Other tasks of the Dutch Inspectorate of Education

The Inspectorate has no tasks in curriculum development. The Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development is in charge of the development of proposals for the government for new attainment targets or other curricular sets; and for the development of curricular materials for (groups of) schools. But incidentally it happens that specialist inspectors take part in working groups as advisers, in particular in the aftermath of a thematic inspection at national level in a certain curricular domain.

The Inspectorate only develops databases for its own use and for the use of the Ministry of Education. On request, certain data can be made available to others.

The Inspectorate neither organizes exams or determines the content of exams. We do have the following responsibilities:

Secondary education

The Inspectorate has a responsibility in secondary education in guarding the quality of the exam processes. In addition, schools are obliged to request permission from the Inspectorate if they want to make an exception to exam regulations. Furthermore, in secondary education the Inspectorate checks whether there are any irregularities in the annual examination results (i.e. whether students have unjustly passed or failed their exams). Also, the Inspectorate keeps a close watch on the average discrepancy between scores for school examinations and scores for national exams. If this discrepancy exceeds a certain level, the school board is called to account.

Vocational education

In vocational education, the Inspectorate checks the quality of the examinations 
(which the schools in this division design themselves). To this end a number of specific standards of examination have been established by the Ministry of Education.