News item | 18-12-2025 | 5:00 PM
The government is investing in strengthening secondary vocational education. MBO is in good shape on many points, but there is also work to be done. That is why the Work Agenda and the Internship Pact MBO 2023-2027 were concluded in 2023. The work agenda aims to promote equality of opportunity, improve the connection between education and the labor market and promote quality and innovation in secondary vocational education. Halfway through the term of the Work Agenda, Minister Moes of Education, Culture and Science sees positive developments in certain areas, such as students dropping out less often and their mental health improving. Teachers also experience less workload. We must maintain this movement.
However, adjustments are needed in other areas. For example, despite all the efforts of the partners, insufficient progress has been made with the Internship Pact. The quality of the internship supervision is not yet up to standard. Student satisfaction with guidance is still low and is hardly increasing. Too many students do not yet receive an internship allowance and internship discrimination is still common.
Minister Moes wrote this to the House of Representatives: ”The progress on the implementation of the internship pact worries me, but also the other signatories. It is not yet possible to make sufficient progress on the formulated objectives. That is why we must take (additional) steps in the coming period. It must quickly become clear how schools and training companies break this negative trend and actually achieve improvements for students.”
Many institutions are taking important first steps that contribute to the further development of secondary vocational education. The investments that have already been made should pay off in the coming years. It is therefore important that approaches that we know work are applied in more places. There is no need to reinvent the wheel every time. This applies in particular to the Internship Pact. Further agreements must be made with schools, employers and students at the beginning of 2026. Minister Moes is also currently exploring the legal options for requiring internship allowances for MBO students. The contours of a bill will be shared with the House before the summer of 2026.