ISK in the Dutch Education
Source: www.lentiz.nl
I have been getting some questions on the Dutch education system and where exactly the ISK figures in and what some of the practices are. Well, on the graphic on the right, you can see a middle section that stands for ages 12 to 18 and on the very right there is a red bar that reads “Special Secondary Education”. ISK falls into that description and is placed somewhat outside of the system.
The ISK or reception classes for foreign students in secondary education go back to 1970s when migrant workers started arriving from Mediterranean countries and it was noticed that their children had trouble integrating into the school system. So schools began creating separate classroom for foreign students where the main focus was learning the Dutch language. Afters some years schools switched to create parallel education tracks for these children, necessitated by the high ratio of non-Dutch-speaking students per class which made immersion in the regular classroom increasingly difficult. Especially schools in areas with large working class neighbourhoods in the Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Utrecht then separated foreign students and placed them in special reception school classes. Other schools continued to immerse them in the regular classroom, adding just some additional support in Dutch. There is also a mixed model which combines the two approaches. These three approaches continue to determine the reception of migrant children in secondary education, with the parallel approach probably being the most popular…
Check out this article for more.
The separate approach is pretty outdated. I don’t know of any school that still has that approach…
The school is geared for children without a previous, formal education. Unfortunately, if a European child gets caught in the school it is very difficult to get them out. The problem is that the school is not equipped nor designed to provide a route to higher education as it was intended to serve the lower skill level workers, akin to the German “guest workers.”
The best way to safely extract an educated child is through the Onderwijsbegeleidingsdienst, or Educational Advisory Servies. They can test the educational level of the child. Beware, some of these workers will try and provide tests, such as an IQ test through the medium of Dutch. If a child does not read or understand Dutch they will be given a low mark, which can affect their access to education. No account is made for the lack of Dutch language, there are no alternative language tests available (at least in 2004).
However, if you can ge educational references from a child’s previous school attesting to their educational level of achievement, it is possible to ask the OBD for assistance to gain access to a Montessori school These schools have been successful in providing concentrated Dutch language education to children and then enable the child to spend less time on their native European language.
The OBD helped me take my two girls out of the ISK into Montessori to do a MAVO. We then returned to the UK where they studied further and have both graduated from University.
Bear in mnd that the ISK insisted that the two children had a low IQ and were destined to LBO, lower level education.
Thanks Sian for your comment. I am actually looking into comparisons between European countries right now, might post something on that later…