Slob: 'Municipality must visit a pupil who does not attend classes at home'
If students fail to attend online classes or are unable to contact them, schools should contact the Compulsory Education Office in their municipality. 'Schools are the eyes and ears of the municipalities', Education Minister Arie Slob writes in a letter to the Lower House.
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Normally, teachers see their students in the classroom every day. With the corona virus, this is not the case now, so that some students disappear 'from the radar'. Slob therefore announces in his brief recommends various actions to reach these students again and sees an important role for the municipalities.
Teachers who do not get in touch with a student and have already taken all kinds of steps can contact the Education Compulsory Office in the municipality, Deborah Jongejan, spokesperson for Slob, confirms by email. 'On the basis of this report and in consultation with the parties involved, it is determined who can best come to the door of the student. This could be, for example, the school attendance officer, but also a youth or family coach or someone from the district team.' This has been coordinated with the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG). "They have shared this with all municipalities," the spokesperson writes. 'The intention is that this route will be followed everywhere.'
This route is intended to be followed everywhere
Not different
VNG spokesperson Sonja van der Graaf says that the situation has actually not changed enormously, because schools normally also contact the municipality if a student does not follow the lessons. "Above all, schools should continue to do that."
Many teachers and schools do everything they can to get in touch with their students. They also notice this at Ingrado, the association of attendance officers. “Often there is already a structure in the school with a care coordinator to enforce compulsory education,” says Carry Roozemond director-manager of Ingrado. “Via the register in DUO, schools indicate if a student is not there, the municipality will then be notified. Then the question is: how do we tackle it, this can be done in various ways and can result in a door visit by the attendance officers. Our association now has training courses for door-to-door discussions. ”
Support
The city of The Hague is one of the cities that is already well underway. They immediately started working on it when the schools closed. “Not to enforce, but to see what is needed at that moment,” says a spokesman for education alderman Hilbert Bredemeijer from The Hague. “In some cases we even go outside. This can also be done with someone from school, a family coach or the community police officer, based on the idea of supporting students and seeing what it takes to get them involved. ”
Now they set out, sometimes with a community police officer, with the idea of supporting students and seeing what it takes to get them involved
In The Hague, the Compulsory Education office comes into action when the schools in primary, secondary and secondary vocational education are no longer able to make contact. "For example, we have made letters in five languages and if necessary we go by the door ourselves to see what help is needed." The spokesperson says that in the city of The Hague, of the nearly 80 children, 203 students are currently out of the picture.
The head of the Regional Office of Compulsory Education Holland Rijnland Senne Janssen can confirm that contacting compulsory education organizations makes sense. “The contact between school and student sometimes recovers surprisingly quickly after a phone call from one of our consultants. Sometimes parents are very happy that we call. They also find it difficult to put their adolescents to work, ”says Janssen. “After Slob's call, we also make physical visits if we are unable to reach students or parents by phone”.
In the first week, schools were busy setting up online lessons, now they notice at the office that the reports are increasing. Janssen: "Up to now it concerns a few dozen reports." Communication is especially important. “There are often several parties involved and it concerns different types of children. In addition, it is different in every region. ”
Poll
In a poll by the General Association of School Leaders (AVS) 78 percent of the schools indicate that they now have a picture of every student. At 22 percent of the schools, an average of four children were left out of the picture. The poll was completed by 968 primary and secondary school leaders and published today.
In addition, 83 percent of school leaders indicate that there is good cooperation between the municipalities to arrange emergency accommodation. In his letter to the Lower House last week, Slob wrote that the monitoring of children in vulnerable positions 'is being started and that municipalities that have already made a start with the supervision often offer tailor-made solutions.' In some cases, schools also choose to receive these children at school. "It concerns a single pupil up to about fifteen per school," said the minister.
