Legal system

The first piece of educational legislation, the Elementary Education Act, was passed in 1801. However, it was the so-called 'Third Schools Act' of 1806 that contributed significantly to the improvement of general education. The Act made provisions relating to teaching qualifications, curriculum and inspection of schools. At that time public elementary schools were government funded and private schools were maintained from private sources.

Religious political parties stressed the need for freedom of education and equal funding which led to the Elementary Education Act of 1889 which introduced legislation for funding to denominational schools. In 1917 equal funding of state and private education was finally enshrined in the Constitution. From 1920 onwards, the principle of financial equality was gradually extended to include secondary and higher education. At the present time there are nearly twice as many denominational schools as non-denominational ones.

Compulsory schooling between the ages of 7 and 12 years came into effect with the
Compulsory Act of 1900. In 1955 the Nursery Education Act came into force, though nursery education was still not compulsory. The Primary Education Act of 1985 for 4 - 12 year olds integrated nursery and primary schools into one primary school and made schooling compulsory from the age of 5 onwards.

At the beginning of the century a small-scale system of special schools for various groups of children slowly evolved in the Netherlands. Special education was originally regulated via the Primary Education Act of 1920. In 1967 the 'Special Education Act', which specified regulations for special schools became effective. This Act was replaced by the Interim Act for Special Education and Special Secondary Education (ISOVSO) in 1985. From 1998 on, new primary, secondary and special education acts  came into force and were further modified in late 2002. The effect of these is that former primary and secondary schools for learning disabled and mild mentally impaired pupils are now part of regular education provision, special schools were reorganised as Expertise Centres, and a new demand-oriented funding system is in the process of being implemented.
 
Financing

Funding for special needs in the Netherlands is mainly provided by the central government. The municipalities are responsible for the costs of transporting pupils with special needs to schools and for making school buildings accessible for these pupils.

The system for funding special education is fairly straightforward. The number of teachers provided is based upon the number of pupils a school has on a particular date. There are ten types of special schools, ranging from those for the speech impaired to those for the multiple disabled. Each school type is allocated so many teacher minutes per number of pupils. As an example: each deaf pupil equals 426 teacher minutes a week. Based on a yearly overview of the total number of pupils, their type of special needs, age, and other characteristics (ethnic minority, level of schooling of parents) the government calculates funding for staffing (formation budget) and all other working expenses (LONDO budget), including housing, heating, teaching materials, insurance, etc. Budgets are made directly available to the school board. The LONDO budget is forwarded to the school as a lump-sum. The school board is free to decide on the spending of these funds.

Based on the annual overview, the government also provides the special; school with an additional formation budget and a budget for travel, administration and teaching materials for peripatetic teaching. The term peripatetic teaching refers to the support provided by the special school for mainstream schools educating pupils with special needs. For exceptional situations that fall outside existing regulations special schools can apply for additional resources. The government decides on the funds schools apply for, but, other than the aforementioned funding procedures, this is not open-ended funding. The budget is limited and requests have been turned down simply because of a lack of funds.

Funding special needs education in mainstream schools has long been restricted. Under current regulations, however, more SEN funding is becoming available to mainstream schools. The ongoing implementation of the ‘Together to School Again’ policy (see: development of integration/inclusion) allows regular schools a growing flexibility in realising various special needs provisions. These provisions are mainly used to meet the needs of pupils with learning difficulties and/or mild mental retardation.

Next to the funding available under the ‘Together to School Again’ policy, mainstream schools can receive an additional budget for pupils with sensory, mental and/or physical impairments that falls under peripatetic teaching provision.  Also without peripatetic teaching there are certain financial possibilities for mainstream school placement. However, these are neither permanent nor formalised. A school has to apply annually for a budget and the amount granted depends on the number of applications submitted. Mainstream schools can for instance apply for additional funding for placing children with Down's syndrome. In that case, the following regulations apply in mainstream schools: a four or five year-old results in an extra 0.1 teacher, while in higher primary school classes this doubles (0.2 teacher, i.e. a teacher for one day a week).

As well as the regulations and sources for funding special needs education by the Ministry of Education described above, there are other sources such as the Ministry of Social Affairs and social insurance organisations that occasionally cater for specific equipment in schools and/or adjustments to buildings for special needs pupils.

The funding of special needs education for pupils with sensory, mental and/or physical impairments and/or behaviour problems will be soon modified. It is expected that from 2003 onwards the system will change from supply-oriented financing to a system in which the means are forwarded to the person requiring the services: demand-oriented financing. The policy is known as the ‘back-pack’ policy: pupils take the funding with them to the school of their choice (see development of integration/inclusion).
 
Identification of children with special educational needs

In identifying special educational needs two different assessment procedures can be distinguished: one for pupils falling under the so-called Together to School Again policy (see development of integration/inclusion) and the other for pupils possibly eligible for special education placement.

Under the Together to School Again policy assessing pupils with learning difficulties and mild mental impairments is basically the responsibility of the classroom teacher. If the pupil’s special needs are difficult to meet, the teacher can be supported by the school’s special needs coordinator or by support teachers from the regional school support service. A next step would be to refer the pupil for assessment to a regionally operating assessment team. These teams, which generally comprise a psychologist, physician, social worker and experienced special needs teachers, assess pupils in order to decide on the support needed. Parents’ permission is required for such an assessment. The initiative to do this is usually taken by the regular school teacher in consultation with the school principal, school support service and parents. In general teachers refer pupils who are behind in learning or show deviant behaviour within the classroom situation.

Pupils eligible for a special education school may or may not have already attended regular education for some years. Certain pupils may not have followed regular education at the time of referral because of the severity of their impairment. Although pupils are formally referred to special education by their parents, referrals can be initiated by regular classroom teachers, medical specialists, the social pedagogical services or early intervention services. Pupils with sensory, physical and mental impairments as well as/or severe behavioural problems are assessed by the admission boards of the special school concerned. Regulations prescribe the composition of an admission board, which generally comprises a psychologist, physician, social worker and the school principal. For specific school types, e.g. schools for the deaf, other specialists, like an audiologist, may also be part of the board. Each special school usually has its own admission board, but governing boards running several schools can appoint a common admission board. Pupils eligible for special education are not obliged to attend a special school, that depends ultimately on the parents’ decision. There are no clearly defined criteria to decide on eligibility, since special education legislation (WEC) simply states ‘separate primary and secondary special education are intended for children for whom it has been established that a mainly orthopedagogical and orthodidactical approach is most appropriate.

Generally the assessment consists of examining  somatic/medical aspects, cognitive development, specific developmental aspects (language development, communication, concentration, motivation, etc.), social-emotional development (behaviour, emotional stability, independence, etc.), as well as profiling the family situation, neighbourhood and/or cultural background. The emphasis in the assessment depends on the reason for referral and the pupil’s impairments. For many years assessment focussed more on deciding on eligibility than on making an individual education plan, whereas now assessment teams try to formulate the findings not only in terms of eligibility, but also in terms of educational planning.
It is obvious that the criteria used by the various admission boards differ between the several school types but also within school types. Especially in less densely populated areas the ‘correct’ school type may be too far away and other special schools may act as a ‘last resort’, thereby stretching the generally applied admission criteria.

Two years after being admitted, a re-examination takes place to assess progress within the specific type of education to decide how pupil's abilities can be further developed and whether the pupil should be transferred to regular or to another type of special school.

Recently, parliament approved the implementation of new assessment criteria and systems for pupils with sensory, mental and/or physical impairments and/or behaviour problems (see development of integration/inclusion).
 
Special needs education within the Education System

In the Netherlands school attendance is compulsory for all children between the ages of 5 and 16. From the age of 16 there is a two-year, part-time compulsory education phase. Children generally attend primary school at the age of 4, until 11 or 12 years of age. In the first grades children receive some 800 hours of education annually, while in the higher grades 1,000 hours of education are given. A week consists of five school days.

The educational system is characterised by homogeneous grouping. Children who do not master the educational matter may have to repeat a year. In this year-group system children have to deal with a set amount of educational material throughout the year. Generally, children (and their parents) receive a progress report several times a year, which may also serve as the basis for the decision for a child to repeat a year.

The end of primary school is marked by tests (national examinations) in which the majority of schools participate. This assessment procedure is important in the process of choosing the best type of secondary education placement. After a relatively short transition period (one or two years) in a secondary school the pupils have to choose between the different types of secondary education. Secondary education in the Netherlands is highly tracked. It comprises:
- pre-university education (VWO; 6 years, age 12-18);
- senior general secondary education (HAVO; 5 years; age 12-17);
- junior general secondary education (MAVO; 4 years, age 12-16);
- pre-vocational education (VBO; 4 years, age 12-16), including an individual track (IVBO);
- special education for learning and/or behavioural problems (VSO-LOM ; 2 years, age 12-13);
- special education for learning difficulties (VSO-MLK; 4 years, age 12-16).

Post secondary Education is provided by MBO (senior secondary vocational education). It provides both full- and part-time vocational education and training in all professions and on several levels. For this overview, the two lower levels are relevant: courses on the assistant level (1 year) and courses in MBO (2 years). Intheory these courses are accessible for everyone who has followed education for 10 years or more. In practice, the technical courses, for instance, require pre-vocational education.

All secondary education pays attention to transition to post compulsory education, e.g. senior secondary vocational education (MBO). Here an important focus is the transition of students to the labour market. The amount of attention for transition to secondary education depends on the type of education and the schools. In pre-vocational education (VBO) pupils choose vocational subjects in their third year when they are 14. Teachers from these schools and from the institutes for senior secondary education give information about further education (and thus about professions and working life).

For detailed information regarding the organisation of mainstream educational services in the Netherlands, please visit for information in English the Eurydice information service at:
http://www.eurydice.org/Eurybase/Files/NLEN/tcNLEN.htm.  See for information in Dutch: http://www.eurydice.org/Eurybase/Files/NLVO/tcNLVO.htm

Special education refers to a separate system of special provision. This includes the  peripatetic supervision of pupils in mainstream education. Separate primary and secondary special education is provided for children for whom it has been established that a special approach is most appropriate.

Special educational provision currently has ten different categories, including: schools for the deaf, the visually impaired, the physically handicapped, the severely mentally retarded and pupils with serious behaviour problems. These ten types of provision are in separate schools. There are also specialist departments located within particular types of special education schools (e.g. a department for children with severe speech disorders in a school for hearing impaired children). The system is now being reorganised into four types of so-called Expertise Centres (see the section on development of integration/inclusion).

Pupils returning from special to mainstream education are entitled to certain facilities, as are pupils with sensory, physical or multiple handicaps, who although they are eligible for special education have not been referred to a special school. These facilities in the form of so-called preventive ambulant teaching are used to an increasing extent. Almost .003 per cent of all pupils receive ambulant teaching in primary and secondary schools.

Contrary to the prevailing practice of referring pupils with special educational needs to special schools is the growing number of pupils with Down's Syndrome in mainstream education. Over the last ten years the number of such pupils in mainstream primary education has risen from a few to over a quarter of the relevant age population. In secondary mainstream education the integration of these pupils is only just starting. The Dutch government has followed this development by ad hoc changes to rules and regulations aimed at providing extra support in mainstream educational settings.

Special primary education caters for the same age group as mainstream primary schools. The age at which pupils are admitted varies: at some schools children may be admitted at the age of 3, whereas the minimum age is 6 at other schools.

Although the law does not set clear guidelines, secondary special education is intended for the same age as mainstream secondary education with an upper age limit of 20. Only in special cases can pupils attend the school over this age.

The participation rate in special education varies according to handicap and age group. Overall, about 1.8 per cent of all children of  primary and secondary school age participate in separate special education. There has been a remarkable growth in pupils attending separate special schools over the past decades. The growth has not been equally evident in each type of school.

Teacher training

In the Netherlands it takes about four years to gain a mainstream teaching qualification. Primary school teachers study at institutions of higher education. They are trained to teach all curriculum subjects, but also a specialist subject. The initial teacher training (ITT) includes an introduction to educating pupils with special needs. Current government policy requires more knowledge of educating special needs students within teacher training, but the programme is oversubscribed and adding special needs programmes is not easy.

Two forms of teaching qualification exits in secondary education: a lower secondary and a full qualification. Teachers with a lower secondary qualification cannot teach in higher age phases of secondary schools like HAVO and VWO. To become fully qualified, study at an institute of higher education or university is necessary.

In-service education for teachers is not obligatory though many teachers follow short courses on various subjects. Due to integration policies, the number of in-service special needs education courses is increasing.

Though supplementary training for teachers in special education is optional, the majority of special teachers follow a two year, part time training. The course assumes the students are already working in education and focuses upon both theory and practice. There are several specialist fields including the visually handicapped, behaviour problems, the mentally handicapped, remedial teaching and peripatetic teaching. Although not obligatory, a growing number of mainstream teachers have a special education certificate.
 
Development of Integration/Inclusion

For a long time, the highly differentiated and extensive special education system was seen as expressing concern for pupils with special learning needs. Currently, this point of view is the subject of much debate. A growing group of policymakers, educators and parents think segregation in education has gone too far. A gradually increasing number of parents want their child with special educational needs to attend a mainstream school because they wish him/her to go to the same school as siblings; to attend a neighbourhood school, or/and to educate their child with non-special needs children.

Advocates of integration also believe that integration is possible by making use of
examples in other countries (e.g. Denmark, Sweden, the UK and the United States). The debate also centres on a wider societal context. The segregation of these pupils is considered to be in conflict with widely accepted human rights, socially undesirable, and perhaps a convenient, but unnecessary way of providing special services.

Among politicians, administrators and certain teacher and parent groups there is a fair consensus that a halt should be drawn to the growing numbers of special education placements. However, compared to other countries, parents in the Netherlands have not in the past been prominent partners in the integration/exclusion debate. There is no tradition of parental pressure groups in the Netherlands actively advocating integration. The one exception are the associations of parents of children with Down's syndrome. These have succeeded in influencing mainstream primary schools to place these children , which has long been a very unusual practice. Recently other parent groups are becoming actively involved in the strive for integration.

In general, parents appear in favour of current integration policy. However, substantial numbers of both mainstream and special education teachers as well as some parents of pupils with special educational needs question integration. Whilst not rejecting the push for more integration in principle, they believe special needs pupils are better off in segregated settings as they need the highly differentiated and therefore more effective teaching and counselling available in special educational provision. In accordance with this view of the 'specialness' of special education, they consider pupils to have profound and special problems which makes mainstream schooling inappropriate.

Developments towards integration in the Netherlands have been largely influenced by two policy papers published in 1990 and 1996. The first, `Together to School Again', aims to support the integration of pupils with learning difficulties (so-called LOM pupils) and mildly mentally disabled pupils (so-called MLK pupils). This policy is known as the WSNS-policy in our country. As part of its policy all primary schools and special schools for pupils with learning difficulties and the mildly mentally disabled have been grouped into regional clusters over the last few years. Each cluster consists of one or more special schools working with 25 primary schools on average. This has resulted in a nation-wide network in which every special and mainstream school is attached to a cluster. Extra funding was available for this.

In June 1995 the Dutch parliament changed the regulations for funding special provisions. In subsequent years part of the funding now available for pupils eligible for schools for learning disabled and mildly mentally retarded has gradually been placed at the disposal of the regional clusters. School clusters may decide to maintain special provision in special schools. They can also decide to transfer parts of that provision to mainstream schools in one form or another. The key factor is that regular schools participate in the decision-making process concerning the structure of special education provision. Each of the school clusters is funded equally, based on the total enrolment in primary education. This was first implemented in 1998 and by 2002 the new funding structure was  fully operational. The new funding system is intended to stimulate integration, as it enables schools to take the services to the pupils instead of transferring pupils to the services.

In line with the ‘Together to School Again’ policy the secondary special schools for learning disabled and mildly mentally retarded pupils has also changed. Special secondary education for these pupils  is no longer part of separate special education legislation, but has become part of the 1998 secondary education act. This reform restructured secondary special education and the lower years of regular secondary education into pre-vocational secondary education (VMBO). For pupils with special needs a support structure has been developed to ensure as many pupils as possible complete their chosen courses and obtain VMBO qualifications. Pupils not expected to obtain a VMBO certificate even with considerable extra support can attend a ‘practical training’ course, which prepares pupils for low-skilled jobs in the labour market. A regional referral committee decides on the eligibility of pupils for separate learning support or practical training. The committee applies centrally developed criteria to decide on placement. The criteria relate to IQ range, level of learning backwardness and/or social-emotional problems. The special needs support structure has been gradually phased in over a four-year period, ending in August 2002.

For educating pupils with sensory, physical, and mental disabilities as well as/or behavioural problems a separate line of policy development has been drawn up. Until now, these pupils were only able to receive the services they needed after being admitted to a full-time special school. In 1996 the policy paper ‘The Back-Pack’ outlined plans to stop financing places for such pupils within special primary and secondary schools in favour of linking the funding of special services to the pupil involved, regardless of the type of schooling. The idea was to change from supply-oriented financing to a system in which the means are forwarded to the person requiring the services: demand-oriented financing. The policy is known as the ‘back-pack’ policy: pupils take the funding with them to the school of their choice. An important characteristic of demand-oriented financing is that parents have an important say in choosing a school for their child. Means would be made available only after a positive decision by a body of experts. If a pupil met the criteria for a pupil-bound budget, parents and pupil could choose a school and decide with the school on how to use the funding.

The regulations do not force regular schools to place pupils with special needs if the parents and the pupil should request this. However, only in cases where a school can clearly demonstrate to the school inspectorate and parents that it is incapable of providing suitable schooling for a special needs pupil is  placement denied.

The eligibility criteria for a ‘back-pack’ are largely based on existing practice. Criteria for the visually impaired are a visual acuity: < 0,3 or a visual field: < 30° and limited participation in education as a result of the visual impairment. For hearing impaired pupils a hearing loss > 80 dB (or for hard of hearing pupils 35-80 dB) and limited participation in education are required. The decision to provide extra funding for mentally impaired pupils will be largely based on IQ  (< 60), for physically impaired and chronically ill pupils medical data showing diagnosed disabilities / illness are needed. The criteria for behaviourally disturbed pupils require diagnosis in terms of the categories of the DSM-IV, problems at school, at home and/or in the community and a limited participation in education as a result of  behaviour problems.

Directly linked to the new funding system is a re-organisation of special (including secondary) education. The number of different school types will be reduced to four so-called expertise centres: those for the visually handicapped, those for pupils with communication disorders, those for physically and mentally handicapped and those for pupils with behaviour problems. In Spring 1997 first plans to reorganise education and change the way of funding special needs provision for these pupils were approved by Dutch parliament and late 2002 more definite legislation was accepted. Currently the implementation of both criteria, funding and the Expertise Centres is in full swing.
 
Quality Indicators for Special Needs Education

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.

View the SNE data for Netherlands [opens in new browser window]