One in five students makes occasional use of additional educational services, the Inspectorate of Education concluded in April. Such students want a faster track to graduation or higher marks and are therefore willing to pay extra for homework help or thesis coaching.

Affluent families

But this kind of commercial service carries a price tag that sometimes runs into hundreds of euros. The inspectors fear that private tutoring impedes equal opportunity as a result: the children of more affluent families are obviously able to take advantage of such services more frequently than children from less well-off families.

This is unfair, MPs Peter Kwint (SP) and Lisa Westerveld (GroenLinks) assert. In their motion, they call on Ministers to enter into talks with universities and universities of applied sciences about cutting back reliance on private lessons. If students were receiving “high quality supervision” within their institutions, they wouldn’t have to seek this kind of costly extra help, the MPs argue.

No ads

Kwint and Westerveld’s second motion is aimed at ridding universities and universities of applied sciences of ads for private tutoring services. They believe here too that the government should come to fixed arrangements with the institutions.

Parliament gave both motions the green light, but it was not unanimous. The VVD was among those who voted ‘no’ twice.