Schools are in a Hurry to Spend ‘Corona Billions’

How can schools limit the damage and eliminate the backlog that students have incurred as a result of the corona lockdowns? That is the central question that the Dutch Education OMT – a group of twelve scientists in the field of education and unequal opportunities – has been considering recently. There is a huge amount of money available: 8.5 billion Euros will be provided to schools over the next 2.5 years and schools can decide themselves how they will spend their budgets.

One of the most important pieces of advice from the experts: extend the time frame. “Under the current circumstances, schools are obliged to start spending their money on summer schools, supplementary training, etc., at a rapid pace, which is tricky,” says professor Inge de Wolf, one of the experts in the Education OMT team. “Are schools actually motivated to do what really works?”

Just like the education inspectorate, the experts call on the billions of Euros to not only be used to close the gaps in students’ knowledge in the short term, but to structurally improve education overall. “You have to consider opting for a dual approach,” says De Wolf. “Get rid of backlogs quickly, and introduce a better-informed way of working.”

The latter would be a major change, she says, as it would require us to throw some existing teaching methods overboard. “We are a country that knows very little about what works in education. We often do things that we think are good because we experienced them. But they don’t always work.”

Every year, thousands of young people leave school without being able to read or write well enough and lack basic maths skills. That problem was already there before corona. In that respect, the pandemic also offers an opportunity. De Wolf: “There are still too many schools that are not used to working on the basis of methods that have been proven to be effective.”