More supporters at primary school in almost all regions
In the region of South & Central Drenthe, schools in primary and special primary education have received proportionally the most educational support staff (oop) this school year. In (secondary) special education, the IJssel and Rijn region shows the greatest growth spurt in supporters.
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In total, primary education gained nearly 2750 full-time support staff this school year, an increase of 13 percent it appeared recently from the latest personnel figures. This increase can partly be explained by money that has become available from the workload agreement, with which teams have brought in more teaching assistants. 
Implementation organization DUO, that the personnel data annually at the beginning of April publishes, has divided the figures into 39 regions and three types of education: primary education (BAO), special primary education (Sbao) and (secondary) special education.
Regions
For the overviews in this article, primary and special education have been added together, in the sbao, the numbers are often smaller. In South & Central Drenthe, the number of support staff grew by 57 full-time jobs (FTE) or 40 percent. In the Almere region, the growth rate was not much lower at 38. Slightly more than half of all 39 regions in bao and sbao together show an oop growth of at least 20 percent.
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In absolute terms, Southern North Holland (excluding Amsterdam) and the Rijnmond region (excluding Rotterdam) have gained the most oops in primary and special primary education, 237 and 203 FTEs respectively (both an increase of 29 percent). In some northern and southern shrinking regions the number of supporters has barely grown or even decreased.
The picture is different in special education and secondary special education, which both belong to primary education in terms of staff. There, the number of support workers has grown much less strongly, nationally by just under 3 percent. The IJssel and Rhine region stands out. There, (v)so schools have 75 FTE more support staff, or an increase of almost 46 percent. The regions of Noord-Holland Noord and Nijmegen follow at a great distance. Seven regions saw an increase of more than 10 percent.
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A quarter of the (V)SO regions, on the other hand, show a contraction in OOP. Sometimes it concerns a few FTEs, sometimes dozens. At the bottom of the list, regions such as the Achterhoek, Rijnmond and Twente have significantly fewer in-house support staff, according to DUO data. Part of the explanation is probably that in a number of these regions (V)SO has shrunk considerably in size anyway.
