Primary education

In terms of their mathematical skills, Frisian sixth-graders with a weighting coefficient of 1.0 have an average lag of 3 months of schooling as compared to their fellow students elsewhere in the Netherlands. The lag is even greater when compared to the students from the province of Limburg (5.3 school months). The same is true for Frisian students with weighting coefficient 1.25. This group lags behind the students in the rest of the Netherlands and in the province of Limburg with 2.9 and 5.4 schooling months, respectively.

In terms of their language skills, Frisian sixth-graders with a weighting coefficient of 1.0 have an average lag of 2.8 months of schooling as compared to their fellow students elsewhere in the Netherlands. When compared to their fellow students in the provinces of Zeeland and Limburg, the Frisian lag is 6.7 and 4.5 school months, respectively.

The educational lag registered for Frisian sixth-graders is quite significant, as this last year of primary school is the threshold to the secondary school. The results lead us to the conclusion that some of the Frisian students start their secondary education with a relative lag in terms of their linguistic and mathematical skills.

The first part of the secondary education research examines the percentage of participation in the advanced science-oriented secondary education (VWO). Comparative analyses indicate that during the school years of 1989/1990 through 1999/2000, the percentages for Fryslân were consistently 4 percent lower than in the Netherlands as a whole. The average VWO participation percentage for Fryslân (12%), calculated over all eleven school years, is therefore clearly lower than for the rest of the Netherlands (16%). The percentage for Fryslân is low also when compared to the percentage of Limburg (17%).

The low participation of Frisian students in the VWO education was already established by Duipmans in 1984. The results of his analysis are based on the school years of 1965, 1970 and 1976. This leads us to the conclusion that the low participation in the Frisian VWO education is a structural phenomenon.

The second part of the secondary education research focuses on the test grades. For these purposes, the grades of the central examination of the school years 1995/'96 through 1998/'99 were analysed. Comparative analyses show that Frisian students of the vocational education system were almost consistently given lower grades than students in the rest of the Netherlands and in the three control group provinces.

On average, students in Frisian lower general education (MAVO) schools get higher test grades than their fellow students in the rest of the Netherlands, but in comparison with students in Zeeland and Limburg, their results are still almost consistently low.

In the lower general education (HAVO) and advanced science-oriented education (VWO) systems, the average test grades of Frisian students are almost identical to those of students in the rest of the Netherlands and in the province of Drenthe, but in comparison to the students in Zeeland and in Limburg, the Frisian test results are consistently low again. In these more advanced forms of secondary education, the Frisian lag is particularly noticeable in the field of modern languages and exact sciences.

In light of the results of the research, the pivotal question of whether Fryslân is suffering from a lag in the primary and secondary education systems must be answered affirmatively. The Frisian lag can be related to the occupational structure of the province's population and to the region's degree of urbanization, but the occupational structure and the urbanization do not provide a conclusive explanation of the Frisian educational lag phenomenon. Phase 2 of the research project focuses on the explanations for the Frisian educational lag.

The research project report does not provide answers which may serve as a basis for scientifically founded policy proposals to improve education in the province. Phase 2 of the project is meant to fill in this lack.