Dutch primary school system

[anteater]

Anyone see that clip about the Dutch schooling system this morning on the news.. need a link..

Thought the clip was fab, loved the idea, but would never work here in the state system.....unless we get the smaller classes that help to encourage trust and good relations between teachers and pupils. Had to admit, i wished my kids could go there!I have no epxerience of this style at all, but from messages on the programme there were similar styled things going on in the 90s in the uk? Can you imagine the ammount of investment needed for both premises and teachers? NEVER going to happen.

oh link please I havent seen this

its a video but i will try the link
this

yes, thats it..
will forward on to our head!

That's the kind fo school I wanted for dd but there is nothing at all like that in Berlin. I saw a few documentaries on schooling in various countries and they had similar schooling to this in Sweden and the Netherlands. I feel schools here are too old-fashioned: big classes sitting down and the teacher standing in the front. Little project or group work and nothing at all like in the video with dc doing weekly work at their own pace or teaching other kids. It's pretty standard in Scandinavia though, isn't it?

Can't make the link work or find anything useful on Google.

What was it like ?

basically really small classes, kids really involved in planning what they would learn that week and setting themselves targets to do it. The kids also "taught" other children in their class, explaining processes and ideas in their own words. It looked like a really positive learning experience. The teachers and children had a really good relationship, based on trust and an understanding of individual strenghts/weaknesses. And the results were great. in the Dutch system there is a test all primary school leavers take, the maximum point available to score was 550...this schools average was 549.3....was really inspiring....and a tad depressing

Wow !! Thanks for that, very interesting.

Here

OK, I live just down the road from that school and we also lived in Amsterdam for 3 years and our eldest ds went to a local Dutch school for a year, so we looked at teh school briefly when we moved back. I can't open the clip as I am at work but before everyone gets carried away, if the clip refers specifically to that school, I believe that the small class sizes are mainly due to the fact that this is a normal private school and charges the usual private school fees (for this area - around £10k). Small class sizes are certainly not the norm in the average Dutch primary school and our experience was not a good one.

There were certain parts which we really liked - shorter days, little or no acadmic work in the first two years, lots of play, gym, singing etc. However, there were also lots of things which we were unhappy with. Dutch children start school immediately after their fourth birthday which means new children are arriving at every point of the year and there always seemed to be one or two kids suffering from the first couple of weeks of separation anxiety. Kids who had previously settled well into school seemed to regress every time someone new started. The teachers seemed to exert very little control over the class so it was quite common to drop ds off in the morning and step over a couple of kids grappling each other on the carpet while the teacher ignored them. For kids who did want to learn, there is very little encouragement provided in the early years - I could go on. So I would just say that Prins Willem-Alexander is NOT typical of your average Dutch school or the education system there in general.

annh makes some good points. I was thinking about this the other day when that research project revealing that 'British Kids are the Worst in the Developed World' was published. There was an awful lot of hand wringing as a result BUT I think a vital factor was overlooked: In many European contries, certain aspects of child-behaviour are tolerated if not condoned that would make us leap up in outrage! I worked in a Bavarian family run guest house for a year after my A levels and was frankly astonished at the rudeness and -well, we'd call it bullying- that I regularly witnessed that was completely ignored by parents and other adults alike! There were some real 'Lord of the Flies' moments I recall, where the adults really felt the victims were wimps who needed to get some backbone! Now, THOSE adults would assess their childrens' behaviour differently than British adults would as, frankly, our expected (not always delivered!) acceptable standards of public behaviour are higher. Which is why we come across as more shocked when our kids don't deliver!

Another thing that must be considered- touchy-feely methods of education (and I actually don't mean that in a derogatory way) wouldn't work here. They require a base belief that everyone is fundamentally equal. We don't feel that way. Just post whether you think 'private education is better than public' to check that! Many of the nordic countries that use such methods of education barely have private ed. at all, their societies don't have that anglo-saxon need to stratify, quantify, judge and compare like we do.

I could not get the sound to work, and can't lipread to save my life, so no idea what the clip was about.

Annh - does it refer to the Dutch school in W in Surrey? I too live very near there, and being Dutch I looked into sending the dc there. But as the dc are only half Dutch I was worried they would not fit in.

If we are talking about the school in W (and how many Dutch schools can there be in Surrey) then most children who go there have fathers (or mothers) working for Shell. Most children only stay a few years before going back to the Netherlands. The school is designed to give continuity with the Dutch curriculum to enable children to move around and still follow the Dutch curriculum.

I like the idea of smaller class sizes (who doesn't) and the idea that children can help plan their lessons.

However, I went to a secondary school in Holland where a big part of the school day was devoted to self-learning. Ie you were issued a large amount of projects (usually one per subject you studied) and the idea was you did these during school time. So you would have a few traditional lessons with a teacher, and then 'free' time to complete your projects.
This works well if (like me) you are a nerd and panic about not completing work, but if you are a lazy so and so you just end up falling further behind, and apart from tellings off there was not a lot the school could do about it.
I was only at that school for a year, but would never go back to that system. The angst, sweat and sheer panic of not getting the work done and signed off was not a great motivator but a recipe for a nervous breakdown...

Ah, ann, will learn to read better. It is Prins Willem Alexander!