School battle in Zoetermeer: ​​whether or not classroom lessons in 30 minutes?

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Teachers leaving in droves. A Participation Council (MR) that drags the school board before the Disputes Committee. Education experts who are very concerned. And the Education Inspectorate, which says it is following the case and has now started “gathering information”.

There have been local educational reforms that have caused less of a stir. Not so the introduction of the new school plan with which the Picasso Lyceum in Zoetermeer started the new school season this week. Fifteen of the sixty teachers left this summer, partly in response to the plan. The MR successfully fought against the board at the Disputes Committee, but now no longer has a teacher as a member. Experts of it ‘RED Team Education’, a self-proclaimed national collective of critical education experts, warn of a “detrimental development to the quality of an education field plagued by teacher shortages.” And the General Education Union (AOb) again calls for attention to be paid to the autonomy of the professional teacher vis-à-vis dominantly operating school boards.

‘keyless’ character

Stone of offense in the innovation: the transition from a 60-minute timetable to instruction of half an hour per lesson per week, also for the exam subjects, and the – according to staff – lack of proper consultation about this. The school board of education umbrella organization Lucas Education “pushed the plan through”, say the critics. “No, the new school plan was the result of two years of broad, careful and long-term consultation with teachers and students,” says communications advisor Sanderijn van Holten, who spoke on behalf of Lucas Education and the Picasso Lyceum.

With nearly ninety schools and ‘centres of expertise’ for primary, secondary and special education, Lucas Education a major education provider in the Haaglanden region. In 2020, the umbrella organization in The Hague took over a number of Zoetermeer schools that were in financial distress or that were struggling with sharply declining student numbers, such as the Picasso (from more than 1,100 in 2018 to just over 800 in the past school year). The acquisition by Luke, and almost 3 million in subsidy from the municipality, gave the schools involved breathing space, including Picasso. The school board used it to further innovate the school’s education.

How can you teach an exam subject in half an hour of teaching time per week?

Former teacher at Picasso Lyceum declares his departure against Omroep West

The two-year, differentiated (mavo/havo, havo/vwo) transition class has been expanded to three years with effect from this new school year, a plan for which extra money from The Hague was requested. All pupils receive half an hour of instruction from their teacher, followed by varying times in, for example, a ‘learning square’ for working independently or in groups (an activity previously included in the 60-minute approach). This is also done under the guidance of subject teachers – and a teaching assistant. In this accompanying phase of the lesson time, one teacher is available for 25 to 30 pupils, says Van Holten.

The already existing cross-curricular Connect program – with extra attention to language, arithmetic and citizenship – has been expanded, also rewarded with a subsidy from The Hague. Connect teaches the students to ask questions about the subject matter from different perspectives, to understand and to apply it. In addition, the ‘test-poor’ character of the school was continued – Picasso tests less than many other schools.

“The leading idea in all of this,” says spokesperson Van Holten, “was to formulate an answer to the increased stress among students, for example due to the high pressure of tests. We also want to strengthen their motivation with appealing education and combat the growing inequality in education. The latter is also an important policy goal for the ministry.”

According to her, the innovation has nothing to do with financial problems or combating teacher shortages. “The Picasso is financially sound and always has been,” she says. “We care about the students themselves.”

Also read this article from 2019: Each school now has its own concept

Intermediate hours

In addition, the uniform teaching schedule made it easier for teachers to discuss the development of new teaching approaches together. “In the new schedule, the teachers have little or no intermediate hours,” says Van Holten. “As a result, they can now free up an entire day to discuss educational development with each other. The hours that have now been made available for this in the collective labor agreement can then actually be used.”

But an internal piece about that NRC gives the opposite impression: that the entire operation is not so much intended for students, but mainly serves the financial and organizational continuity of the school. The internal report of the session before the Disputes Committee on the matter states: “Because the school has been showing a shrinking intake for several years, the competent authority has formulated a development task for the school in 2022 with the school management. According to the competent authority, the educational concept should be further developed in such a way that affordability, the organisability of education and thus the continuity of the school are guaranteed. This modified model should start the 2023-2024 school year.”

Further on in the report, reference is made to a subsidy of 1.1 million euros for cross-curricular education (Connect). “According to the competent authority, the MR must agree to this before January 31, 2023, otherwise the school will miss out on this subsidy of 1.1 million euros to be provided by the Minister for Primary and Secondary Education.”

When NRC the spokesperson for Lucas Education points to these texts, she e-mails back: “The educational vision is leading. Affordability and continuity are important preconditions.”

The Disputes Committee agreed with the MR earlier this year. But the school management went ahead with its plans, after promising the staff about some adjustments. Many teachers jumped to conclusions and left. “How can you teach an exam subject in half an hour of class time per week?”, quoted Omroep West one of fifteen teachers who left.

Spokesman Van Holten confirms the number of fifteen (a quarter of the teaching staff), but adds: “More teachers leave at the end of the school year, which can be for very different reasons, including personal ones.” She points out that the innovation “has also attracted new teachers who are curious about what will happen with us. We currently have hardly any vacancies. For example, according to her, the school currently only asks for a mathematics teacher and an exam secretary. The registrations are also on the rise, according to Van Holten: from 98 last year to 176 this year.


Growing concern

However, specialists in the field of education followed the developments in Zoetermeer with growing concern. Theo Witte, subject didactician and chairman of the aforementioned RED-Team, says: “At the moment there are more schools that are switching from, for example, a 50-minute schedule to a 30-minute schedule due to staff shortages. That is disastrous for the quality of education and the workload of teachers.” The work is fragmented, the effectiveness of education is decreasing, he says. “I know a school in a big city that has since come back after the exam results turned out to be deteriorating sharply.”

Jan Drentje, rector of the Deltion Sprint Lyceum (vavo education) in Zwolle and member of the RED-Team, sees emphasizing the self-reliance of students as a good-sounding marketing tool for schools that have to compete increasingly hard for new students. Drentje: “Parents and many students always think that sounds attractive: self-learning, room for my child’s talent, et cetera. But in the end, that same child learns much less than during the instruction in 50-minute lessons.”

In a blog on the same topic Drentje called lesson duration reduction “a scam, because the pressure on the lesson, teacher and students is increasing”. After all, what remains of a lesson, writes Drentje. “The students come in, you have a chat, there is something that requires attention. The world is on fire. A lesson does not start exactly on the timetable and does not end on the minute. Of the 40 minutes, 30-35 remain.”

Lucas Education, on the other hand, disputes the fact that a 30-minute teaching instruction is less effective, especially if it is followed by a proper follow-up. Communication advisor Van Holten: “After the lesson instruction, the students are given time to work independently or in groups to process the lesson material and to do their homework. Acquiring the subject matter in this way has a positive impact on learning results, according to research.”

According to Van Holten, scientific studies are not unequivocal about the ideal lesson length, but “research does show that instructions that are too long do not work for the adolescent brain. The attention curve is on average no longer than half an hour for this group.”


‘Through trial and error wise’

Jelmer Evers is not convinced. The vice-chairman of the largest teachers’ union AOb, and former history teacher, says that he follows developments in Zoetermeer with concern, just like the RED-Team. “Both from my own teaching practice and what I know from research,” says Evers, “50-minute schedules are much more effective than 30-minute schedules.” A spokesman for the Ministry of Education says that 50-minute timetables are “common” in secondary education, although a detailed overview is missing.

In Evers’ class, too, people worked alone or in groups after class, but 50-minute lessons were a necessary basis for the upper years, the AOb director emphasizes. Evers: “It makes quite a difference whether that work is done independently under the supervision of your own subject teacher, or in a larger group with, for example, a relatively cheap teaching assistant.”

Evers sees a ‘new dichotomy’ emerging in the education field between, on the one hand, schools with sufficiently qualified subject teachers and, on the other hand, schools that keep their education running with ‘a lot of art and flying with the help of, for example, teaching assistants. Parents will probably pay more and more attention to that.” Incidentally, Lucas Education strongly denies that Picasso has cut back or diluted the quality. The spokesperson points out that subject teachers, accompanied by a teaching assistant, supervise the entire group process.

AOb director Evers has a second reason for concern: the way the board interacts with the staff. “It seems that there was no proper consultation in Zoetermeer,” he says. That casts a shadow over the implementation of the plans, he says. “We have become wise through trial and error, we now know that educational innovations only have a chance of success if they have the support of a large proportion of the teachers.”

Partly to strengthen the position of the teacher in educational innovation, schools have been obliged since 2017 to have a so-called professional status to keep up. This gives teachers the space to fulfill their own responsibilities in the field of teaching design. “By no means all schools have such a statute, partly because the Education Inspectorate does not actively enforce it,” says Evers. What about the Picasso Lyceum? “The school is currently working on the professional statute,” the spokesperson emails.

Also read this opinion article: All educational innovation is at the expense of ‘weak’ children

A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on August 22, 2023.

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