Brabant students have submitted 41,000 complaints to LAKS about their final exams. This puts our province in the top 3 when it comes to the number of complaints. Complaints often concerned difficult questions, but sometimes also about bleating goats or noisy fat bikes.
“There have been a lot of complaints,” says Inass Jagour of the National Action Committee for Students (LAKS) in the radio program KEIgoeiemorgen! Thursday. “This year we have a total of 340,000 complaints. Last year there were still 240,000.” In Brabant the total number of complaints amounts to 41,000. “North Brabant is one of the provinces that complains the most. The province is even in the top three in the Netherlands.”
LAKS mainly received many complaints about the Dutch exam at HAVO. Logical in itself, says Jagour, because the exam makers have already confirmed that the exam had a different form compared to other years.
“We received a complaint about goats that were bleating.”
Other common complaints were substantive complaints about specific questions or noise pollution. And strange reports are sometimes received about the latter in particular. “We received a complaint about goats that were bleating outside an exam room and banging on the room. Those students obviously didn’t like that and knew where to find us.”
It may sound like an exceptional complaint, but according to Jagour, these types of reports are received more often. “We have also heard several times that students suffer from fat bikes. These have of course become increasingly popular lately.”
“The emphasis is too much on the grade, and not on the development of students.”
If LAKS receives complaints about noise pollution, for example, the organization will first contact the student. The school is then called and a discussion follows about what went wrong and how the school can prevent this in the future.
The final exams are over and all complaints have been received, but that does not mean that LAKS will sit still for the entire year. One issue in particular is receiving attention: are the final exams in their current form still relevant today?
According to Jagour, that is not the case. “The emphasis is too much on the grade, and not on the learning process and development of students. That is a shame, because that is what education should be about. And this takes its toll in terms of the mental well-being of the students and their performance.”
