A group of 59 Catholic primary schools in Rotterdam has announced plans to take over a training college to train their own teachers to ‘better deal with teaching in a big city,’ the Volkskrant reports on Tuesday.

The schools say trainee teachers should deliberately opt to work in a big city and that by running their own college, new members of staff can be better prepared for the challenges The operation they want to take over is currently part of Leiden’s hbo college.
‘We have a difficult group of children at our schools, often from disadvantaged backgrounds,’ Frie van Os, chairman of the Rotterdam Catholic school association told the paper.
However, junior education minister Halbe Zijstra, who would have to give the green light to the takeover, is not in favour, the paper says.