Lobke Vlaming in the Trouw: “We must stop putting children in boxes”.

Lobke Vlaming in the Trouw: “We must stop putting children in boxes”.

After eight years Lobke Vlaming says goodbye as director of Ouders & Onderwijs. In November she starts at the Youth Education Fund. Eline van Suchtelen of newspaper Trouw spoke with her about her time at Ouders & Onderwijs and her views on Parental involvement, student monitoring systems and tailored education.

Parental involvement

During her years at Ouders & Onderwijs, Lobke spoke with hundreds of parents worried about their child. According to her, parents are not always seen fairly. Parents are not always the interfering ‘helicopter parents’ people think they are.

“They can never really do it right. They are either too involved or indifferent,” she says in the interview.

According to Lobke, many parents may find it difficult to approach a school and thus wait too long before sharing their concerns with the school. “For every parent you think is too involved, there may be five parents who very much wanted to discuss something with you.”

Student monitoring systems

Lobke is also critical of the way children are monitored and assessed. Student monitoring systems put too much emphasis on measuring and judging. This increases pressure to perform and locks in students too much,

“In education we are constantly putting children in boxes, based on what they can and cannot do. We must stop that.”

Tailored education

When asked if parents’ requests for help have changed over the years, she says there are still many children who get stuck when they need more support.

“What remains are the children who get stuck because they need something extra that is not available in regular education. Unfortunately, I see little improvement there. The bureaucratic way tailored education is organized keeps leading to conflicts.”

According to Lobke, good tailored education remains a big problem. Because of lack of time, knowledge, and support, children are too often passed from one place to another, do not end up in the right place, or may not go to school at all. “We need to organize education much more around children, instead of moving children around all the time.”

You can read the full interview here:

Want to make a difference for parents too? See the vacancy here for director-governor Ouders & Onderwijs.