Lower house discusses parent involvement in vocational education.

Lower house discusses parent involvement in vocational education.

The House of Representatives spoke on Wednesday 13 September with the caretaker Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf about secondary vocational education (mbo). Ouders & Onderwijs raised several issues, including parent participation, the cost of learning materials and challenges for students with support needs.

Parent involvement and participation in mbo

René Peters from the CDA asked for extensive attention to the importance of parent involvement and participation in mbo. Parent involvement helps among other things to prevent dropout, to make a good study choice and a good internship progress, he states. The challenges regarding parent councils in mbo were also discussed extensively.

There is a legal possibility to set up a parent council at an mbo school, but no school has such a council in operation. To address this situation, Peters encouraged the minister to actively inform schools about setting up parent committees and support them in carrying this out. The minister agreed to the intention to consult with the umbrella organization of mbo schools. Ouders & Onderwijs has indicated it would like to be involved in this.

Problems when switching from special secondary education to mbo

Research by Regioplan shows that many students from special secondary education drop out when moving to mbo. The lack of continuous support is a frequently mentioned cause. Peter Kwint from SP and Lisa Westerveld from GroenLinks attended the presentation of the research and also raised this point in the debate. The minister will look at improving support and will return to this in his ‘attack plan for early school leaving’.

Citizenship education in mbo

Following an advisory committee, Minister Dijkgraaf wants to introduce some tightening of citizenship education in mbo. Citizenship is an important part of an mbo program. Here a student learns how to make decisions that affect the future and how to deal with social issues.

Among others, members Kwint (SP) and El Yassini (VVD) wondered if this went far enough. Together with member Peters (CDA) they insisted on a mandatory exam so citizenship is really tested. According to them, schools would then be more likely to offer (good) citizenship education. However, the minister first wants to see if the tightening already leads to sufficient results in the coming years.