During the next six months, there will be public debate on the aims for the future. Some of the core concepts are quality improvement, accessibility, and variety within the education system. Within the new knowledge transfer framework, schools can decide for themselves how they will use government funding, and they will also be allowed to approach parents, businesses and other organisations for further funds. The fact that every pupil has his or her own individual social, cultural and intellectual background means that teaching needs to be more didactically tailor-made than in the past. Information and Communication Technology will play a major role in all this.
Education also needs to become a more attractive field in which to work.
The work of the Education Council, the Dutch government s main advisory body on education policy, is to be reorganised. The Council will provide more advice in the early stages of policy development and will focus more on the relationship between the demand for education and what is available at existing educational institutions. The new chairman, the educationalist Prof. A.M.L. van Wieringen, will take up his position on 1 January 2001. This will bring the Dutch system more into line with that in other countries. Under the new system, university students will first take a Bachelor s programme lasting at least three years and will then be able to go on to enter a specialised Master s programme.