Girls from group 8 received a lower school advice again last school year than in the years before the corona pandemic. Boys received a higher recommendation, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) reported on Thursday.
In 2020, all students received a lower recommendation, but now that only applies to girls.
Primary school pupils receive the first school advice for further education in group 8. In addition, they make a final test, such as the CITO test, on which advice is also based. If this advice is higher than the previous school advice, the school may consider raising the final advice.
Statistics Netherlands states that girls’ test advice is often higher than their school advice. This means that girls are more likely than boys to be eligible for an upward adjustment of the school advice. Yet this year, boys in particular seem to have benefited from this.
Share of boys with HAVO or VWO advice is growing
The proportion of girls with a school recommendation lower than VMBO-G/T (mixed/theoretical) increased further in the past school year. Five years ago, 22.6 percent of girls received that advice, in 2020/2021 that had increased to 24.4 percent.
The proportion of girls with a school recommendation for VMBO-G/T or HAVO decreased slightly further: from 46.3 percent in 2016/2017 to 43.6 percent in the previous school year. The proportion of girls with a HAVO/VWO or VWO recommendation (31.1 percent) hardly changed in the past school year.
According to CBS, boys received a slightly higher advice in the past school year than before the corona pandemic. The share of recommendations for levels below VMBO-G/T decreased compared to 2018/2019, as did the share of recommendations for VMBO-G/T and HAVO levels. The proportion of boys with advice at HAVO/VWO or VWO level actually increased: from 31.2 percent to 33 percent.
It is not possible to say with certainty what the cause of this trend is, but a corona effect is obvious. Girls in particular say they suffer from psychological complaints due to the corona measures, such as school closures and lockdowns. This may have caused a backlog.