Just before the holidays, the last letter from the Ministry of Education arrived at the schools. There is extra money! Just ask! It is not a small amount: 900 euros per pupil in primary and 1,200 in secondary education, intended to reverse the worrying decline in basic skills – language, arithmetic/mathematics, citizenship and digital literacy. Schools can apply until the end of September.
The money should be spent on ‘effective interventions’, such as better instruction of students, effective didactics and classroom management. An additional grant will also be made available for the hiring of ‘basic teams’ to help teachers improve the basic skills of their students.
That the ministry is finally intervening in the steady decline in performance in reading, writing and math is gratifying. It is remarkable, however, that a decline can already be observed in the subjects of citizenship and digital literacy, which have suddenly been promoted to ‘basic skills’ (but hardly live in many schools).
Citizenship is a vague subject with at least two objectives: to impart useful knowledge about democracy, civil and human rights, and to promote qualities such as empathy, self-control and the ability to cooperate. The first belongs in history education (a subject that the Schnabel committee coolly wanted to abolish in 2016). The second, molding children into citizens of the desired model, does not seem to me to be the main task of the school.
Schools are not behavioral control institutions, although students must of course behave there, and education always has a civilizing effect. The world needs all kinds of people, including uncooperative and less sociable guys. Education should provide young people with tools to understand the world and to think critically about society and life in complete freedom.
Just start reading, writing and arithmetic, I would say. Those who cannot do that are lost. The key question here is: how in God’s name is it possible that our foundation education, where highly educated professionals work, fails to teach all children those skills at a basic level? What went wrong and what exactly needs to be done in order for them to learn it? We need to know that first.
And how will the ministry check whether school boards are indeed spending the money on this, how usefully it is being spent and whether progress has been made? The reprimand by the Court of Audit that it is unclear where the 8.5 billion euros for the National Education Program will go is still fresh in our minds. In the letter I read that schools will be asked for a ‘critical self-evaluation’ in 2023, after which they can apply for a subsidy for the following year. Something tells me that schools will report that the money has been extremely well spent.
Who are in those helpful ‘basic teams’? What do teachers think about that? It is to be feared that mountains of government money will again end up at the hired commercial offices. We’ll never know if it helps, all those courses and coaching. In the Education magazine contains a revealing story by Joëlle Poortvliet. She shows that the ‘shell’ of educators who do not teach but advise is growing, from 41 thousand in 2015 to 61 thousand last year. Many of them have run away from education to earn more as advisors and tell others how to do it.
Sustainable quality improvement can only be expected from improving teacher training, so that from now on they will supply people who know exactly how to effectively teach children basic skills and to whom you can safely leave that to them. That requires completely different investments and efforts.