Dutch Education Council Calls for Fewer Tests and a Culture Shift in Schools
In a new advisory report, the Onderwijsraad says school tests should serve learning rather than selection. Pupils take "many hundreds of tests" by the end of secondary school, it warns, fuelling press
Tests in Dutch primary and secondary schools should focus far more on supporting teaching and learning, and matter much less for decisions such as admission, progression and diplomas. That is the central message of a new advisory report from the Onderwijsraad, the main advisory body to the Dutch government and parliament on education, published on Thursday at the request of the Tweede Kamer.
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“Many hundreds of tests”
According to the council, achieving this will require a culture shift at many schools. Louise Elffers, chair of the Onderwijsraad, writes that by the end of secondary education, pupils have taken “many hundreds of tests,” which the report describes as far too many.
The problem, the council argues, is that tests serve several different purposes at once. They are used as a way to push pupils to study, as a tool to select pupils for admission or progression, and as a means of evaluating the quality of schools or the education system as a whole. This “mixing of functions” should be limited, the report says, because pupils, teachers and schools can become “entangled” in the many tests and the different intentions behind them.
Pressure and “teaching to the test”
The current situation creates pressure not only for pupils, but also for teachers and school boards, the council says. Too much attention goes to achieving the highest possible test score, rather than to the feedback a test can provide about how a pupil is developing and what they need to learn next.
The report warns that this encourages “teaching to the test.” “A form arises in which lesson attention is limited to raising test scores and in which broader educational goals fall out of view,” the council writes. It also points to an analysis last year by the PO-Raad, the sector body for primary education, which found that pupils performing at the same level sometimes received different school advice depending on which test they happened to take.
Reactions
The Inspectorate of Education called the report an important piece of advice. “It is good that the Inspectorate checks at schools whether enough is being learned,” its director of knowledge Matthijs van den Berg told the radio programme Spraakmakers on NPO Radio 1. “Only, we also see that the scores sometimes weigh very heavily.”
Why now
The timing is no coincidence. For the first time in twenty years, the national curriculum for primary and secondary education, the core objectives and final attainment levels, is being revised, and a bill for this is currently before the Eerste Kamer. The council argues that, as these new objectives are introduced, it is important to rethink the role of testing so that each of its functions can come into its own without overloading pupils. The advice is directed at the minister of education, culture and science and at schools themselves.