Bridget is beaming. She did an internship at Blokker, she says, and she was allowed to stay. Now she has a part-time job. She enjoys helping customers. Today she is busy building up the flea market at school with students who, like her, are studying ‘retail trade’.
This is the Procollege, the practical school in Nijmegen. In the bright sun, twenty students carry plants, clothes and toys. “Everyone has a division for when the customers come later,” says Brigitta (17).
Practical education is just as important as theoretical education – ministers, MPs and opinion leaders have recently been repeating that message at every opportunity. It is intended to somewhat counteract the upward pressure in education. Universities attract more students than higher vocational education, theoretical havo/vwo are more popular than the more practical vmbo. While it is precisely professionals who are desperately needed, ministers, economists and employers repeat.
‘Acts fail to materialize’
Why, says chair Nicole Teeuwen of the Sector Council for Practical Education, do her schools always feel that they are at the bottom of the stacks of the ministries in The Hague? “Acts are not forthcoming for this group. And even words are often lacking. In the minister’s policy response to the annual report of the Education Inspectorate, there was nothing about the nearly 250,000 students in practical and vocational secondary education.”
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This concerns 30 percent of all students in secondary education. They have been in the ‘practical stream’ since the age of twelve: 27 percent at VMBO basic/squad level and 3 percent at practical school. Children like Brigitta who don’t learn from a book but in practice. “They may not always be able to calculate a sum on paper, but they can carve a table,” says director Eric Bouwens of the practical school in Nijmegen.
In the debate about the quality of education, says Nicole Teeuwen, the practical disciplines often feel lonely. “How do you promote ‘basic skills’, which everyone is rightly talking about, in students who do not learn from books? With students who solve sums and become language-skilled by doing and making things? Don’t regard those quarter of a million students as a residual group that also needs to be dealt with.”
There is money for everyone, but not for the practical school
Nicole Teeuwen Sector Council Practical Education
It is in small, concrete things, says Teeuwen. If you leave the practical school and even the entire pre-vocational secondary education, you are officially still without a diploma. You have to go on. Nicole Teeuwen: “We provide the entrance training at the practical school, just as it is given at intermediate vocational schools. That is an admission ticket for a level II secondary vocational education – with that you can really become a carer, car technician, hairdresser, security guard. 2.5 years ago, the House of Representatives passed a motion to include this ‘entrance training’ at the practical school in the law. But that has not happened yet.”
The House of Representatives will soon also be discussing the plans of Minister Dennis Wiersma (Education, VVD) to reduce inequality of opportunity at secondary school. “It turns out, says Teeuwen: “There is money available for everyone, but little for the practical school.”
When things go wrong
People are not naive at the practical school. The teachers flawlessly explain what their students are struggling with. With “abstract reasoning, with quick thinking; the emphasis is on the here and now”. They have difficulty remembering and recalling what they have learned. By separating main and side issues. Bouwens: “Also with controlling and reflecting on your own feelings and thoughts.”
From the age of 12 to 18, pupils can attend one of the 175 vocational schools if their IQ is between 55 and 80. The differences are big. 5 to 10 percent eventually go to daytime activities or sheltered work, but the vast majority obtain a mbo 1 or 2 diploma.
With some guidance and aftercare, these students have every chance of finding work. Bouwens points to three men who are repairing the sewage system under the sidewalk across the street. “Those people, society needs them and they start at practical school or pre-vocational secondary education.” Students like Brigitta, says Bouwens, “have real potential with guidance”. They end up in shops, cleaning, catering and home care. At Schiphol with luggage, at Bol.com, in construction, in logistics and with gardeners. They sort, pack, deliver packages.
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Photo Dieuwertje Bravenboer
Some developments turn out well: dealing with cash is difficult for most students, so “you couldn’t become a cashier before. But now that cash registers work with scanners, it works.” Things only go wrong, says Bouwens, when something major changes at work. A reorganization. A new boss. “Then they don’t always have the skills to adapt.” If the job disappears altogether, they often don’t have the network, or the skills, to find a new one.
They may not always be able to calculate a sum on paper, but they can make a table
Eric Bouwens director of practical school Nijmegen
And then his students come knocking here again, sometimes a few years after they have dropped out. This often happens literally and the former student suddenly shows up on the doorstep. Bouwens: “This school is the only place they know well and where people know them. They do not go to the municipality – an anonymous body with five counters. Often the family is unable to help them with work or education. So they come back to us.”
Equally valuable
The formal name for what teachers here do out of love for the students – conversations, barbecues – is aftercare. And that also hurts, in the long run. Teeuwen: “MBOs receive millions of euros for the aftercare of their students. We do not. Moreover, MBO schools have been allowed to work for years with pathways to quickly get lateral entrants qualified to teach, especially in vocational subjects. That would also be a solution for our schools. There are retired bicycle mechanics or others who want to teach here. But you guessed it: that is not allowed.” To teach at a practical school you need at least a pabo diploma.
The underlying cause of the problem is that society values practical skills lower than theoretical ones, says Arjen Daelmans, chairman of the Stichting Platforms VMBO and a teacher in Eindhoven. He started to notice this again from the time of corona, when schools were encouraged to ‘give promising advice’ – in other words: to give students the benefit of the doubt when giving school advice.
Daelmans: “That has reinforced the upward pressure. Parents and child usually choose as high as possible. Not to vmbo-t, but to havo. Not to the pre-vocational secondary education framework/basic, but to the theoretical learning path. Because that gives the child, they think, the best chances later on.”
As far as he is concerned, the whole ‘promising advice’ can be abolished again. Director Bouwens adds: “We sometimes hear from disappointed parents: ‘My child has to go to practical school.’”
Bouwens would like every student to be proud of his VMBO framework, vocational or practical advice. “Because a practical training for a practical subject is just as valuable as a theoretical one.”
And Brigitta, how does she see her future? “I am very happy with the Blokker. It has become my family.”
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