Coalition agreement: Education cuts scrapped, hardly any extra money beyond that

The minority cabinet of D66, CDA and VVD wants to reverse the cuts to education and is allocating 1.5 billion euros for this. Major investments in science will not materialise, except perhaps via Defence.

“I’m personally proud that we are fully reversing the cuts to education”, said D66 leader Rob Jetten on Friday afternoon at the presentation of the coalition agreement ‘Aan de slag – bouwen aan een beter Nederland’.

The three parties are setting aside an extra 1.5 billion euros for education and research. A lot has to be done with that money. It will be spent, among other things, on senior secondary vocational education (MBO), education quality, tackling the teacher shortage and strengthening the Education Inspectorate. And then also on ‘investments in research and science and on the purchasing power of students’. Education party D66 had actually wanted to spend several billion euros more on education and research.

Students

Much is still unclear in the agreement. Take students’ purchasing power: it states that the basic grant for students living away from home will increase, but not by how much.

The three parties also want to introduce a mandatory internship allowance, possibly with an internship fund for shortage sectors (for companies that are short of cash). But nobody yet knows what that allowance would be.

They also want to cap the interest rate on student loans at 2.5 per cent, so that student debts cannot rise unchecked in the future. Repayment should become easier via employers, so that former students can get rid of their debt more quickly.

In addition, the parties want to ‘invest in the mental wellbeing and resilience of students’, they say, but this too has not yet been made concrete. “Education institutions will be given room to provide good support and deploy student psychologists”, according to the agreement. And also: “Initiatives by students and young people themselves will be actively encouraged.”

Internationalisation

The parties have also reached agreement on international students and researchers. They are keen to ‘bring in top scientific talent, which is needed for groundbreaking research and innovation’.

They also want to use internationalisation to ensure skilled workers ‘in the sectors where the challenges are greatest’. Think of ICT and engineering, but perhaps also healthcare. There are plenty of other labour market shortages as well.

So English-taught education is no longer a problem for the coalition parties. They will maintain the current programmes that are not taught in Dutch, they agree. They even scrap the announced assessment for new ‘foreign-language’ programmes.

But how do they intend to keep a grip on the influx of international students? To that end, they will make ‘binding administrative agreements’ with universities and universities of applied sciences.

The interests of the region will weigh heavily in this. “Universities of applied sciences and universities need international talent to maintain business and knowledge clusters in the region”, the three parties state. “We give them room for that.” They cite Brainport Eindhoven, Wageningen Foodvalley and Noviotech Campus in Nijmegen as examples.

Incidentally, the cabinet wants to make the funding of senior secondary vocational education and universities of applied sciences stable and predictable. “Institutions will become less vulnerable and less dependent on fluctuations in (international) student intake”, it says. The agreement does not say this about the funding of academic education.

National assessment for teacher training

There will be ‘one strong foundation’ for teacher training programmes, the parties write. “Teachers and academics will jointly determine the core of the curriculum nationally, with more attention for basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic.”

In addition, teacher training programmes will in principle get the same exams. “For teacher training programmes, the same national assessment will apply, so that every starting teacher has the same strong foundation.”

Lifelong learning

Lifelong learning also features in the agreement. This concerns training for people in work, who either need to move to another sector or keep up with developments in their own profession.

‘Structural funding’ will be made available for this: 100 million euros. The lifelong learning measures still need to be worked out, but universities of applied sciences in particular – which are seeing student numbers decline – have been lobbying for a larger role in lifelong learning for years.

Defence

Spending on education pales in comparison with spending on defence. Universities of applied sciences and universities can also benefit from that. The parties are keen for government, business and knowledge institutions to work together.

“To safeguard our technological lead, the cabinet is committed to setting up a defence innovation authority”, the agreement states. “This authority will also co-finance joint research projects with knowledge institutions that are of added military value for Defence.”

An ‘up to 10 per cent share of the defence budget’ will go towards this. That could amount to a rough 2 billion euros.

Cuts

Ultimately, citizens and companies will have to pay a ‘freedom contribution’ of 5 billion euros. One way or another, everyone will have to dig into their pockets.

The cabinet also wants to cut 6 billion euros from the deductible excess in healthcare and shorten unemployment benefits from a maximum of two years to one year. People will also have to work longer from 2033 before they receive their state pension.

Not set in stone

Together, D66, CDA and VVD have 66 seats in the House of Representatives, ten short of a majority. For all their plans, they will therefore have to seek support from the opposition. The coalition agreement is not set in stone.

In some areas the cabinet may be able to work with GroenLinks-PvdA, while other topics will be aligned with right-wing parties such as JA21 and SGP, which together have enough seats to help the cabinet to a majority.

The coalition negotiations in recent weeks were led by informateur Rianne Letschert, in everyday life chair of the Executive Board of Maastricht University. There is a chance that she will move to The Hague.

Letschert hopes that the future ministers will seek broad support in society for their plans, she said when handing over her final report to the House of Representatives. It will take a lot, she thinks. “I advise them to buy a good coffee machine.”

The House of Representatives will debate her final report and the agreement this week. Jetten will then be appointed as formateur and can start forming the new cabinet, in which he himself will become prime minister.