The education polder gets bogged down in a meeting swamp

Tekst Arno Kersten - Redactie Onderwijsblad - 6 december 2021 - 12 Minuten om te lezen

All images for this article: Type tank

It's all in the news that last Thursday of October. Students struggle with cognitive and emotional disadvantages due to corona, especially in pre-vocational secondary education. At the same time, many schools struggle with the manpower needed for extra guidance and support. The findings come from the first interim report on the National Education Program (NPO), which the Ministry of Education made public at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Also with the AOb has been looking forward to the report, it deals with a subject that affects almost all teaching staff. The week before, all kinds of educational organizations from the ministry received an outline presentation about the monitor. A PowerPoint with preliminary findings, subject to confidentiality. A policy officer from the AOb is also present and taking notes. She doesn't get to see more than that. Despite a request, attendees are not sent the presentation.

Four hours before the monitor becomes public, the PO council already sends an extensive response to the press, under embargo. The sector council will then already have the report

Four hours before the monitor becomes public, the PO council already sends an extensive response to the press, under embargo. The sector council will then already have the report. Not surprising, because he is closely involved in the evaluation process. Together with the ministry, the Education Inspectorate, slo and the secondary education council, the PO council is part of an important steering committee that supervises the investigations. A 'broad' steering committee, as the ministry calls it, but in which employee organizations have not been asked.

irritation

Due to the corona pandemic, new conference tables have been added in the already overcrowded education polder. That polder has dozens of large and small consultations on a range of topics such as the NPO, corona protocols, the labor market, competences, teacher training to name a few. The list of participating parties is sometimes dizzying. During the consultations about the implementation of the NPO support package, no fewer than twenty organizations are on the mailing list.

“The problem is not that there is too little consultation”, says Thijs Roovers, AOb-director for primary education. On the contrary, his agenda is filling up so quickly that he has to make hard choices, just like his AOb-colleagues. “But I especially see that educational staff often only come to the table after the important decisions have already been made. Then it is actually still mainly about the implementation, and sometimes only about the periods and commas.”

In particular, I see that teaching staff often only come to the table after the important decisions have already been made

Take the NPO. Documents that NRC requested earlier this year in reliance on the Government Information (Public Access) Act show that in the run-up to drawing up the program, the sector councils were more likely to sit down with the ministry than the trade unions and other organisations. Last summer there was considerable irritation at the consultation table when it turned out that the sector councils had already received the so-called funding scheme earlier, while all other parties were asked by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to respond the next morning - in the end they were given a few extra days. The AOb wanted to prevent the billions from the aid package from being absorbed into the lump sum, but that was a long time ago. The right of consent of the participation council at school was also AOb worked out too vaguely.

It is also questionable whether it is always wise to join. That's how the felt AOb there is little in the way of discussing the teacher shortage at the national consultation table. “In our opinion, structural investments are crucial for combating the teacher shortage, but it was not allowed to be about that,” says Roovers. “Now when I look at the persistent messages about classes being sent home or the decreased influx at the teacher training colleges, I wonder: what has all that talk yielded in recent years?”

And sometimes it is just not clear what a consultation table is for, such as with the Growth Fund, the investment pot of billions in incidental money. AOb-chairman Tamar van Gelder: “Participation is different from participating in decision-making. Are teaching staff really involved in educational decisions? New."

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Courage

The criticism of the education polder is not new. Research to 'management in education' showed in 2017 how educational ambitions from The Hague get stuck in practice. 'All management and policy initiatives added together turn out to be too much, mutually contradictory, follow each other too quickly, and above all: leave too little professional space. This is caused by the fact that the government does not direct the school boards and schools itself, but does so indirectly, through diverse networks of countless organisations', concluded the researchers, including Edith Hooge, currently chair of the Education Council. 'Education management and policy are characterized by a one-way street: it is decided and made for people in educational practice, usually without involving them.'

Has anything changed since then? “No”, answers lecturer public governance Henno Theisens at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, who was involved in the research at the time. “That is not incompetence or malicious intent on the part of the ministry or school boards, but that's how we set up the decentralized system. And nothing has changed in that regard. The research did encourage people to think and have conversations. I am also sometimes asked by the ministry to contribute ideas about how education can be better managed. But structural changes take a lot of time and political courage.”

Who owns the education? At least not from teachers and parents, we can safely say

Frustration is growing in political The Hague. While school boards experience an increasing burden of accountability, the House of Representatives is regularly upset about the lack of insight, direction and control over the billions in public education money. “Whose is the education? At least not from teachers and parents, we can safely establish that," says MP Paul van Meenen of D66, the governing party that is preparing for a second cabinet participation in a row. “Education no longer belongs to anyone. Perhaps most of all from school boards, but not completely. Education is one big decentralization and pretty much the only one that is no longer under democratic control. It all happened with the best of intentions, but if you see what we ended up with: a spaghetti of agencies. Look at the teacher shortage or inequality of opportunity, you have to conclude that it has become very difficult to make things better.”

According to Van Meenen, the position of teachers, school leaders and other staff is far too limited. “We have been trying to change that for years by strengthening employee participation, but I don't think that is enough. We need to rediscover the school as a unit and lift it out of that policy spaghetti. A positive example is the work pressure equipment, the team was really up to it. It's one of the few times you really say: we were planning something, we wanted to leave it to schools and teachers and damn, it happened." In the meantime, his party has had a proposal to transfer education money to schools instead of to school boards from now on hanging above the market. According to Van Meenen, because it is "very complicated" to change the legislation.

The agreements that education ministers conclude directly with the associations of school boards are a thorn in his side. “A bag of money is put on the table and vague agreements are made. In the meantime, those agreements eliminate any form of control and authority, both on the part of the unions and that of the House of Representatives. Administrative agreements are democratic death in the pot.”

Control

About the balance of power in the decentralized education polder appeared last summer in didactic a tantalizing one contribution, written in a personal capacity by chemistry teacher Arjan Linthorst from Meppel. Like the Ministry of Education, the PO Council and VO Council umbrella organizations have increased in staff in recent years. They present themselves as sector representatives and have a powerful position, Linthorst argues, but are not subject to democratic control.

“Associations of school boards that are paid with taxpayers' money, that have a lot of influence on education and that say they speak on behalf of the sector… They don't represent me in any case. Has there been a large group of taxpayers who ever asked for this construction? Not to my knowledge. Who tells me that these associations serve the public interest? The public interest must be able to be democratically controlled. A minister can be monitored by the House of Representatives, but a sector council such as the PO council or the VO council cannot. That is why I am also very much in favor of everyone coming to a single collective labor agreement, from caretaker to director, which will in future be negotiated by the unions with the minister.”

Who tells me that these associations serve the public interest? The public interest must be democratically controlled

The minister should take more responsibility for education, believes the AOb. Including through the terms of employment. The government also grants educational employers an important knowledge advantage at the collective labor agreement table. This autumn, in which various collective labor agreements were concluded, a discussion flared up again about the so-called space letter. In it, the government informs the employers' associations how much money is available for the employment conditions. The unions do not get to see that letter. This makes the unions dependent on the good will of employers' associations to provide insight into the wage margin. AOb-director Thijs Roovers: “The PO council had that will, but you don't want that kind of dependence. The employment conditions are paid from public money, it must be as transparent and equal as possible.”

During the past term of office, the House of Representatives adopted a motion to release the space letter, signed by PvdA, GroenLinks, SP and D66. In vain. “I see collective bargaining as a game, and then you have to know what the scope is on both sides,” said MP Van Meenen. “I therefore think that the space letter should be known. But I also sometimes have the feeling that the unions could take a firmer position. You can say: we will no longer conclude a collective labor agreement as long as we do not know the wage margin.”

And the negotiations move back to the ministry? “It is an illusion to think that there will be more money. But I think it's an interesting thought."

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Directors: "The voice of the staff comes through fine"

It takes little effort to find topics that teachers and support staff view very differently from employers: from temporary contracts and the flexible layer to digitization and the problems surrounding appropriate education. Another striking difference: the drivers who Education magazine interviewed, find that the voice of teaching staff is heard just fine.

"I don't mean it's perfect," he said Freddy Weima, chairman of the PO council since April. “But my experience so far is that teachers' voices get through enough, thanks in part to the AOb and fellow organizations. This is especially true for the National Education Programme. Like the unions, we are strongly against the incidental nature of money. Government policy over the years is also not always consistent. We find each other in our criticism of that.”

According to him, the roles of employers' association and sector representation are quite compatible. "If you thought it was a problem, you would have to organize the whole system differently, also outside the education sector. Our mission statement doesn't say: 'Go govern!', but work together on good education for every child. The AOb is also not only a party to the collective agreement. I would like to continue that good collaboration.”

The fact that employees are often only allowed to talk about periods and commas is exaggerated, says Rinda den Besten, chairman of the PO council from 2013 to April 2021. “In the eight years that I experienced, in the education polder, rarely if ever anything went ahead if the unions were against it. The ministry was also very well aware of that.”

She still enthusiastically recalls the time of the PO Front, when employees and employers campaigned together in 2017 and 2018 for more investment. “It was quite special that we could act as one group. In the world of education, that is worth a lot. Education is quite fragmented and the more fragmented, the less you can make a fist. It would be good if there were one large education union in the long run.”

School boards can represent all staff very well, thinks Inge Sterenborg, director at CSG Het Noordik in Almelo and member of the general board of the VO council. “I think administrators always consider the question of how a certain measure falls within their schools.” She therefore calls the Secondary Education Council an association of schools. "That's what it says on the website." Hey, wait: it's an association of boards. “Yes, but they have joined on behalf of the schools.”

How can the board speak on behalf of the school if the employer's interests clash with the interests of employees, for example in the case of temporary contracts and the so-called flexible shell? “That's a bottleneck, that's right, especially in shrinking regions like ours. It can rub against an employee's individual interest. But I see the interest of the foundation as a whole as a common interest, also of staff and students.”

Ministry says to involve teacher

“We strive to involve teachers as much as possible in policy making, because we are convinced that this will improve policy and align well with practice in the school,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education said. “OCW has also taken many steps in this area in recent years. During this entire cabinet term, all educational parties were intensively involved in the choices that had to be made, especially during the corona time. At the same time, the ministry confirms that teachers and school leaders are increasingly being asked outside the existing organisations, for example in so-called 'focus groups'. This happens, for example, in the monitoring of the National Education Programme.

This article appears in the December issue of the Education magazine, which is published eleven times a year AObmembers falls on the bus. Learn more about all the benefits of the AOb-membership? Look here.