Abolition of merger test primary and secondary education perished in senate
The merger test in primary and secondary education will continue to exist. The bill with which the cabinet wanted to abolish this test fell in the Senate this afternoon.
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The coalition of VVD, CDA, D66 and ChristenUnie only got 50Plus and the SGP. With 36 votes in favor and 39 votes against, she drew the short straw. The vote result is a line through the bill of the cabinet that had included the plan in the coalition agreement.
Last September, the House of Representatives - supported by the same parties - adopted the bill. The coalition no longer has a majority in the Senate. During the plenary debate last week, it already appeared that the bill would have a hard time today.
During the plenary debate last week it became clear that the bill would have a difficult time today
Emergency brake
Now the minister remains responsible for assessing merger plans, it is an 'emergency brake' that most parties want to maintain. According to the cabinet - and school boards - this entails a lot of bureaucracy. The AOb was critical of the scrapping of the merger test. 'The practical objections of school boards should never outweigh the human dimension in education. As long as this is insufficiently safeguarded, we think it is unwise to abolish the merger test ', said a letter to the Chamber of the union.
The merger test was adopted unanimously by the House of Representatives in 2010 in response to the wave of mergers in education, which led to large institutions. The specter was the drama surrounding the educational moloch Amarantis.
