Court of Audits: make clear agreements on the 8.5 billion euro corona package

In mid-February the outgoing Cabinet presented a comprehensive stimulus package designed to offset the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the education sector. Of the €2.7 billion allocated to VET colleges and higher education institutions, €1.1 billion will be allocated directly to students. For instance, most recent graduates will be granted a €535 allowance, tuition fees will be halved next academic year, and students will remain entitled to student loans for longer.

The remainder of the amount will allow education institutions to do things such as appoint more tutors and student counsellors and extend the contracts of 20,000 junior researchers.

Risk

In a letter to the incoming coalition government, the Court of Audits warns that the education institutions must be made aware of the purpose of the additional funding, and of how they are to account for its spending in their annual reports. “If not, there is a genuine risk of it being impossible to determine after the fact what effect the capital injection actually had.”

The Court of Audits also provided an example of what can go wrong if no such requirements are imposed: the dodgy accounting for the €1.2 billion the Ministry injected into better training for teachers between 2015 and 2018.

In talks

Some education institutions are already in talks with their representative bodies about how to spend the ‘coronavirus millions’. However, the associations of universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands have stated that it is not yet known how much money each education institution will be allocated.