MPs move to curb small schools amid cost and curricula concerns

MPs and the cabinet want to curb the growth of small, independent schools in the Netherlands, after a school linked to the far-right Forum for Democracy (FVD) opened with just four pupils, according to broadcaster NOS.

A 2021 law made it easier to set up state-funded schools based on new educational ideas or on religious or other “worldview” beliefs. Since then, more schools have opened every year, a large share of them Islamic.

The “Renaissance School” in Almere, which opened in August, was approved partly on the basis of market research showing around 350 people were positive about it.

MPs from both coalition and opposition parties said the research amounted to little more than an online survey, and that respondents often did not know what kind of school was planned. It is linked to the far-right FVD party.

Junior education minister Judith Tielen told parliament on Wednesday she would look at whether that part of the law should be tightened or scrapped. She had already written to MPs that keeping so many small schools going was “no longer sustainable”.

Tielen said she saw no reason to intervene at the Renaissance School for now. It must have at least 139 pupils by the start of its fourth school year or close.

The law originally was a VVD initiative, which the FVD voted against it at the time.

The debate comes a year after research by current affairs programme Nieuwsuur found that a number of orthodox Protestant and Islamic schools were teaching messages at odds with democratic values, such as rejecting same-sex relationships or teaching that women should be subordinate to men.

All schools in the Netherlands are legally required to stick to democratic values, including equality and non-discrimination. The schools inspectorate said it would investigate where necessary.