Conversation with Rutte about educational investments
Will there be extra money for education? And is that structural or incidental money? Beforehand there are always many question marks and afterwards interpretation differences about 'extra' or 'extra extra'. A preview of the discussion this afternoon between education unions, employers and the cabinet.
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Today the farmers are drawing almost all the attention, but this afternoon there are also consultations on investments in education at the Binnenhof. The presidents of AOb, other unions and the employers' organizations PO Council and VO Council talk to Minister of Education Slob and Prime Minister Rutte. Remarkable, because until recently Slob's message was hard and simple. "As I have said before, there is currently no room to make additional resources available," he said Slob expressed the government's policy in a letter to Parliament after the summer.
Emergency package
This tough attitude was surprising, because the teacher shortage is increasing and the workload is sky-high. Both primary and secondary education have the very highest burnout percentages of all professions. So every reason for the unions to file a claim together with the employers an emergency kit.
Both primary and secondary education have the highest burnout rates of all occupational groups
This package consists of a further salary increase for primary education in order to make the profession more attractive, an impulse for special education and school leaders in that sector. In secondary education it is mainly about reducing the workload by reducing the number of lessons. In total, this will cost more than 400 million euros. Structurally. In other words: every year.
Amount of space
Until recently, the cabinet's message was a resolute njet: education could not count on extra money. According to the political commentator of NRC Handelsblad, that space may have existed, but D66 failed to submit a claim for it in the cabinet meeting. Under pressure from actions, Prime Minister Rutte now seems to be taking over the education dossier, the only question for today is how much space he wants to offer. Because Rutte also used the hard line before the elections: education has received enough.
Under pressure from actions, Prime Minister Rutte now seems to be taking over the education dossier
Not forever
The suggestions that circulated in The Hague last week was that there might be some money left in the education budget here and there. That money could be scraped together for a one-time investment. And perhaps that was true for all government policy, because there is at least four billion euros on the shelf. Due to higher tax revenues and less expenditure than expected. And very maybe there was also something in that foggy investment fund, which we hear less and less about lately. All these solutions are then incidental, one-off or perhaps for two years, but certainly not forever, structural. While the latter is necessary to offer people in education a perspective for the future.
Structural funding is needed to offer people in education a perspective for the future
Brush up
Regardless of whether the cabinet will provide incidental or structural funding, an offer will always be polished up with amounts that have long been agreed and are ready. An old Hague trick to make a negotiation proposal look more beautiful than it is. Minister Slob has already taken this line by being surprised about the 'extra' 285 million euros for the collective labor agreement for primary education. There is nothing there extras because it is an automatic price compensation that every education sector, civil servants and also the minister himself receive.
Prime Minister Rutte went a step further by demanding that a collective labor agreement for primary education must first be established before he wants to think about money for education. It is not unlikely that this amount will be used again today to make a proposal to unions and employers more beautiful than it is.
