Access to quality education now depends too much on the wallet of parents. Therefore, the role of the growing number of commercial tutoring, exam training and homework guidance providers in primary and secondary education needs to be carefully considered. These companies can increase the inequality of opportunity in education. That is what the Education Council says in an advisory report that will be published on Tuesday.
According to the council, the government and school boards are not sufficiently aware of the risks that this development entails. The Education Council advises schools to think more carefully about ‘what is necessary’ for education and ‘what is nice’ to do with it. Everything that is needed should be freely accessible to everyone.
The advice states that the government must also ensure that sufficient money is available to provide good education, so that schools do not have to rely on tutoring, homework guidance or exam training from private providers. The council also wants a ban on advertising commercial products within schools. According to this advertising ban, pupils should, for example, not receive brochures for typing courses or discounts on exam training by mail from their school.
In secondary education, two thirds of the schools offer homework support, about half of the schools offer exam training and tutoring. Parents often pay hefty sums for this, which, according to the Education Council, threatens the public nature of education. The expensive extra lessons increase the inequality of opportunity and there is a division in the class, says the Council.
‘Government is not present’
“The private supply has many buyers and has been able to grow unimpeded, partly because the government did not intervene. School boards also give private providers room, without being sufficiently aware of the consequences,” the report states. The council further states: “The balance between public and private has tipped to one side. Private influences have gotten too big a hold on education.”
“We find it a struggle and are increasingly critical of such private providers,” says Duco Adema. He is chairman of the Executive Board of the Cedergroep, which manages five schools in the Amsterdam region. “We stopped a certain organization just before corona because of the high costs and have now started homework guidance at that school with teaching assistants and students.”
The school pays for this with subsidies and NPO resources, the 8.5 billion euros that the government has released to make up for educational disadvantages caused by the corona pandemic. “We now have enough money, but how do you find the people? That is the most difficult. It is the government’s move, but the government is not present.”
–
Adema sees that the extra training sessions and tutoring start early, for example in group 8 for the Cito test. “That’s the bittersweet thing. Because of that extra training, some of the students reach a higher level. Highly educated parents with good incomes can afford that, but other parents cannot. That separation is getting stronger, also due to the delay caused by corona.”
Erasmus Education offers exam training for both the central final exams and test weeks for students of all ages and levels. “We agree with the Education Council that such training courses should be accessible to everyone,” says director Wieger Maris. “The NPO funds ensure that we can provide more training for all students. But I am afraid that as soon as those subsidies disappear, we will return to the old situation in which parents have to pay for it themselves. As a result, some students will be left out. fall.”
He does not see an advertising ban, as proposed by the Education Council. “It is difficult for parents to make a choice because there are so many different parties active. It creates trust if you are nominated as an organization by a school.” But that also involves a great deal of responsibility, he says. “If the quality is disappointing, they go to another party.”
‘Hard to do without’
Louise Elffers is an education researcher at the AUAS and UvA and director of the Inequality Knowledge Center and conducts research into so-called shadow education. “It is not only the teacher shortage that causes this. Education level increasingly determines your social position. Parents want everything to be taken out of it. It is a certainty that they buy.”
Elffers sees that such tutoring and homework guidance are taking an increasingly permanent place in children’s school careers. “It’s becoming so standard that it’s getting harder to do without.”
The education researcher does have a suggestion for how to solve this: “I don’t think you can avoid the fact that the ministry will come up with extra money so that schools can guide students within the school in all aspects of their learning process. I have no indications that education is getting worse. has become, but the society around it has changed. There is much more at stake for education. That Cito simply counts much more and as a result the demand for schools has changed.”
The Education Council is not opposed to private provision and emphasizes in the advice that it can provide “strengthening, improvement and innovation” in education.
–
