The rules for starting a new school should be overhauled and modernised in order to expand the type of education on offer in the Netherlands, the education council says in Thursday’s Volkskrant.

At the moment, new schools have to have a ‘very high’ minimum number of pupils and show they fit within an established ‘belief system’, the council says. This means the system is effectively closed and very few new primary and secondary schools have been established since the turn of the century.
The Volkskrant points out many schools have a religious base which no longer reflects the population at large. While a large majority of the Dutch are not members of any church, 30% of primary schools are run on Catholic principals, nearly 26% are Protestant and just 6% offer a special form of education like Montessori or Dalton.
In the Netherlands, most schools are financed by the government whether they are local authority-controlled or run by independent boards.