Education inspectorate visits fewer schools than promised.

Education inspectorate visits fewer schools than promised.

Since 2007 the education inspectorate promised the House of Representatives that it would inspect primary and secondary schools every four years. Now it appears this has not happened at many schools. This comes from research by NOS and Nieuwsuur.

What is going on? 

The education inspectorate has not kept its promise to the House of Representatives to visit every primary school every four years. Since 2014 many fewer schools have been checked than agreed. The House of Representatives was not well informed about this for years. State Secretary Mariëlle Paul informed the House of Representatives about this in a letter. 

Investigative journalists from Nieuwsuur have been researching for some time how many schools the education inspectorate actually visits. The inspectorate had no clear answer to this question. Registration is not in order, so it is unclear which schools have and have not been visited. It did become clear that between 2014 and 2019 a third of the schools were not visited by the education inspectorate. In 2021 the inspectorate ended the four-year visit. Since then only a third of the schools have been visited. 

Response Ouders & Onderwijs 

Lobke Vlaming, director at Ouders & Onderwijs, says in an interview on Radio 1 that this news is not a big surprise. Ouders & Onderwijs has received signals for a long time that the inspectorate visits schools much less often than agreed. Lobke Vlaming calls for an education inspection that is close to the practice of the classroom and the school. The quality of education must be visible in the classroom, and the supervision should mainly focus on that.