Secondary schools ignore school advice
Since 2014, the advice of primary schools must, in principle, determine at what level pupils end up in secondary education. In practice, secondary schools sometimes refuse students on the basis of previously completed Cito tests. Underprivileged students are particularly affected.
Last school year, internal supervisor Ariëtte Vlot switched from a primary school with mainly white children of highly educated parents to a school with an opposite population. And immediately inequality of opportunity became a topic. Because where Amersfoort secondary schools are usually eager for 'Berg children', Vlot's former students, she now had to talk like Brugman to get two group 8 students to start at the recommended school level after the summer.
The parents of both students did not speak the Dutch language, says Vlot. This invariably results in low Cito scores, especially in the earlier years of primary school. At the same time, the team saw children with a positive work attitude, who made developmental leaps in groups 7 and 8 and often scored better on method tests than before Cito. The school advice for both of them was: basic pre-vocational secondary education.
But the pre-vocational secondary education school where the students were registered did not want to accept it. Vlot: “We got 'no' on paper, without a phone call or observation.” She contacted them, but could not agree with the argumentation: “Based on data from the Cito pupil tracking system, the secondary school thought practical education suited these pupils better. They wanted to prevent runoff.”
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Additional requirements
For almost nine years now, school advice has been leading in the transition between primary and secondary education. This means that the group 8 teacher indicates which type of secondary education best suits a pupil. Only special secondary schools may set additional requirements: think of bilingual education, top sports schools or technasia.
Some regions also have placement guides, but they have no formal status, as can be read in every government brochure. The Ministry of Education wants promising advice. That is why the teacher - and often also other members of the team - analyzes learning performance, but also looks at 'soft' student characteristics such as attitude to work, motivation and self-confidence.
Since the same summer of 2014, primary schools are legally obliged to keep a pupil monitoring system (lvs). Test scores from such an lvs system are often shared with the secondary school as part of a 'warm transfer'. The vast majority of schools opt for Cito's pupil monitoring system, which has been the market leader in language and arithmetic tests for children for decades.
Back to the secondary school that ib'er Vlot had to deal with. He turned out to be adamant: “At a certain point, time is running out and you want clarity for the students and the parents.” Vlot started an official complaints procedure, because the parents were unable to do so. In the end, the girl was admitted, but not the boy. “It was too late in the school year for him to wait for the procedure.”
Gnaw
Vlot found a good place for the boy at a vocational school. But the state of affairs and the contrast with her previous school continue to gnaw at her. "Because this is exactly what we don't want: it is precisely these students who should be given the opportunities that we all give them."
Juliëtte van der Meer, an ib'er from the same city, recognizes the problem. Already earlier she told the Education magazine about secondary schools requesting the complete test history of primary school students. In recent years, Van der Meer has also experienced a number of incidents at various secondary schools in which it was difficult or impossible to place students at the level of the school advice.
And she also works at a school with many underprivileged students.
Pupils with a non-Dutch background often catch up
Van der Meer: “Students with a non-Dutch background often start at a disadvantage compared to their Dutch peers. But they are catching up in the last years of primary school.” A small study at her school shows that this group of children grows enormously in the last two or three years of primary school. “We suspect that this development will continue in secondary education, but then children must be given the opportunity to do so.”
Test data
A primary school director from Central Netherlands did not let a refusal go over her side last school year. Because of the relationship with the VMBO school in question, she wishes to remain anonymous, but the case is comparable: the secondary school where the pupil had registered did not want to place him at the recommended school level because of 'the test data and the home situation', says the director: “It was a student with a Syrian background.”
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Picture: Rosa Snijders
The headmaster looked higher up, with the board, after which the student was eventually placed. She realizes: “This boy has been lucky to have someone who sinks his teeth into it. I can imagine that colleagues do not get around to this at all. Then this child might not have been in the right place. But above all: it should not be necessary.”
There is still insufficient confidence in the school advice
Dutch teacher Duygu Donmez, at that time still working as a group-8 teacher in the Schilderwijk district in The Hague, also got a call from the care coordinator of a secondary school last spring. “She didn't know what to do with the file of a registered student. In her opinion, the results from the pupil monitoring system fit better with practical education than with pre-vocational basics/management: the advice we had given the pupil.”
After a long and difficult telephone conversation, the school was willing to accept the student, but only with learning support. Donmez: “The only thing we had indicated was that the student could use homework assistance. You would expect that to be standard in the package.”
Inequality of opportunity
Donmez emphasizes that when she started as a teacher fifteen years ago, the inequality of opportunity was greater than now. “At the time, secondary schools could still refuse children based on their zip code. Fortunately, that is no longer the case.” At the same time, she still experiences insufficient confidence in the school advice. “The primary school knows the students so well. We follow them in their results, but also in their attitude to work, for example.”
Donmez therefore advocates more contact with secondary schools. “Actually, we know too little about what is going on in secondary schools, what is expected of students. And vice versa, they do not know what we offer up to and including group 8.”
We give the school advice very carefully
But it can also be the other way around. The tenacious school principal from Central Netherlands only shared results from the pupil tracking system with a previous employer after placement in secondary school. “That is exceptional, but I support it. The idea of a warm handover between primary and secondary education is sympathetic, but I think it is better not to provide LVS data until pupils have been placed.”
She continues: “We give the school advice very carefully. The IB'er looks at it, the teachers, me as director. Why does high school have to pee on that too?” ib'er Vlot from Amersfoort also tends to share less with secondary schools. “You get the idea that sharing test data in this way hinders equality of opportunity.”
Primary school teachers often do not need tests
This spring published Pointer, an investigative journalism platform of KRO-NCRV, about test stress among primary school children. In a questionnaire, completed by four hundred teachers from groups 5 to 8, 76 percent of the teachers indicated that they do not need the tests of the pupil monitoring system to estimate whether a child understands the subject matter. The lvs system is there to monitor students, according to 96 percent. At the same time, 63 percent of teachers believe that the aim of the lvs system is to determine the exit level for secondary education.
Watch the Pointer broadcast on test stress
Note: the transition between po and vo will change
Starting next school year, the timing of the school advice, the final test and the registration for secondary school will change. Minister of Education Dennis Wiersma wants to combat inequality of opportunity with a shorter time span between the provisional school advice and the final test.
The final test, which every Dutch primary school pupil takes in group 8, functions as a second opinion for the school advice. If the result of the final test is higher than the teacher's advice, the school advice will be adjusted upwards, unless the primary school has very good arguments not to do so. Downward adjustment is not possible.
By reducing the period between the provisional school advice and the final test, parents have less time to let their children practice for the final test. And less test training promotes equality of opportunity, the minister argues.
In addition, there will be a central registration week for secondary school. In 2024, all pupils will register for secondary education in the same week with their final school advice in hand. For example, children with adjusted advice should have an equal chance of being placed at the school they most want to go to. That is about 17.500 children every year, calculated the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).
From 2023-2024:
- Group 8 students will receive their provisional school advice between 10 and 31 January.
- The final test - which will be called the transfer test from then on - will be taken in the first or second full week of February. The results of the transfer test will be known no later than 15 March.
- Students and their parents will receive the final school advice no later than 24 March. Subsequently, all students in the Netherlands register at a secondary school between March 25 and March 31.
