The Dutch school system.

The Dutch school system: public and special education

The Dutch school system is the result of a typical Dutch compromise. Unlike in many other countries, public and special education exist equally side by side. The freedom of education brings equal rights to funding by the government. The freedom of education concerns three aspects:

1. The foundation of a school; citizens are free to found a school.
2. The direction of the education; the basis of the school can be religious, political, or educational.
3. The organization of the education: within limits this brings some freedom in material and teaching method.

The principal equality of public and special education followed a long school dispute.

School dispute

The start of the school dispute came during the French time in the Netherlands (1795-1813) with the principle of separation of church and state. Until that time, the Dutch Reformed Church had control of schools and there was only one school system. Under the influence of France, education became a state matter. Separate Christian schools were allowed to continue with government permission but did not receive government money.

The public school did have a Christian layer. The School law of 1806 stated that the public school had to educate to ‘all Christian and social virtues’. In other areas, the law was stricter for the public school: teachers had to teach class lessons and be qualified as teachers. Parents had to pay school fees.

Most public schools gave a mild form of Protestant teaching, but many Protestants found this not enough. Anti-revolutionary Groen van Prinsterer, for example, worked for a much more religious form of education. Abraham Kuyper, leader of the anti-revolutionaries, worked for special schools besides public ones. Protestants got support from the Catholics. The Catholics gave King William I in 1840 a list of complaints about their poor position. Education was central on the list. Public education was often Protestant and left no space for Catholic teaching.

The education pacification

The fight for special education got support from an unexpected side. In the constitution of 1848, liberal Thorbecke stressed freedom of education. Thorbecke, as a liberal, supported public education more but thought everyone could found their own school if there were good teachers. This gave the school dispute a big boost: the right to special education was realized with the 1848 constitution. What was missing was money – financial equality. Political parties ARP, CHU, and the Catholic Electoral Association had big religious differences, but shared the political fight for equality of special and public education. In principle and financially. They kept fighting.

Political opponents were liberals and socialists. They defended public education and were against any government funding for Christian schools. They believed good education was neutral education. Liberals and socialists had one political goal more important than public education: universal male suffrage. This needed a constitutional change with a qualified majority in parliament. For this, the support of religious parties was needed.

After years of political struggle, a compromise came in 1917. In exchange for the introduction of universal male suffrage, special education became constitutionally equal to public education. Also financially. From then on, special schools got as much government money as public schools. This new situation was fixed in the Primary Education Act of 1920. The end of the school dispute, called the ‘education pacification,’ was a fact. Together with public education, special education now forms the school system in the Netherlands.