has high expectations. Peters: “We don’t say: oh well, you’re having a hard time at home, just take it easy and go to VMBO instead of HAVO.” It is rather the other way around here, says teacher Silke Bodd (group 8): „How clever is it if you are not helped at home and you still do well on your own? Well, of course you can go to havo!”

field mouse

Back to the woods at Oosterbeek. While Jelina and Lisa are discussing an argument, a field mouse runs across the kitchen where Miss Irma eats blackened leftover pancake from the stove. The girls run away screaming. “Whoa stop!” says Master Berrie. “We need to talk some more. What was going on?”

“I wanted to go out and then she slammed the door against my elbow,” Lisa says.

“Accidentally, master! But then she hit me really hard,” says Jelina.

Master Berrie: “Okay, how do we solve this?”

Jelina: “No more hitting.”

Lisa: “And say sorry. Sorry.”

Master Berrie: “Well resolved.”

Irma: “Now catch that mouse, ladies.”

“Does the one who threw up have to clean it up himself?” one of the students asks with a pale face. How does he feel? “Can I say a curse word? pussy”

Moments later, he happily stands outside where Master Berrie explains the complex rules of the game Living Stratego.

“So if you get tagged by someone with a lower grade, what are you?”

In unison: “Death, master.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Get a new ticket.”

“Okay, folks: go!”

The class disappears with a jolt between the trees.