School finance and school choice in the Netherlands

The school system in the Netherlands gives parents wide freedom of choice. Public and private schools are funded on an equal footing by the national administration, and most parents can choose from several schools in the vicinity of their homes. Parental choice can spur schools to take on a special profile and to improve their education, provided schools offer meaningful and reliable information to parents about their profile and quality. To support this process, new government policies require schools to provide such information, validated by the national educational inspectorate. On the other hand, choice can also lead to social segregation. Rather than fighting this segregation, Dutch government focuses on offering all children a high quality education. A weighted funding system that gives more government support to schools with large amounts of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, was introduced years ago in order to compensate for the more difficult task these schools are facing. Presently, efforts are being undertaken to make this policy more effective by giving local authorities a say in the way schools deal with children from underprivileged families. [JEL I21] (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.