The Netherlands is failing to guarantee good education on Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius. Fifteen years after the constitutional reform, the right to good education on the islands is still not guaranteed. The education system designed for the European Netherlands is insufficiently connected to the completely different reality on the islands.
It is the hard conclusion that emerges from a comprehensive report that the Education Council published this Monday, a ‘state of educational Netherlands’, this year entirely devoted to the Caribbean Netherlands.
According to the council, the problem is structural. The islands are small, far from The Hague, have limited facilities and have a different social and linguistic context. As a result, schools encounter limits and problems that they cannot solve themselves.
“We looked closely at the differences that exist between the Caribbean islands,” says Louise Elffers, chairman of the Education Council, who traveled to the area herself. “Our overarching message to the ministry is: keep a close eye on the situation on the islands, look carefully at what they need on the ground, instead of trying to level everything out. That hasn’t happened for too long.”
The Education Council looked specifically at the BES islands of Bonaire (26,552 inhabitants, nine primary schools, one secondary school), Sint Eustatius (3,270 inhabitants, four primary schools, one secondary school) and Saba (2,158 inhabitants, one primary school, one secondary school), which have been special municipalities of the Netherlands since October 10, 2010 (10-10-10). In the field of education, this means that education has become part of the Dutch education system, which falls under the responsibility of the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OC&W).
The other three islands in the Caribbean part of the kingdom, the CAS islands of Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten, are independent countries within the kingdom and are responsible for their own education.
Solving most urgent problems
“Fifteen years seems a long time, but it is also short,” says Elffers. “Before that transition, almost no school on the islands met the basic quality standards of the education inspectorate. Now almost all of them comply, so enormous steps have already been taken.” At the same time, she says, the focus in those years was mainly on solving the most urgent problems, while a broader view of the entire education system was missing.
The Education Council has now done this, at the request of the Minister of Education, Culture and Science. The council notes three important points. The first is that students on the BES islands are insufficiently prepared for their different future paths. Because further education and work are only possible to a limited extent on the islands, many young people leave to study or work in the region or in the European Netherlands. For this they need language skills, Dutch, English and on Bonaire Papiamentu, which is not always in good order. In addition, the courses must be better linked to further education and more money is needed, according to the council.
Schools on the BES islands are also unable to cope well with the growing diversity and support needs of students, due to a lack of trained teaching staff, knowledge and appropriate financing. For example, children who grow up in poverty need appropriate support, just like children with a form of autism. On St. Eustatius, about half of the students now need extra support.
Finally, educational boards have insufficient options and support from the government to meet their responsibilities, because they lack the right infrastructure and guidance.
Small scale as a bottleneck
The small scale that the islands have to deal with often emerges as a bottleneck. Elffers: “Look at educational boards. In the European Netherlands they have become increasingly larger, resulting from mergers, because of the economies of scale. This allows them, for example, to jointly arrange their legal and financial affairs, as well as their personnel policy. This is not possible on the islands, where there are individual schools and a few people who have to carry out all those tasks, where quality depends on individuals. That is simply far too big a task for them.”
So The Hague must step in, says the Education Council. “For example, by training education administrators with local roots,” says Elffers. “Now administrators are regularly brought from the European Netherlands. This has advantages, because they know the Hague context well and know everything about policy, but they have less knowledge of the island context. And they are often only there temporarily.”
The range of further training in the Caribbean Netherlands is very limited
The ministry must also take a closer look at what people need locally. “The range of further training in the Caribbean Netherlands is very limited,” says Elffers. “A teacher said that that was why she took part in a course online at three o’clock in the morning, because it started at nine o’clock in the morning Dutch time. That is understandable – you cannot expect trainers to fly in and out all the time – but it is not ideal, of course. The teacher then had to be back in front of the classroom a few hours later.”
The fact that the European Netherlands does not always coordinate well with the Caribbean part of the kingdom, a legacy of the colonial past in which the Netherlands brought more than it brought to the area, has a wider impact than just in education. Recently, the judge ruled in a climate case that Greenpeace filed against the state together with residents of Bonaire that the Netherlands treats residents of Bonaire as second-class citizens. “We heard that often too,” says Elffers. “At the same time, many people also cling to the opportunities offered by the bond with the Netherlands, which makes it easy for them to study in Europe, for example.”
To improve education in the Caribbean Netherlands, the Netherlands must implement unequal policies – tailor-made for the schools in the Caribbean part – says the Education Council. The Constitution allows this. “Our conclusion is that too little structural improvement has been made over the past fifteen years,” says Elffers. “That really needs to be improved.”
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