General

Ministers: boards must better justify spending education money

School administrators in all education sectors must be more accountable for what they do with education money. That is what education ministers Ingrid van Engelshoven and Arie Slob want. Boards must publicly record how much money their school will receive, what amount they will spend on administrative costs and what the reserves are.

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Picture: National government

The ministers of education announced this yesterday in a letter to the House of Representatives. They respond with the letter to an advice from last July in which the Education Council argues for the retention of the lump sum funding. This is the funding in education: school boards receive a bag of money from the government that they can spend as they see fit. The council wants this funding to continue, but wrote that accountability must be improved. The ministers adopted that advice.

Measures

Various measures will be taken to improve the accountability of school boards. For example, the ministers want to oblige school boards to publish their financial data, such as administrative costs and reserves, in a digital environment. The participation council, the internal supervision and other stakeholders gain a better insight into the finances and can be compared with other school boards. Participation councils in primary and secondary education also have the right of consent on the main lines of the budget, this is already the case in MBO and HBO.

The ministers also let it be known that they share the principle of the Education Council to be cautious about 'target funding'. That is incidental money for problems that arise. It is often not clear afterwards what happened with the money. If this incidental financing is nevertheless used, clear agreements must be made about this, about which boards must account for themselves afterwards.

Schools have a lot of freedom in choosing the lump sum. To this end, public accountability for these public resources may be expected in return

'The boards that lead the way can then set a good example,' says Minister Van Engelshoven in the press release of the ministry about the mandatory accountability of expenditure. "The rest can pull themselves up to that." Her colleague minister Slob says that schools have a lot of freedom with the lump sum. 'Public accountability for these public resources can be expected in return.

Scots

De AOb wants an adjustment of the lump sum. AObchairman Liesbeth Verheggen advice of the Education Council last summer already 'incomprehensible'. “I don't understand why the advice has now also been adopted by the ministry. It does not solve the bottlenecks that we all see. Schools can still transfer the money for teaching staff to the pot for material maintenance. The po council put it nicely: 'if heating costs rise, the groups will become larger'.

In order to ensure that the money is channeled properly, it is necessary to determine in advance what should be done with it, according to the AOb. Verheggen: "We argue for a shot, so that you know what percentage goes to staff and what percentage goes to school maintenance and material matters."

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