Comment: Optimism and progress
The left-wing opposition is presenting a counter-budget today at the General Considerations, which does include investment in education. Why is the Rutte cabinet blocked on that point? The key lies with the VVD. The party that still sees education as a cost rather than an investment in 'optimism and progress'.
Picture: Type tank
'Education is one of my favourites', said VVD minister Eric Wiebes about the Netherlands' growth agenda. Investing in education is a must, said the Minister of Economic Affairs a day before Prinsjesdag. Can it get any better? But in the next sentence Wiebes states in the interview in the Financial Daily disappointed again. Because he is against higher teaching salaries. 'That does not lead to a higher earning capacity for society.'
Cost item
Perhaps it is because he is a business administrator and not an economist. As a business administrator, personnel is a cost item. The situation is different for economists: investing in education and thus in the education level of the population is, according to this group, profitable in the long term. The return on what is called cold human capital in the economy and skills and talent at school, for example, is great. In the form of a better competitive position, better health, a better salary and, not unimportantly, more intensive social involvement.
Personnel is a cost item for business experts, but it is different for economists
A day after the interview, Minister Wiebes therefore received from it Financial Daily bottom of the bag. "That an investment in teachers is not seen as an investment in society is significant," the paper wrote in the commentary.Stop with the platitudes about education'. Leave the pay gap between primary and secondary education? Leave teaching salaries lower than the private sector? 'It sends the wrong signal in times of an acute teacher shortage,' says the FD. 'The current teacher shortage is detrimental to Dutch youth.'
Wide
You might not immediately expect such a comment from the business newspaper FD, but it clearly shows that the teacher shortage has the full attention of society at large. Not only in education itself or in the opposition. A NOS survey endorses that image. The top priority for the Dutch population is raising salaries in education, healthcare and the police as the destination for the money from the budget surplus.
'Bit stupid'
Now you can still think that Wiebes' statements are a 'little stupid'. If only that were the case, his statements fit perfectly into the image that the VVD has been projecting for years. Before the elections, VVD party leader Mark Rutte said that no billions had to be spent on education. 'All the extra money that was added in the past has not reduced the number of complaints about education.'
Wiebes' statements fit perfectly into the image that the VVD has been projecting for years
Somehow that mantra has gripped the entire cabinet. Because although D66 Member of Parliament Paul van Meenen occasionally knocks on the door of the Torentje with the call for a different education policy, the D66 squadron within the cabinet cannot manage that. A pattern that has already been the case for three Rutte cabinets - with a varying political composition.
Disturbing trend
Political commentary Tom-Jan Meeus from NRC Handelsblad therefore signaled a disturbing trend in government expenditure on Prinsjesdag. An increasingly smaller share goes to education. An increasing share goes to healthcare. Of course, the Netherlands is aging and so an increasing share of the expenditure on care and decent benefits for the elderly would make sense, writes Meeuws. But he turns it around. 'If that is at the expense of the best investment we can make, especially in young people – the hunt, through education for the talent that is hidden in every human being – then it will be at the expense of progress.' And so Meeus argues for investments in education, or as he calls investments 'optimism and progress.'
