Stopping flexible teaching hours experiment is a 'step back'
Education Minister Arie Slob's decision not to make school hours more flexible nationally is 'extremely disappointing'. That says director Hans van der Most of the Sterrenschool Apeldoorn, who has been participating in the experiment with flexible teaching times since 2010. "It is also a step back for appropriate education."
Picture: Type tank
In the experiment, which started in 2010, more than ten primary schools were given the opportunity to deviate from the standard school holidays and the standard five-day school week.
According to the Education Inspectorate, the flexibilisation is at the expense of the quality of education. "Five of the original twelve schools have dropped out of the experiment due to quality problems," the minister writes in a letter to the House of Representatives. 'Introducing flexible teaching time requires flexibility in the organization of education. And that demands a lot from schools and staff.'
Quite spicy
School leader Van der Most will not deny the latter. Because if all students can fly in and out freely throughout the year, each student should in fact follow a personalized learning pathway. "In the beginning it is quite tough for the teachers."
But teachers quickly notice that they can respond to this in a handy way. Van der Most: “Suppose there are ten students on vacation in one particular week. You may want to postpone an instruction on a difficult part of your curriculum until the following week. Or you give that instruction to the smaller group in that one week, to present it to the students who are back the next week. You can make all kinds of choices. ”
If the inspectorate says that the quality of education at some experimental schools is not up to par, we do not feel addressed
Three years after the experiment had started, the Sterrenschool Apeldoorn did not have the quality of education fully on track. “A number of things were still wrong,” says Van der Most, “but that has now been resolved. If the inspectorate says that the quality of education is not up to standard at some experimental schools, we do not feel it is addressed. ”
Risks
'A few schools, with a strong school organization and a well thought-out approach, can make teaching time more flexible and at the same time safeguard or expand the quality of education', the Education Inspectorate notes. 'But other schools are unable to do this for various reasons.' Letting go of the legal provisions therefore entails risks for the quality of education.
That is why Minister Slob has now decided not to expand the law. All schools must continue to adhere to the current teaching times, and the schools that participated in the experiment must return to the old situation.
Gymnasium advice
Van der Most thinks that is a shame - also for suitable education. Because these individual learning lines allow his school to offer excellent customized education. “And there is a need for that. Since 2010 we have grown from 60 to 170 students. And those are really not all students who get a gymnasium advice with two fingers in their nose. ”
The board of the Sterrenschool is now looking at whether the flexibilisation of the teaching time can be achieved in another way. “The hatchet has not yet been buried,” notes Van der Most.
