Knowledge must make way for citizenship and digital skills

Tekst Joëlle Poortvliet - Redactie Onderwijsblad - 28 maart 2024 - 9 Minuten om te lezen

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“Have I been sleeping?” teacher Ruud Brouwer wonders. At the end of last year he attended a conference about his physics subject. “I first heard in the corridors about what will probably be a major adjustment to the number of physics teaching hours.”

And this doesn't just apply to physics. Biology and economics also lose considerable space in the upper levels of HAVO and VWO, at least on paper. Just like French, German and English.

The overview above shows the courses for which the study load hours (SLUs) in the so-called 'design space' deviate by more than 15 percent from the current number of study load hours. The complete Education sheet calculation for twenty school subjects can be found here. (*Or any other modern foreign language)

The curriculum is a charged topic. After the failure of Onderwijs2032 (2016) and Curriculum.nu (2018-2022), little concrete seemed to happen for a long time. Until the Curriculum Development Foundation (SLO) in February first contours of a new curriculum.

SLO received the principles for this new curriculum from the Ministry of Education in 2021. It is then corona time, with Arie Slob in the outgoing phase of his ministership. Translated into normal Dutch, SLO had to:

1. make the profile boxes the same size
2. find space for digital literacy and citizenship
3. adjust the study load (study load hours) downwards for all subjects in the final examination year

Professional innovation should not stand still

The consequences of this remained unexposed for a long time and are now seeping through. AOb-director Jelmer Evers: “Professional innovation should not stand still, but this is a fundamental intervention in the upper levels of havo and pre-university education. This should have been discussed with the educational staff much earlier. The government is also obliged to communicate clearly and transparently about this.”

Angry betas

Physics teacher Brouwer fears that a 30 percent reduction in study load hours will result in a 'critical mass': “For further training in a physics field, a student must leave secondary school with sufficient background.”

Kim van Strien is a French teacher and chief administrator at the AOb. She too had not yet realized the consequences of the design space for modern foreign languages. “I didn't know this. You learn a language by working and practicing it. That takes time. In recent years, many schools have already cut French hours considerably, at the expense of quality. I can close down my profession with 30 percent less.”

With this intervention we signify a decline in knowledge

Biologists struck this fall the first to sound the alarm. According to teacher Per-Ivar Kloen, there is a 'bit of panic' within his profession. “Are we going back further in hours now?” he wonders. His teaching career began around the millennium, when angry science students protested against significantly fewer teaching hours because of the Studiehuis. Kloen: “Look, I serve as a teacher. And a curriculum is always arbitrary. But with this intervention we signify a decline in knowledge. And I will always oppose that.”

Kloen lacks a solid substantiation. “What I mainly see is an attempt to boost the scores in subjects where we are doing poorly at Pisa. The fact that this lack of insight comes at the expense of knowledge subjects is harmful.” He mentions CRISPR-Cas as an example: “An important and complex development in biotechnology. To explain this, I must first address a number of other topics. You can't just cut 30 percent off that.”

His physics colleague Brouwer has also experienced revisions to his subject before: “Normally, a group of 'wise and elderly' make these kinds of choices based on the content of a subject. This is also how the differences in study load hours between, for example, chemistry and physics have arisen. One subject indeed has more study load hours than the other, but that is because you also need to know and be able to do other things.”

Brouwer continues: “What I see now are nice numbers, percentages that are being equalized. But on what basis was this done? It feels like accountability after the fact and backroom politics. My profession becomes the baby of the bill because it squeaks and creaks elsewhere.”

Determine schools

Curriculum developer SLO emphasizes that the soup is not eaten that hot. Because, as the advisors involved repeatedly state: the design space does not determine the teaching time that a subject receives at school. “Schools decide for themselves how they deal with this.”

The annual Ipto poll, among other things, forms the basis for the design space, SLO explains. This measurement shows that the differences in time per subject are large between secondary schools. But if you look at averages, teaching hours for most profile subjects are already comparable: roughly three lessons of 50 minutes per week in the upper years of HAVO and VWO, according to SLO.

The curriculum experts point to 'inconsistencies and inexplicable differences' in the current, according to them, very outdated study load hours. Here, for example, the correction is rolled out for all subjects in the final school year of HAVO and VWO. “Because,” says Bernard Teunis from SLO: “There are virtually no more lessons in April, May and June. So you shouldn't develop a curriculum for that.”

“False reasoning,” claims Brouwer. “Study load has never before been linked to the length of a school year. I can name three parts of the exam year that students spend extra study time on: extra lessons, much more homework and more test weeks, for example.”

Moreover, the study load hours at schools are often calculated into lesson hours, according to the experienced teacher: "In practice, it is a conversion factor for the lesson table."

I hope that together we can make the switch from numbers to substantive discussions

Tycho Malmberg, director of the Netherlands Institute of Biology, resigned in February The Telegraph: 'If you allocate less curriculum space, students need to know less and schools are likely to teach fewer biology lessons.'

“It does indeed hurt for some subjects, I understand that,” responds Gerdineke van Silfhout of SLO. “You have to relate to that. But I hope that together we can make the switch from numbers to substantive discussions.”

Her colleague Teunis, when asked whether enough teachers have been consulted: “There is a lot of contact with the trade unions, but it remains complicated. Which teacher says: In my subject the cheese slicer is allowed to go over it? Sometimes it feels like discussing Christmas dinner with the turkey. Ultimately, the question is: Do we have a meaningful, current and feasible curriculum for the students?

Rich texts

Another important choice made in 2022 has to do with the political and social desire for more attention to basic skills, citizenship and digital literacy. These skills are included in three subjects in the upper levels of HAVO and VWO: social studies, mathematics and Dutch. That is why social studies, for example, is growing enormously.

A costly design error, says biology teacher Kloen. “Citizenship and digital skills are poorly defined areas. You have to integrate these topics into subjects that are based on knowledge.” Also the AOb wants digital skills and citizenship to be included in all school subjects. And not that they are allocated separately to subjects, as is currently the case. Director Jelmer Evers: “This also applies to basic skills such as reading and writing. It is precisely about rich texts, knowledge and vocabulary in business subjects.”

The interviewed secondary school teachers explain how their profile subject contributes to basic skills. For example, Brouwer students work a lot with Excel. According to him, you can easily acquire this digital skill in a subject such as physics. And Kloen explains: “Social discussions continuously affect my profession. We live in the century of biology. All major issues have a biological component. Biological knowledge is therefore becoming increasingly important”

Countermovement

A counter-movement is already underway in primary education. A revaluation of knowledge: consciously working on basic skills such as arithmetic and language from substantive subjects. But according to SLO, this is not possible in the upper levels of HAVO and VWO. Teunis: “Of course, students also work on citizenship and digital literacy within profile subjects. However, there is no guarantee that every student will be taught the content. Or students are offered the same content for different profile subjects. You therefore have to invest them in the common part.”

The fact is that so-called professional innovation committees have already largely started rewriting exam programs based on the design space. These committees also include teachers. Biology teacher Kloen: “Personally, I would be scratching my head if I had to fill this in. Because as a teacher you are a partner in the whole? Or legitimization afterwards?”

Response from outgoing education minister Mariëlle Paul 

“It's a work in progress new exam programs - which say what students in upper secondary school should know and be able to do - because the current examination programs are outdated. Some exam programs even date from 1998. In addition, the school program is also overloaded. The total education program must be manageable for students and teachers.

When developing the new examination programs, the space that a learning area can take up in the total educational package is taken into account. The total number of available hours is, as it were, divided over the disciplines. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has commissioned SLO to make a proposal for this. The House of Representatives has also been included in this.

In recent years we have seen time and again that students do not sufficiently master basic skills (reading, writing, arithmetic, digital skills and citizenship), while they need them to be able to survive well in society later. 

This means that there is also a relatively large amount of room in the new curriculum for improving basic skills. This is largely integrated into subjects that all students take, so that all students also benefit from the extra attention to basic skills. For example, it is essential that all students learn about how Dutch democracy works. This must therefore be reflected in social studies, a subject that all students are required to take. And not just in history, for example, which is an elective subject."