AOb about secondary education: 'Our tax money does not end up well in the classroom'
How will Minister Dennis Wiersma ensure that the millions of euros that secondary education receives each year will contribute to reducing the workload for teaching staff? That is what the Socialist Party (SP) asks the education minister in response to an opinion piece by AObdirector Jelmer Evers in the daily newspaper Telegraaf.
Picture: Type tank
To reduce the workload in secondary schools, the Cabinet set aside EUR 300 million annually this spring. A nice amount, thinks AObdirector for secondary education Jelmer Evers. But so far it has not been possible to get the money in the right place. "School boards get a bag of money and we don't really know what it is spent on anymore." Evers wants to prevent the same from happening with this workload money.
Evers wrote an opinion article that was published on Tuesday 24 May in newspaper Telegraaf. 
In it, the AObdirector that the union has been trying for years to make agreements with the association of school boards, the VO council, about reducing work pressure. 'But we don't get any further than 'agreements must be made about this in the teams at school'. And we have known that. We keep hearing from our members: "the pressure is only getting higher, the dropout rate is increasing, the shortages are getting bigger". And in the end, Dutch education is the loser.
Control
The SP shares concerns about the spending of the 300 million euros. MP Peter Kwint asks Minister Dennis Wiersma whether he also wants this money to reach teachers as soon as possible. And whether the minister thinks that teaching staff should be given a say in that amount. The minister initially has three weeks to answer these parliamentary questions.
If it is up to the AOb This structural amount is used, among other things, to reduce the number of teaching hours per week for teachers. The AOb want to go to a maximum of 24 lessons per week*De AOb bet on 24 teaching hours (starting moments) per week. This means that the collective labor agreement should put a brake on too many teaching hours/starting moments per week and the resulting work pressure. For example, lessons of 40 or 45 minutes allow teachers in some schools to schedule 28 lessons per week. Ultimately, the AOb step-by-step back to a maximum of 20 starting moments. A maximum has already been included in the collective labor agreement of Ons Middelbaar Onderwijs (OMO), a large employer in North Brabant. "So it is possible," says Evers..
Together against work pressure
On Wednesday 8 June, the AOb a national campaign. Everyone who works in secondary education is asked to discuss the workload with his school board that afternoon. The AOb has made material for this action. Check it (partly central) program, the step-by-step plan of the action and a sample questionnaire that you can submit to your school board.
