Extra money for education does not end up in the right place
The Ministry of Education has spent billions in recent years to reduce secondary school classes, to offer teachers more wages and to hire more teachers. Nothing came of it. It is unclear what the money was spent on, say former teacher and econometrician Hans Duijvestijn and mathematics teacher Frans van Haandel.
The Ministry of Education has spent billions in recent years to reduce secondary school classes, to offer teachers more wages and to hire more teachers. Nothing came of it. It is unclear what the money was spent on, say former teacher and econometrician Hans Duijvestijn and mathematics teacher Frans van Haandel.
They conducted research in a personal capacity into lump sum financing in secondary education in the period 2002-2015. Including from the Ministry of Education and the AOb they got information. They share their conclusions on their blog and in online magazine The Correspondent.
Research
Each school board receives money from the government for maintenance, materials and personnel costs, the so-called lump sum. Schools are free to spend this money as they see fit. Checking afterwards is often difficult. 'It is high time for politicians to initiate an investigation into the question of what the public money has been spent on and whether it has been spent effectively', the two teachers say.
Based on the conclusions of the Social Cultural Planning Office, they calculated that secondary education received an extra 1,4 billion euros annually. Their question was: how much of that extra money ends up in the classroom with the teachers? In any case, the money did not go to the deployment of extra teachers. The number of FTEs of teachers increased by 6 percent, the number of students increased more sharply by 12 percent in the period 2002-2015.
The money has not been spent on smaller classes either. You can see this from the student-teacher ratio, the number of students per teacher. In 2002, the student-teacher ratio was 14,4 and has risen to 15,6 in 2015, according to the survey.
Other priorities
According to Haandel and Duijvestijn, the salary of teachers has also lagged behind. Their calculations show that the real wages of teachers have fallen by more than 2002 percent since 2 until 2015. They point out to the political parties that are now working on a coalition that it is good to find out where the money ends up if they donate billions. want to invest in education. 'However, who can guarantee with the current lump sum financing that it will not be shown again in the future that school boards set different priorities?'
The SP has asked parliamentary questions about the investigation to the outgoing State Secretary Dekker of Education. In 2015, a majority of the House served already a motion in which the government is asked to investigate alternatives to the lump sum.
