Education Council: ‘Accessibility of education under pressure due to increase in commercial forms of education’.

Education Council: ‘Accessibility of education under pressure due to increase in commercial forms of education’.

The offer of commercial tutoring, exam training, and homework guidance providers is increasing. These forms of private education are becoming more part of regular education. The result is that accessibility, quality, and professional authority are increasingly under pressure. This is stated by the Education Council in a report.

According to the research, two thirds of secondary schools offer homework guidance and about half offer exam training and tutoring. This is a big increase. Since parents have to pay for this, it puts the public nature of education under pressure. These are forms of education that are not affordable for every parent. This increases inequality of opportunity.

Plus points

On the other hand, the council also sees benefits of private education. It gives ‘strong impulses of strengthening, improvement and renewal to education’, they state. More serious is that sometimes boundaries become unclear. ‘It is not always clear to students and parents what is necessary and belongs to the school, and what is extra private offer.’

NP Education

This is partly because private education is in many cases part of the NP Education. For example, secondary schools spend part of that budget on tutoring or training. This is to better cope with study delays during the corona period. ‘These developments cause social and political concern and raise many questions,’ states the council. ‘About whether public money ends up in the right place, about inequality of opportunity, and about how much room there should be for market forces and commerce in publicly funded education.’

Advice

The council therefore advises the government, school governing bodies, and schools to better protect the public nature of education. Schools must think better about ‘what is necessary’ for education and ‘what is nice’ to add. Everything necessary must be free for everyone. The council also calls on politics to get more actively involved.

Advertising ban

The Education Council proposes some more concrete measures. For example, they want a ban on advertising commercial products within schools. This better protects the public nature of schools. This is a good thing, because Lobke Vlaming (director of Ouders & Onderwijs) already pointed this out. Last summer, it disturbed her that students received advertisements for a commercial homework institute in their school books. This led to many reactions on Twitter. This is also explicitly mentioned as a point of attention in the report.

Parent contribution

Regarding the parent contribution, the council also proposes to ‘uncouple it from the individual child’. This means no longer tracking who has paid. Another option is to cap the contribution. This way, parents with less money are not discouraged by the requested amount. ‘Because’, the council states, ‘even though parent contribution is voluntary, it sends a signal.’

More information?

Do you want to read more about the council’s conclusions? The full report can be downloaded on the website of the Education Council. For questions about the situation at your child’s school, you can of course contact our staff. By email: vraag@oudersenonderwijs.nl or by phone: 088-6050101. We are available on working days between 09.30-12.30 and 13.00-16.00.