Discrimination and racism

Feb 14, 2024 at 1:07 PM Update: 20 minutes ago

Billions of euros to combat discrimination and inequality of opportunity in secondary vocational education are not being spent properly. But any major policy adjustments will have to wait until there is a new cabinet, outgoing education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf said on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) took measures in 2019 to promote equal opportunities for students in secondary vocational education (MBO). The department spent 1.6 billion euros on this between 2019 and 2022. Another 1 billion will be added in the period up to 2027.

The Court of Audit audits the income and expenditure of the central government. In September, the institute wondered in a report and a letter to the vocational schools whether the money was well spent. Additional substantiation was provided in a new report on Wednesday, after data research and hundreds of interviews with school administrators, teachers and students. Inequality of opportunity and discrimination in secondary vocational education would not decrease despite the expenditure.

Moreover, Dijkgraaf would not have made it sufficiently clear what he means by equality of opportunity and what the objectives are. “Due to the lack of clarity, the boards of vocational schools decided to implement the national equal opportunities policy in their own way,” can be read in the Court of Audit’s most recent report.

And that in turn means that not all schools spend the available money well. That is why one of the recommendations is to better monitor vocational schools.

Dijkgraaf sticks to conversations

Dijkgraaf understands and supports the criticism and recommendations, he said in a letter to the Court of Audit on Wednesday. The education minister promises that he will hold discussions with those involved, his spokesperson also confirmed to NU.nl.

But concrete adjustments in response to the recommendations will have to wait until a new cabinet is in place. “Given the outgoing status of the cabinet, I am reluctant to make concrete commitments about this,” Dijkgraaf writes.

One of Dijkgraaf’s initiatives is the internship pact 2023-2027. This aims to put an end to internship discrimination in secondary vocational education. Every year, OCW spends up to 132 million euros on this. “However, it is not explained exactly how all these measures and instruments should contribute to promoting equal opportunities for MBO students,” the Court of Audit says.

A potentially effective concrete measure against internship discrimination is to place students at internship companies without having to apply for a job. All 58 MBOs are experimenting with this, according to inquiries from NU.nl in November.

2024-02-14 12:07:40
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