Talk:Education in the Netherlands/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Abbreviations

Sorry, but these abbreviations are a mumbo-jumbo to the reader. What is po, vo, bhe etc? Please enlighten us all. :-( — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.186.128.58 (talk) 11:04, 22 November 2003 (UTC)

The official categories, which are abbreviations of the Dutch terms for what is explained in the article. - Patrick 20:44, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Corrected acronym

po should be bo (basis onderwijs) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.109.236.119 (talk) 22:20, 22 July 2004 (UTC)

History

Could someone give a brief history the education system? Preferably someone connected to the school systems? Ask a friend to expand this article.--DennisDaniels 14:55, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

2nd phase

I just edited in the difference about when the cassical languages are given in Gymnasium schools. Should we include information on the 2e fase? (2nd phase, big mixup thanks to the government, most people have low opinions on it.) --Kasperl 11:24, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Order

Have attempted to put a litle more order into the start of this article by putting the general before the particular and sorting out the abbreviations. Rest of the article still to be looked at in detail. -- Picapica 12:19, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Corrected date

Just corrected the date that the Mammoetwet was introduced, and included the mentioning of that name -- DodgeK 00:18, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Template:Education infobox

I created a template, Template:Education infobox which can give a quick at a glance demographics table for education articles. See its implementation at Education in the United States and feel free to help improve the template.--naryathegreat | (talk) 01:00, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Copyediting

This article was clearly written by a Dutchman! I made some general improvements in the idiom and grammar. Perhaps some more attention should be given to the universities? JFW | T@lk 22:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for taking out my spelling mistakes! Feel free to expand the section on universities, but I kept it short seeing there already is a List of universities in the Netherlands and an article on Dutch universities (but the latter has a tag that it should be improved, perhaps it should just be merged with this article...). Well anyway: feel free! -- C mon 07:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Sex Education in the Netherlands

One thing I what like to see, is a section about the sex education policy in the Netherlands. Their sex education is seen a beacon in the teaching of sex and relationships, and subsequently it has the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. It is vastly different to the UK, where we have the highest rate in Western Europe, caused by the only teaching is just the biological part and about STDs. Even this, is not compulsory! 159753 23:49, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a page on it on the Dutch wiki. There is a brief mention on the statement you made on the Sex education page but the Netherlands does not have a truly stunning sex education policy. Personally, from a Health Psychology view, I deem social and cultural circumstances to be of more importance than the teaching of sex and relationships in schools. I do not see a direct cause for adding this unless I can be provided with a scientific article showing evidence that family and place of residence are inferior to sex education in schools. -- Eddyspeeder 13:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Various TBA

Although this page is coming about nicely, it still lacks certain vital aspects.

1. The use of a propedeuse in the Netherlands, which should be mentioned for both HBO and WO. I wrote an article on it very recently and am well aware it still lacks references; I intend to expand that article with among others more background information on the introduction of the system. References will then be added accordingly.

2. The distinction between HBO and WO should be further deepened, including mentioning that the Netherlands has a Hogeschool / University system (including its history), and what separates WO (theoretical) from HBO (practical). There is also a need for a separate article on what a Hogeschool is.

3. Although I agree with the designer of the image to leave out certain aspects, it should be clarified that upon completing one's WO Master, one can choose to become a researcher as opposed to entering the job market. In regard to the image and propedeuse; it is best left out as the propedeuse is a part of the bachelor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eddyspeeder (talk • contribs) 21:30, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Great work! Great work! -- C mon 07:18, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks ;-) I resolved issue #1, but I think #2 needs a little more work. Maybe we can work on a Hogeschool wiki together? -- Eddyspeeder 12:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
On issue #2 I tend not to make separate articles on specifically Dutch phenomena. I propose we discuss the difference between HBO and WO in this article, paying attention to parallels from other english-speaking countries. A Hogeschool is very similar to a polytechnic if I remember correctly. -- C mon 13:19, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
You are right. It is also stated as such on the polytechnic page as well as on the list of Universities. I'll make sure (Thursday/Friday) that there will just be a Hogeschool stub, referring to the list of universities and such. I think I'm also going to clean up the Dutch universities page (note, this page is not the list of universities). -- Eddyspeeder 13:08, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Your comment on the Dutch universities page with Copyediting (see above) is noted. Although I do not see any reason to mention sex education in the Netherlands, would it be interesting discussing the use of cannabis on middelbare scholen, hogescholen/universiteiten and even basisscholen? -- Eddyspeeder 13:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering if it should be mentioned that many employers would consider a BA degree at a university incomplete? If you went to university and only got a BA and not an MA employers often wonder why you did not complete your education. I cannot find my sources right now, but I'm sure they can be found in an article in the "volkskrant". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.174.208.34 (talk) 10:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

"Literally"

Just a note when translating foreign words into English in an english language text: its not necessary to put the word 'literaly' in front of EVERY translation. Simply putting the words inside () is enough. In a text as this one where several words and phrases are being translated into English, it almost gets annoying. Besides its obvious the translations are literal. A 'literal' translation simply means you are translating each word independantly, regardless of thier relation to each other in the language they are being translated into. However since the phrases and words translated mean pretty much the same (both together and indpendantly) in English, its not necessary to add 'literaly' to each translation. Check out the article on Literal Translations on this Wiki. This is not meant so much as a critisizm, more as advice for the writer (obviously dutch), who's English is very good except for these small mistakes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.91.67.31 (talk) 08:32, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Free Tax-Payed Education?

Is education is free/tax-payed up to the university level? Or does free/tax-payed education exist only until secondary school? Zachorious 20:18, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. For secondary school "schoolgeld" is required, usually in the magnitude of Eur 700/yr in the earlier years till Eur 1500+ for Masters) 88.159.74.100 12:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I have a question: Does anyone know the budget, total or per capita ? I wanted to compare it to Finland's budget but can't find it for The Netherlands. Excuse me if this is the wrong location for asking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.182.191.15 (talk) 20:57, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Atheneum plus

Although VWO+ sometimes offer just latin as extra (compulsory) class, other schools may differ in their approach. For example, I finished VWO+ that included philosophy, spanish, culture and "scientific education" as compulsory classes (in addition to increased depth in general), but not latin. I suggest changing the article to reflect that VWO+ is a more challenging option than VWO that may differ from school to school. Source may include: http://www.zernike.nl/site/web/index.php?MOD=text&mid1=916

6th of Februari 2007, 6:10PM UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.126.117.242 (talk) 18:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Additional Resources

It might be helpful to add some English references to the article. As I'm currently writing a paper on school-to-work transition in the Netherlands I happen to have a list of them here for people to sort though and determine if they would benefit the article. As an aside, there are a few things in the article which I have not encountered in any of my English language sources. Note that most of these sources primarily discuss what the English language world calls Vocational Education or Career and Technical Education (HAVO, HBO, VMBO, MBO and the old MAVO, VBO, LLW schools) but contain background information about other aspects of the educational system.

  • CEDEFOP (2004) Vocational education and training in the Netherlands: Short description. Revised edition. Available online
  • CEDEFOP (2003) Vocational education and training in the Netherlands Paper English language version orderable
  • OECD (1994) Vocational training in the Netherlands: Reform and innovation. Paris: OECD.
  • Dronkers, J. (1993) The precarious balance between general and vocational education in the Netherlands. European Journal of Education, 28(2) 197-207.
  • Streumer, J.N. (1999) School-to-work transition programs in the Netherlands. In S. Stern & D.A. Wagner (Eds.), International perspectives on the school-to-work transition (pp. 335-384). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

--BenFranske 20:46, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Duration

A lot of studies, specially technical are 5 years now. The picture could reflect that. (maybe the text could also be clarified what is the most common duration for WO) 88.159.74.100 12:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Grading systems compared

This section is lacking in references, and I can thus not find the numbers mentioned here. The Nuffic institute has published the following paper: [1]. This summarizes the grades in high schools, and universities. There is substantial variation in the percentages for a 9 or a 10. The sum for 8, 9, and 10 is also much higher than 15% for VWO and universities.

It seems to me that either this information should be supported with references, or else the section should be rewritten based on other (aforementioned) references. Maybe it suffices to state that there is no simple relation between Dutch grades and other grading systems, rather than try to give actual percentages?

This same information is used in Grade (education). --Sentewolf 12:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

No maths in CM/C&M profile

With the new system - just introduced this school year - maths is not a compulsory subject for the Culture & Society profile(Cultuur & Maatschappij profiel). ~~ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mecanita (talk • contribs) 17:56, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Grading systems compared

This section is a complete disaster. Who ever wrote it has clearly a bad understanding of the Dutch system, and the story is too niddled. Simply irreadable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.80.236.182 (talk) 12:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Criticism

How come there is no section here on criticism to the Dutch educational system? I'm from Portugal and the Dutch system really surprises me. Especially what concerns entry to secondary school. Many kids, especially coming from foreign countries have difficulty adapting to the Netherlands the first few years they arrive. This whole system of recommendation of levels - mbo, hbo and wo sounds terribly discriminating, to say the least - kids and their parents can have temporary problems and it's not the fate of a school board to decide what the kid should do next with his/her studies! In Portugal until you are 16 ALL kids have the same basic education, with only some subjects allowed to vary according to personal preference. And still it's only up to the pupil and to the parents to decide what the pupil will study till he/she is 18 yrs old, including whether they want to go to University or to a technical school. I find it unbelievable that nobody thinks this system is strange and that no critics are shown in the main page! If you read it from the main page it really sounds like another version of Brave New World, where the ones considered unfit have all their life decided by other people, and are immediately discriminated from the "good ones" to go to a separate section. Also I would like to see some criticism to the fact that public schools have such a bad reputation in the Netherlands and that most schools are religious in nature. This is also something that for a Portuguese or for example for a French person sounds completely unbelievable!! In Portugal most schools have religion only as an optional subject, which most people don't even take, and nowhere is allowed to display religious symbols, including christian ones. In many schools it's not even possible to have religion as subject and children should learn through private means, such as in sunday school or equivalents. I can imagine that many islamic parents are angry about this because they have to choose between indoctrination of their children or their being sent to ghetto schools! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.224.252.10 (talk) 15:32, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you should have a look at this document and see how Portugal ranks opposed to the Netherlands ;)
Seriously, I don't agree. People are not all the same, there will always be differences in their learning abilities. The Dutch system addresses this by offering different levels of education. This benefits the students and the quality education. If you put students of all levels together, the actual level of the education given will have to be "average". This will lead to above-average students getting bored, below-average students not being able to keep up and, consequentially, both groups not achieving their full potential. By differentiating by skill level, every group gets an education tailored to their skills and specific educational needs. This helps to prevent frustration in students because they feel they're asked to perform above or below their capabilities. It's not about discrimination or denying people their chances, but to try and get the best out of every student, without disappointing them. It's one thing wanting to go to university, it's another succesfully completing university. Through "channeling" students into the programmes that fit them best, overall quality is raised, because of programmes not becoming "cluttered" by people who don't belong there. Of course this leads to only the smartest people studying at a university, but in my opinion that's exactly what universities are for.
It's not a means to filter out all mediocre students and give smart students the best chances, it's a means to give all students the best chances. The smartest ones will be able to tap into the full range of their abilities, while the mediocre ones will be able to reach a level they would never have reached if they were just struggling to keep up with the rest. Being realistic and admitting that not everyone is an Einstein, and thus not trying to treat them as such, is not the same as discriminating.
This system works, for students as well as schools, and I think it's one of the reasons the Dutch educational system is as high on the PISA list (the one I linked earlier) as it is. There is not much criticism on this aspect of the educational system from within the Netherlands. There has been a lot of debate about the contents of the individual programmes though, and this might be worth a mention.
Returning to my first comment, I don't think it's meaningful to criticize the Dutch system by comparing it to that of a country that has a lower standard of education.
Regarding the difference between public and "special" education, the scale of this problem is questionable. Most schools that call themselves religious hardly practice the religion. As the article already states: "Practically there is little difference between special schools and public schools, except in traditionally religious areas like Zeeland and the Veluwe (around Apeldoorn)." In some instances, problems have been known to arise, but that's a political debate, and I don't think this is the place for it. --92.69.76.36 (talk) 14:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
I feel the first poster is right, Finland has a similar structure as a suggest with kids in one class until they are 16 years. I believe they have one if not the best education scores on any test in the last couple of years. Comparing The Netherlands with Portugal seems unfair since our GDP per capita is much higher. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.182.191.15 (talk) 21:03, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, in most areas (outside of the Dutch Bible Belt) the "Christian" schools are nominally Christian, they only claim to teach an education inspired by Christian values -- in practice they do not differ much from public schools. The most obvious difference among schools is "white" (mostly children of Dutch people study there) vs. "black" schools (mostly immigrants' offspring study there). Public schools could be either "black" or "white", and the same applies for Christian schools. "Black" schools are generally under-performing, perhaps due to the students not knowing Dutch language good enough or due to coming from lower class backgrounds. Muslim schools are often portrayed in the media as below average (sometimes severely under-performing). Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:47, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Ranking and comparing countries educational systems to state one is better than the other by using percentages of people reaching higher education is by no means an excuse to hide internal problems and does not show how the students came to be where they are. The Dutch system has unnecessary unfair unequal elements and knowingly continues with it. Every year, generation after generation. I have written a little part about the most easily verifiable (and common knowledge in the Netherlands) criticism on the Dutch Educational system. Including the Cito and separation into levels problem and mistakes being made with such. This really should be in here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seeionosphere (talk • contribs) 14:53, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Cleanup of sections of secondary education?

It's all scattered under secondary education... Not very good at that, so I was wondering if someone more experienced could do it?? The Blue Bucket (talk) 16:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect

I completed gymnasium-β in 1974 I did NOT have to do 6 languages and 5 sciences I had to do a total of 7 subjects. I was allowed to do more but it was not required. For a start I could choose either Latin or Ancient Greek. I did not have to do them both to get my degree. Thus this article is IMHO misleading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chris scaife (talk • contribs) 16:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

If you completed gymnasium in 1974, you were part of the first group gymnasium graduates under de "Mammoetwet", which means that indeed your examination was in "only" 7 subjects. Whaledad (talk) 22:22, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Abbreviated levels in lower case

The official word list of the Dutch language (or het Groene Boekje) requires the abbreviations of school levels to be written in lower case, whereas in the past they were all written in upper case. I would like to ask for other people's opinion on this before I start making any changes. But first, let me explain why I propose changing to lower case:

We should deal with the current inconsistency in capitalization:

Although the article on education in the Netherlands consistently uses upper case abbreviations (the former Dutch writing style), there currently is an inconsistency with other articles: the havo article consistently uses lower case, the VMBO article is in upper case but consistently use lower case in the article's body, the vwo article abbreviates to lower case, but continues using upper case in the remainder of the text (therefore it is being inconsistent and confusing), and the vocational university only mentions HBO once, but in upper case.

This inconsistency needs to be dealt with, as it only raises confusion. We can do either of two things: all upper case or all lower case. This extends not only to Education in the Netherlands but also to the other articles mentioned above, where I will make the changes once we have reached consensus.

Pros and cons of "all lower case" versus "all upper case":

  • All lower case would be consistent with our official word list, but does not improve readability as the abbreviations no longer stand out. Changing to lower case would only require the VMBO article to be moved to an article with a lower case title.
  • All upper case generally makes the text more readable and is more consistent with English upper case abbreviating, but is no longer considered proper Dutch. Changing to upper case would require two articles to be moved to an article with an upper case title.

Proposal:

It seems that in page titling, the choice has already been made for lower case, and some articles also apply it to the body text. Articles on Dutch matters usually try to be consistent with the formal Dutch writing style. As a result, I propose that we make the switch to lower case everywhere, even though I am well aware that its greatest downside is that it affects readability in a negative way. In practice, this will lead to the following changes:

  • All abbreviations in this and other articles are changed to lower case according to the word list: vwo, havo, vmbo, hbo, mbo, lts, and vbo (wo is not explicitly mentioned in the word list, but it can be deduced that if vwo is in lower case, wo is too; the same rationale can be applied to tvwo and ghvmbo).
  • The VMBO article is moved to vmbo (the upper case version will still redirect to lower case).

Do I have the consent of others to change the upper case abbreviations to lower case? What are your thoughts? Is there another solution to resolve the inconsistency that I overlooked? Let me know! Thanks for your consideration. -- Eddyspeeder (talk) 11:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Due to an absence of responses, I have made the change in good faith conform WP:Discussion. Consistency in lower case is applied to all pages. Naturally, these changes may still be disputed and discussed. -- Eddyspeeder (talk) 20:02, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
Obviously, it's years later now, but articles on the English Wikipedia should follow English style guidelines, and most of the abbreviations on this page have already since been converted to uppercase; I've made the same changes on the articles for HAVO, VMBO, etc. --V2Blast (talk) 20:42, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

VWO

About the VWO. VWO+ can also mean that you besides your normal VWO things also do some projects about any kind of subject. I am doing it myself and in fact it is a copy of how they on university, but then for younger people. Might they can tell you more at my school. Here the link (Duth website)http://www.helinium.nl/ I hope you can write something about it, because my english is not good enough to explain the whole thing.

The rest of the article is quite good. I did not know that people out of Netherland also know something about our schoolsystem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frisie (talk • contribs) 18:25, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Frisie, thanks for the tip! I indeed see that the vwo-plus page on the Dutch Wikipedia describes it as having a wider scope than the original "atheneum met Latijn". I have added it to my "to do" list, but it may take several weeks before I get around to it. But it will be done eventually ;-) And by the way, I think your English is quite good! --Eddyspeeder (talk) 09:52, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Dead reference link

Reference 1 is a dead link: http://www.lobo.nl/openbaaronderwijsenbijzonderonderwijs/ Thoralor (talk) 06:50, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Brugklas

Some secondary schools, or more than just some, have a system of mixing in the brugklas. So VMBO, HAVO, and VWO are mixed into one class, or just VMBO/HAVO and HAVO/VWO. Based on grades in the first one or two years in such a class, the school makes a decision (together with a parent). Atleast, my school, and I know more did that when I started Gymnasium (which was excluded). But that was eight years ago. User:Deadbuddy 19:34, 17 June 2013

Beroepsonderwijs

I question the translation of beroepsonderwijs as professional education. I would suggest vocational education. A "beroep" may be a profession, but also covers "occupation", for example on identity cards, and vocation, as in vocational education. Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 16:55, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

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Missing info

Puzzled to see no mention here of some unusual aspects of the Dutch system: the school voucher system apparently introduced in 1917 and the concept of pillarisation. - Snori (talk) 00:32, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

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