Social affairs ministry inspectors have found ‘serious abuse of public resources and vulnerable students’ at 87 of 227 branded language schools which are helping people prepare for integration exams.

Social affairs minister Wouter Koolmees told MPs that language schools find it easy to commit fraud with people who are new to the Netherlands and do not speak the language.

‘Every form of fraud involving public resources is unacceptable,’ Koolmees said in his briefing. ‘And the recent rise in reports of fraud are extremely worrying.’

New arrivals to the Netherlands have three years to pass a string of integration exams to be able to stay in the country and are able to borrow up to €10,000 to pay for lessons.

However, many people taking the courses are unaware of the conditions attached to the loans and cannot judge if the language school they are attending is up to the job, Koolmees told MPs.

In 22 of the cases identified by inspectors there is ‘strong to extremely strong’ indication of fraud, in 12 a ‘very strong’ indication and in 55 an ‘indication’. The minister does not go into details about what the language schools are said to have done but it would appear to involve advance payments for courses which are not up to scratch or do not take place at all.

Public prosecutor

The public prosecution department and the inspectors are now deciding what action should be taken, the minister said. Some are likely to face prosecution.

Language schools where fraud has been identified will lose the Blik op Werk trade mark – 45 schools have already been removed from the system this year.

The ‘Blik op Werk’ trade mark was introduced several years ago in an effort to weed out cowboys. Immigrants can only get a government loan to pay for their integration course if they go to an approved school.

E-learning

In addition, all forms of e-learning which do not take place at the language school itself will no longer count towards the number of hours of lessons.

Student loan organisation DUO has also begun publishing information about the integration process on its website in languages other than Dutch. The organisation will also stop paying for courses in advance.

Koolmees earlier announced plans to overhaul the integration system and the system of grants will be abolished. Instead local councils will be given budgets for language tuition to ease the burden on applicants.