OPEN LETTER
Loenen, Wednesday 26 March 2007

Members of the Houses of Parliament,

Tuesday the 23rd of March, the House of Commons debated concerning the bill to adaptation of the Law on Compulsory Education (LCE). Goal is: bringing the public schools and the private (read: pioneering) schools in one line control. The process leading to this bill is controversial. Several Councils and other Governmental Institutions have advised negatively or are not even heard at all.

The Governments Educational Inspection reported already in August 2006, that true innovation has become impossible since the “Law on Educational Inspection 2002″. At the time only valid for higher education, due to the new LCE, innovation has become impossible on ALL levels.

The State-Council was very clear in its criticism on the amending proposal: The planned amendment puts an end to freedom of education! The Council made further observations concerning the need of the proposal, the constitutional implications and the transition aspects. The recommendations were negative in every aspect. The Council even criticises the complete necessity of the amendment where it states: “it is recognised that the legal basis on which the Government can enforce quality requirements is already present.” Putting additional law into action is therefore superfluous.

The Education Council, the Government’s main Education advisory council, has not even been heard at all!! This council stated in 2002, in negative advise to the forming of the Law of Educational Inspection, that this law should not be the instrument for Educational quality-improvement. Of course, it is likely that this Council is opposed to this youngest amendment too.

This proposal to Law on Compulsory Education is said to be developed “in consultation” with the educational field. That is only seen from one point of view. ” the education field ” feels itself manipulated.

The core of the matter is this: The well-known methods and fixed programmes are not appropriate for all pupils. The enormous numbers of truants, the large numbers of school-leavers and the aggression in schools show this clearly. There needs to be space
for pioneering schools. There needs to be space for children to learn on the basis of their own brio, their own tempo and in their own manner. Fear for “Muslim schools”, indicated by the chief inspector of the education earlier as the main reason lying behind this amendment to the law, may not put an end to freedom of education.

Mentioned below is an enumeration of the most fundamental lacks where the bill leads to i.e. what is does not change:

LEGALLY:

• No possibility has been created for a counter-evaluation on an inspection report. That is absolutely necessary. The Inspection hardly understands the pioneers.

• There is no institute accredited to deliver “equivalence declarations” (these are well known in the world of Dutch construction)

• The authority of a school is responsible for the quality of their education, but has no legal status in procedures and therefore cannot go for higher appeal against a judgement of the inspection. Parents, in cases of a negative inspection-report on the school, face criminal charges. These criminal charges may be handled by the public prosecutor without involvement of a judge.

• Private schools on which a negative inspection report is published can be closed directly, without getting further time to make improvements. This condition does not apply to public schools. That is improper justice.

POLICY:

• By means of the enforcement of the current criteria for subsidized schools to the private schools, an obligatory, extensively detailed, but undesirable “break” between basic - and higher education. Several private schools support an uninterrupted development (just like the legislature!).

• Individual profiles become impossible in this law. The private schools and students are forced to follow the profiles and the detailed schemes of the so-called “Mammoth-law”. (Yes, mammoths are extinct) The majority of private schools have deep-rooted reasons to consider such profiles as one of the main problems in public education and therefore reject these.

CONCLUSIONS:

This adaptation of the Law on Compulsory Education is:

1. Superfluous, because badly performing schools already can be tackled;
2. Stalemate, because it terminates the own responsibility of parents;
3. Untimely, because new education need a larger time-frame to prove itself

And dangerous, because:

1. elementary judicial foundations are violated;
2. because the freedom of education “de facto” disappears
3. because the minister can curtail further freedom of education without consulting Government
4. because necessary innovation will be no longer possible;
5. because more and more mistrust is institutionalised and that the government and the citizen become divided.

Michaël de Vos,
Aventurijn

A selection of responses from all over the world:

“Each of you who places a vote is a separate individual, each with the power to say no. Please think very carefully before you become responsible for yet another step in the devastating mono-culturing of our world.”

Juli Gassner
Assistant Principal

Gardeners Rd Primary School
Sydney, Australia

“Currently there are private schools in your country that serve as models for the democratic style of education, a style that is expanding around the world right now, satisfying many families and communities. This valuable learning approach will be destroyed if this new law is enacted, surely not what is intended? If so, I would be deeply disappointed and surprised that a country known for progressive and experimental ideas would have produced such a negative outcome for education-it would be chilling indeed.”

Sally Rosloff
California, United States

“Why must those in power reduce the personal powers and opinions of others? This imperial attitude is patronising and can only come from hidden fears. There is enough of that already in the world, so why add depersonalisation to classrooms the like of which is found in barrack rooms.”

Christopher Gilmore

“Together with Denmark, the Netherlands are viewed as
enlightened and progressive in regard to educational policy and practice in
other parts of Western Europe such as the UK and Ireland. It is vitally
important therefore that govermental support and tolerance of democratic
schools in Europe is continued, strenghthened and extended throughout.”

Alison Cordingley
County Cork
Ireland

“Having different schools and different options for the education of your children will strengthen
your country not weaken it.”

Moe Zimmerberg
The Tutorial School
Santa Fe, NM, USA

“Two years ago I attended some public schools in the Netherlands as well as the Aventurijn Free School in Loenen. I was simply astounded by the zest for life, general enthusiasm for learning and above all the amount of knowledge that the children of Aventurijn demonstrated. During my many years of teaching I had never witnessed the likes of that in any school in South Africa.”

Douwe van der Zee
Teacher, facilitator and author of ‘Wisdom of the Most Conventional Kind?

“It would be a pity if a free country like the Netherlands offers less freedom to her children than a small, poor country in Afrika…”

Best wishes,
Gerard Mathot,
Seliba Sa Boithuto

“Democratic education is now offered to over 40,000 children around the world
in over two hundred places, in more than 30 countries, and the movement is
growing all the time. Holland is seen as a leader in this development.
…… If the government in the Netherlands can throw itself behind such innovation, it
will retain its image as an example for the future.”

David Gribble, U.K

“For the last few years I have been reading in Ode -a Dutch magazine of contemporary culture- all kinds of accounts of the radical and visionary schools in Holland, schools that have been an inspiration to educators all over the world. I wonder if Holland now really wants to go backwards, maybe even further back that America has gone.”

Todd Pratum, Pratum School & Library.

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