Working together to build the culture of learning in the Netherlands

by Andreas Schleicher 
Director for Education and Skills, OECD

The Dutch are known for making a virtue of necessity. Now is a time when their reputation will be put to the test.

The Netherlands’ economy and society are being transformed by technological change, increased economic integration, population ageing, increased migration and other pressures. A highly skilled population with the opportunities, incentives and motivation to develop and use their skills fully and effectively will be essential for confronting the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the future. The Dutch skills system is strong compared to others internationally, but still the Dutch understand that for a small country with an open economy to remain competitive, it will need to reinforce the foundation of skills on which Dutch success has been built.

The OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Netherlands, published today, identifies nine key skills challenges for the Netherlands and three priority areas for action.

So what are the priority areas for action?

1. Fostering more equitable skills outcomes: The Dutch skills system works well to ensure that most people develop strong skills. Still, a large number of adults have very low levels of skills that mean they have trouble extracting information from longer and more complex texts or performing numerical tasks involving several steps. Too often these people are not actively engaged in learning to improve their skills. Older workers with still many years of working life ahead of them and migrants account for a sizable share of the low-skilled population. With the costs of marginalisation so high, and with an ageing population, the Netherlands cannot afford to waste its precious talent. 
2. Creating skills-intensive workplaces: Despite having comparatively highly skilled population, the Netherlands could use these skills more intensively at work. Small and medium-sized firms, especially, could do more to get the most out of the skills of their workers. The increased adoption of high performance workplace practices, in particular, has potential to foster greater skills use at work, resulting in higher productivity, wages and greater job satisfaction.
3. Promoting a learning culture: Despite many years of talk in the Netherlands about the importance of developing a learning culture and the introduction of a series of policy measures aimed at making it a reality, the country is still far from realising this aim, as evidenced by the low “readiness to learn” of Dutch adults when compared with their peers in other OECD countries. Many stakeholders confirm this assessment, finding that the Netherlands has much more to do in order to transform itself into a learning economy.

The OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Netherlands reflects the many valuable contributions received from four ministries, the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands and hundreds of stakeholders who shared their perspectives on what are the key skills challenges facing the country and their causes, and proposed some good practices for addressing these challenges.

In a series of workshops, the Dutch lived up to their reputation for frankness and self-reflection, with many claiming that too many people in the Netherlands were neither developing the “right” skills to succeed, nor taking sufficient responsibility for maintaining and further developing their skills in adulthood. Firms also came in for some criticism for not investing sufficiently in the skills of their workers. Stakeholders also lamented that fact the Netherlands was failing to live up to its ambitions for creating a learning society.

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing the Netherlands is one of collective action. Taking action in these priority areas will require that governments, individuals, employers, trade unions, education and training providers and others take joint responsibility and action. 

Along with presenting a number of specific recommendations for addressing the countries skills challenges, the OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Netherlands proposes the creation of skills strategy founded on a commitment to a “national skills pact” that goes beyond a virtuous “statement of intent”. One that would, at a minimum, be guided by a shared vision, specify the concrete actions that each partner needs to take, and establishes performance measures and clear public reporting requirements for all partners.

In the past, it took a whole of society effort to build the dikes and canals that protected the Netherlands from flooding and allowed it to reclaim land for habitation and cultivation. Today, the Dutch once again need to call upon their talent for collective action, this time to shore up the skills foundation upon which they will secure their future for generations to come.

Links

OECD Skills Strategy Diagnostic Report: Netherlands

OECD National Skills Strategy

Survey of Adult Skills

For more on skills and skills policies around the world, visit: http://www.oecd.org/skills/

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How can the Netherlands move its school system “from good to great”?

by Montserrat Gomendio
Deputy Director, Directorate for Education and Skills

Activities undertaken by lower secondary teachers at least once per month,
OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013

A new OECD review of the Netherlands education system offers a roadmap towards excellence. Netherlands 2016: Foundations for the Future, based on data from both PISA and the Survey of Adult Skills, confirms that the country already enjoys a high-quality and highly equitable education system. But it also identifies areas that need to be improved as the country moves its education system, in the words of Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science Jet Bussemaker, “from good to great”.

The Dutch school system is highly stratified, and uses early tracking extensively. For a long time the Netherlands has made this complex school system work well for students: students performed well at school, socio-economic status had a relatively weak impact on performance, and were readily employable when they completed their schooling  (the number of young people who are neither employed nor in education or training is among the lowest across OECD countries). Our analysis shows large differences in performance within educational tracks, and a large degree of overlap in literacy and numeracy performance between tracks. This implies that students in different tracks are equipped with more similar levels of skills than is observed in other countries, probably due to the existence of “bridge classes” and “scaffolding diplomas” which allow for greater flexibility among the different curricula. But evidence points to a worrying trend towards making the system more rigid, which could lead to less movement between tracks and an erosion of the equity levels that the system enjoys today.

The complexity of these issues calls for a coherent policy response. Netherlands 2016, the first report of its kind since the late 1980s, proposes making student selection more objective by giving more prominence to an objective national test; limiting secondary schools' autonomy in selecting students into different educational tracks; and making the system more permeable to ensure that students progress more smoothly through the education system. The latter calls for various measures, including the alignment of curricula of different tracks, more personalised teaching and learning, promoting larger secondary schools that offer all education tracks through financial incentives.

More efforts should also be made to attract talented and motivated people to the teaching profession especially since many teachers in the Netherlands are approaching retirement age. A more systematic approach to the professional development of teachers is needed. The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2013 shows that collaborative working and learning among teachers is not well established in the Dutch school system, yet these practices have proven essential for improving the quality of teaching. These findings stand at odds with the country’s ambitions to develop its schools into learning organisations.

The system has achieved a good balance between a large degree of school autonomy and efficient accountability mechanisms. However, given the extent of school autonomy, more effort should be invested in training school principals.

The quality of early childhood education and care should also be improved. Although participation rates are high, most parents use childcare facilities fewer hours a week than parents in most other OECD countries do. A national curriculum framework, higher staff qualifications and more staff training are needed to ensure all early childhood education and care services are of high quality and deliver good outcomes for children, and long-term benefits for Dutch society as a whole.

Links: 
Netherlands 2016: Foundations for the Future
Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) country note for the Netherlands
Chart source: © OECD