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The Zeeland island of Schouwen-Duiveland shows what you can achieve when you work together and prepare properly. Next school year, no fewer than fifteen primary schools there will offer school gardening education. Janneke Donkers of NME Schouwen-Duiveland (NME SD) is seeing her big dream come true. Janneke talks about it in an interview with the School Gardens Alliance.
‘School Garden Inclusive Education’ in the municipality of Lingewaard has won the Steenbreek Trophy 2024 in the category of social initiatives. The winners of the awards were announced during National Green Day, which was held in Eindhoven this year on 10 October.
The Municipality of Amsterdam wants all primary schools to operate with a Dynamic School Day by 2030. This means that children engage in physical activity for at least 60 minutes a day.
The Research Team at Wageningen University, which works on Smaaklessen, is looking for Turkish parents with children in grades 3 through 8 for a study on parental involvement. The aim is to learn how parents are involved in nutrition programmes at their child’s primary school and to find out what parents think about them.
Paying attention to gender diversity and sexual diversity at school is very important. Research repeatedly shows that LGBTQ+ students feel less safe at school and are bullied more often than heterosexual students. Acceptance of homosexuality among young people is also declining. That is why it is especially important now to talk about this together, says Melissa, policy adviser at School & Safety. And according to her, school is the ideal place for this.
Dutch toddlers generally eat healthily. Teenagers, on the other hand, eat the least healthily of all age groups. This is shown by Statistics Netherlands (CBS)’s 2023 Health Survey and Lifestyle Monitor. The results are also relevant for education professionals.
If you want to work continuously on the wellbeing of pupils and the school team in primary, secondary or special education, organizing a professional development day on this topic can be an important step. But what should you cover during such a day? What requires extra attention? And above all, how do you ensure that the day is effective and leads to follow-up action? The new ‘Guide to Organizing a Professional Development Day’ from the Trimbos Institute and Pharos offers tips, inspiring examples and experiences from education professionals to help you get started.
The traffic-light method enables teachers to clearly communicate behavioral rules in the classroom using the colors red, orange, and green. With this approach, students display more on-task and less disruptive behavior. This applies to students of different ages and in different educational settings. It seems important to introduce and discuss the traffic-light method carefully with the students. These are the main findings of the Kennisrotonde.
What impact do social media have on bullying and gossip, and what can you do about it as a school? Loïs Gampierakis, an employee of the Advice Centre and substantive officer for social safety policy at School & Veiligheid, wrote the blog below about this.
More and more schools and out-of-school care centres are switching to a celebration policy. To encourage this, the celebration cards can be downloaded free of charge via the Wie jarig is viert feest website.
From 11 to 14 November, it is Motor Skills Week. During the week, there are two webinars that are interesting for education professionals.
One-third of primary schools do not meet the statutory standard of at least 90 minutes of physical education per week. Schools attribute this to a lack of facilities and full lesson timetables. Researchers from the Mulier Institute consider it worrying that many schools do not have it high on their list of priorities to improve the situation quickly.
Wageningen University & Research is looking for school classes that would like to participate in 2025 in an impact study on the Smaaklessen educational programme. To gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of Smaaklessen and the factors that contribute to it, many participating classes throughout the Netherlands are needed. Each participating school class will receive all the necessary materials free of charge.
Are you ready to get started with a healthy and sustainable canteen again this year? Then read in advance about the first steps you can take. Who knows, a new plaque might soon be shining in your canteen!
A stressful home situation has a significant negative impact on the learning performance of Dutch children. Thirty percent of children experience stress at home, mainly due to financial worries. These are the conclusions of the annual report ‘Inequality of Opportunity in the Netherlands’.
How can you strengthen the well-being of students and the school team in a way that really works? The National Education Programme is organising the conference Finding Your Way to Well-being in Foundational Education on 14 October 2024 in ’s-Hertogenbosch.
Every year, the month of October is dedicated to food and sustainability. Sustainability Day and National Vegetable and Fruit Day take place on 10 October, World Food Day on 16 October, and from 5 to 12 October it is Our Food Week. In short, October is the ideal opportunity for schools to focus on this through a lesson or activity.
Primary School Wereldkids Albatros in Zeist is the proud winner of the ‘An ANWB Traffic Square for a School Playground’ campaign in the province of Utrecht. On 26 September, the ANWB Traffic Square was officially opened in the presence of all the pupils, Annemarie Gerards (ANWB Fund advisory committee member), Hanneke van Nieuwenhuijzen (primary school principal) and Frances van de Graaf (primary school teacher).
The week of 23 to 27 September is Anti-Bullying Week. This year’s slogan is ‘Think FF! When it comes to gossip’. Gossip may sometimes seem harmless, but it can have a major impact on children and young people. What can you do as a professional, for example in education, when children and young people gossip? The Netherlands Youth Institute has listed some advice.
Eating vegetables or fruit with lunch every day, drinking water, or having a celebration policy instead of treats—these are all steps towards a healthier lifestyle at school. The Netherlands Nutrition Centre has outlined what schools can do in the coming school year.
From 23 to 27 September 2024, Anti-Bullying Week will take place. It is an initiative of the School & Safety Foundation. This year's theme is ‘Think for a second! When it comes to gossip’. But why is it actually called Anti-Bullying Week? The website of the same name, together with the School & Safety Foundation and the Knowledge Centre for Dealing with Bullying, lists the eight reasons.
From 8 to 15 November 2024, Media Literacy Week will take place. For the next three years, the theme week will focus on digital balance. In 2024, the main theme is healthy screen use. Netwerk Mediawijsheid has created an Inspiration Guide for each sector. One of these is the Inspiration Guide for Education.
Many primary schools put on a video during lunch breaks. More schools are also experimenting with eating without the television on. The Netherlands Nutrition Centre lists the effects of watching television while eating and the benefits of eating with sufficient time and attention. They also provide alternatives to watching television during lunch breaks.
This school year, approximately 10,000 primary school pupils at 85 schools in the Northeast Brabant region are taking part in an innovative food education program: Feasting on Edible Greens. In this cheerful, hands-on vegetable program, schools work together with 45 local businesses—from farmers, supermarkets and greengrocers to restaurants and care institutions—and with school garden coaches to teach pupils food skills and knowledge about healthy and sustainable food in a playful way. Cooperation on this scale is unique in the Netherlands.
From 23 to 27 September, Stichting School & Veiligheid is organizing Week Against Bullying. This year’s slogan is ‘Think FF first! When it comes to gossip’. The opening video and teaching materials are now available. There will also be a kick-off webinar on 18 September.
How can we ensure that a healthy lifestyle becomes the norm at every childcare location and every school? And what can you do to contribute to this? These and other questions are central during the conference week 'Healthy living, learning and developing. The norm!' from 6 to 13 November 2024. This week is organised by Healthy Childcare and Healthy School.
Children in the Netherlands are walking or cycling to school less and less often. In the new school year too, many parents choose to take their children to school by car, cargo bike or as a passenger on a bicycle. The 46,000 responses to the biennial Cycling Municipality survey conducted by the Dutch Cyclists’ Union show that children and older people feel less safe cycling.
Since 2 September, the summer holidays have ended in all regions. For children, this means spending a lot of time indoors at school again. Too much, says Vincent van der Veen, IVN Impact Coordinator for Children & Nature. He wrote the blog below about it.
From Monday, September 9 through Sunday, September 15, 2024, Food Waste-Free Week will take place. Chef!, the free online teaching portal with all the lessons and activities from Smaaklessen and EU-Schoolfruit, has Smaaklessen and Smaakmissies for the upper grades that fit in well with this theme.
More and more young children are vaping. Should we now launch a mass education campaign in primary schools? “Preferably not,” argues Simone Onrust in a blog on the Trimbos Institute website. “But that does not mean that no action is needed. Primary schools can do other things that are much more effective.”