Education minister Arie Slob is not making extra money available to give teachers who were unexpectedly rejected for a teacher’s grant. The House of Representatives called for this, but the minister will not implement the adopted motion.
In a letter to the House of Representatives, Slob writes that none of the options are “desirable or possible”.
The House of Representatives, led by coalition parties D66 and CDA and opposition parties GroenLinks, SP and PvdA, asked the minister to bring forward money for the 2021 teachers’ grant in order to allow the 2,400 rejected teachers to start training after all. However, according to Slob, it is not possible to bring forward money in the current year.
Autumn note
Another option that the minister considered in the search for extra money is to reduce the budget for schools. That is also not possible, he writes, because “the prices for the year 2020 have already been definitively determined and communicated to the school boards”. A third option is to arrange extra money with the autumn bill. According to Slob, this is not possible either, because it is only when the autumn memorandum is being discussed – in November – that it is decided how any windfalls will be divided.
After years in which there was always money left in the pot with money for the teachers’ scholarship, this year 2,400 teachers who wanted to follow a training course for an extra deepening of their subject, fished behind the net. The teachers did not learn until July that they would not receive a scholarship – one month before their training was due to start. Schools had often already taken into account that a teacher would be given study leave, and had already hired replacement teachers.
Wrong leg
The House of Representatives itself had twice taken money away from the teachers’ grant to invest in tackling the teacher shortage. But the House swears that they were never warned by the ministry that there would be too little money left for the teacher’s grant. “We have been misled by the minister,” said D66 MP Paul van Meenen in early August.
Minister Slob did let sector organizations and trade unions know that there would be less money for the teachers’ grant this year, but did not inform parliament. He admitted in a debate that communication could have been better. He also states that the rejections are “obviously very annoying for teachers”. Slob also announced that it will give the rejected teachers a priority grant next year.
In the cold
“Slob leaves teachers out in the cold”, says CDA MP Michel Rog. GroenLinks MP Lisa Westerveld calls Slob’s reaction “very annoying”. “There was a reluctance to resolve this from the start. Unfortunately, the delaying tactics of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science have worked, because it is too late for the current group of applicants. ”
The cutbacks on the teachers’ grant will also apply in the coming years, Westerveld read on Prinsjesdag. “We will try to get this off the table in the debate about the education budget.” According to her, “there must be a majority for this”. Rog wants to arrange something there for the current teachers who have been victimized, “so that they can start their studies after the Christmas holidays”.