Quality indicators for SNE - Netherlands

Virtually all children in the age of 5-15 participate in education. With an enrolment of about 99 per cent, there is no real exclusion. Areas of concern regarding the potential exclusion of pupils from education in the Dutch educational context are the participation of children at risk of potential disadvantages in early childhood programmes, early school dropouts, and participation of special needs students in mainstream education. While almost all pupils attend school, not every pupil is integrated in a mainstream school. In the Dutch education system, special needs students can either attend mainstream education or special education. When discussing issues related to exclusion in the Dutch context, these often refer to the placement of pupils with SEN in special schools and the extent to which curricular and social integration are realised for these pupils in mainstream schools.

To inform inclusive education policies, several indicators and data are used. These include:

• the number of pupils in the age of 5-18 who are not enrolled in education;
• the number of pupils who are referred to special schools;
• the educational achievement of all pupils, in mainstream education and in special education;
• the number of pupils at risk of educational disadvantage who are not enrolled in early childhood education programmes;
• the number of early school leavers under the age of 23;
• the number of people who leave school without a basic qualification;
• the results of national and international comparative studies (PISA, PIRLS, etc.).

A distinctive feature of the Dutch education system is its centralised policy. Taking into account the provisions of the Constitution, the central government controls education through legislation and regulations. It does this directly by imposing qualitative or quantitative standards on schools and/or student progress, or indirectly through funding and other resources schools receive from the government plus the conditions schools must comply with, for example regarding the legal status of teachers.

The school inspectorate is one of the most important instruments for the government to gather and analyse quality indicators about special needs education, others are research and national assessments.