The Dutch system is characterised by its high levels of school autonomy, with government education policy today still very much influenced by the Freedom of Education Act signed over 100 years ago in 1917.  Because of this Act, the government is very careful in the amount of involvement it has in schools.  The ‘rule of thumb’ is that the government decides the ‘what’ of education (through setting standards, core competencies and test content) and the schools decide the ‘how’. 

Decentralisation reforms that began in the late 1980s saw school autonomy further increase.  The Schevenings Beraad of 1993 brought with it momentous changes and resulted in the role of school housing being devolved to local government and public education becoming more independent with the majority of municipality-run schools taken over by non-profit organisations very similar to private school boards.  It was also the beginning of a ‘lumpsum’ funding system (in which school boards receive a single sum of money to direct to their schools as they see fit). This process was completed in 2006 when the lumpsum funding of primary schools was finalised.

Largely in response to this greater autonomy, accountability has increased over the last decade, along with an increased focus on ´core learning areas.´ In 2014/15 the primary end-test (which has been made by CITO since the late 1960s and traditionally used to objectively stream students into secondary education), was made compulsory, and also became used to measure language and numeracy reference levels. Further, and largely through a change of Inspection framework in 2007, the function of national tests have shifted; from student streaming and qualification, to school (and even by extension, to teacher) accountability.

These developments have also brought up concerns over school freedom (it was argued that the government could not dictate to schools which instruments they must use for testing and monitoring). This led to compromise and these instruments were liberalised (i.e. open to different providers).  This has led to issues of comparability (schools taking different end-tests cannot be directly compared).  Another element of this compromise was the date of the primary end-test being moved closer to the end of the school year, meaning that students have applied to their secondary school (on the basis of their teacher’s advice) by the time results are published. This has reportedly subjected teachers to greater parental pressure and has resulted in concerns of increased inequality through ‘teacher bias.’ It has also further removed the test from its original function, i.e. the streaming of students.

(OECD, PISA 2015 Database)