VMBO-BB and -KB students have already begun taking some exams. The other school levels start on 8 May, which is also when the LAKS Exam Complaints Line opens. The fact that the Exam Complaints Line has increasingly received complaints in recent years about excessive pressure on students fits into a broader trend of rising performance pressure. Figures from the Trimbos Institute showed, for example, that the number of secondary school students experiencing performance pressure has almost tripled in 22 years. In 2001, this was 16 percent; in 2023, 45 percent.
Marielle Balledux of the Netherlands Youth Institute sees the same thing, as she tells Nu.nl: “At some point, we as a society did something strange: we started increasing the pressure enormously. All those tests are no guarantee that children will actually retain the material. Why do we want all that short-term cramming? Is it an urge to monitor as much as possible?” Making mistakes seems to be considered unacceptable nowadays, says Balledux. “Yet it is part of life. You learn by trial and error; we seem to have forgotten that.”
Other options
Dirk-Jan van Dijk, project leader for Test Pressure at the VO Council, tells Nu.nl that the performance culture cannot simply be changed, but that schools do have initiatives that make a start. “The issue of ‘pressure’ is now on the radar at every school, although not everyone is yet convinced that things need to change. Among other things, we help schools discuss it with students. They then look together at how things can be done differently.” According to Van Dijk, options include publishing test grades only at times announced in advance; reducing the number of tests; and using more varied forms of assessment.
Balledux also makes a suggestion about scheduling exam week: do not schedule it immediately after a holiday. “My employer would not say to me: you are off now, but that report must be finished by Monday, would they? Yet that is what we expect from our children.”