Education Council is concerned about the elaboration of the teacher register
The Education Council, an adviser to the government, is concerned that the teacher register will become a 'technical-bureaucratic exercise'. The council is in favor of the teacher register, but the implementation must be different.
It's in today published advice of the Education Council. In it, researchers are considering the draft Decree (Teacher Register Decree) drawn up by the Ministry of Education. That decision sets out, among other things, the principles and procedures for the re-registration criteria and for approving activities that teachers can do for the register.
The judgment of the Education Council is sharp. The current design of the teacher register does not match the goal: to guarantee that teachers are and remain competent. In an additional press release, chair Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink says: 'Setting up complicated structures and decision-making procedures with committees and mandates will land the register of teachers on barren soil.'
Simplicity
In its advice, the Council therefore argues for more simplicity, because only then can the register help to improve the quality of education. It is now really too far removed from the practice in schools, the council thinks. "In this decision, the emphasis is too much on ticking off separate activities," says an information officer for the council.
The Council is very concerned about the structures of advisory committees, approving training courses and other decision-making regarding the register. 'The attention is shifting to administrative actions instead of actual skills maintenance', according to the council. 'Many separate decisions about re-registration and validation are provided for, all of which can lead to objections and appeals. The Council considers it impracticable to properly and carefully assess the re-registration of some 230.000 teachers and the total range of activities through national advisory committees of limited size.'
Henriëtte Maassen van den Brink, chair of the Education Council: 'Setting up complicated structures and decision-making procedures with committees and mandates will land the teacher register on barren soil.'
Bureaucratic exercise
For example, you can avoid a bureaucratic exercise by working with portfolios. The professional group can then itself agree which requirements the portfolio must meet for re-registration.
According to the Education Council, the participants' meeting (from the Education Cooperative), which contributes ideas about re-registration and validation for activities, is too small and not very representative. The participants' meeting mainly consists of teachers who had already registered themselves with the voluntary register.
More clearly
The Education Council also refers to the competence requirements. They should be formulated more clearly. "The expectation was that these were further elaborated and that it would be clear what the minimum requirements would be."
Another point that bothers the council is that an ICT program is already being worked on, while the re-registration criteria are not yet clear at all.
Nevertheless, the Council is in favor of the introduction, but it must be done in a different way. The Council does not consider the teacher shortages a reason not to introduce the register. "That's another problem," he said. This must also be addressed, but is no reason to abandon the focus on quality.
