Easier calculation of funding secondary schools
Financing secondary schools is becoming easier. That is what Education Minister Arie Slob announced today in a letter to the House of Representatives. Funding is now too complex and means that school boards are not always able to make good financial planning.
Picture: National government
As of today, the bill to simplify funding in secondary education is open to consultation† 'The current funding of secondary education is complex, opaque and contains (unintentionally) guiding incentives', the minister writes. his letter to the Chamber.
Start of July published the government's advisory body, the Education Council, also issued an advisory report advising less complex funding.
unjust
Current funding means that schools do not always receive the same amount for the same type of pupil. A community school now receives more money for a HAVO student than a school community with only HAVO, writes the VO Council, the representative of the school boards in secondary education. It can ensure that school boards do not want to cooperate, while this is necessary due to shrinking pupil numbers.
That has to be done differently and, above all, simpler. Now school administrators need more than XNUMX pieces of data to calculate how much money they get from the government. Minister Slob reduces this number to four, so that schools can calculate much more easily what their funding is.
Fixed amount
In the new method, schools will from now on receive a fixed amount per location and per pupil in the lower or upper years. For example, a fixed amount for junior and senior students in general education. And also a fixed amount per student in the upper years of pre-vocational secondary education and practical education.
The new calculation means that some schools receive less money. This applies to 10 percent of school boards, Slob reports. The minister calls this percentage 'defensible'. These schools lose more than 3 percent of funding. The minister is meeting these schools with a compensation scheme.
The VO council is pleased with the simpler financing that the council has drawn up together with the ministry. Well points the Council on a possible growth of categorical schools (with one type of education), because the community schools in the new model will not receive more money.
D66 proposal
In his letter, Slob also responded to the proposal D66 MP Paul van Meenen to send the money no longer to school boards, but directly to schools themselves. Teachers and school leaders can then jointly determine what they will spend the money on so that it actually ends up in the classroom. Slob understands the wish, but believes that there is a huge system change. "This requires a fundamental conversation," said the minister.
Slob hopes to submit his bill to the House of Representatives before the summer of 2019. The new funding must come into effect on January 1, 2021.
