I also enjoyed an education from public schools in The Netherlands (NL) but I feel this article is more about the teacher than the system. Besides, the NL syste

I also enjoyed an education from public schools in The Netherlands (NL) but I feel this article is more about the teacher than the system. Besides, the NL system is also district-based and we recently started "grading" schools according to standardized tests and then publishing the results. This will probably (and already has to a certain degree) result in parents wanting their children to go to the schools that score highest, in turn, those schools request more "bijdrage" (extra cost, for supposed 'school trips' and 'books'), in turn making those schools less diverse (i.e. more "white") and in turn making schools that used to perform nominally, worse. The teacher is what makes the student, and unfortunately I have also witnessed PABO students barely able to pass basic spelling/math tests. Those students will probably only go on to teach toddlers/basic grades, but due to teacher shortages it is conceivable that they will eventually move on to teach higher grades as well. In my opinion, there is no easy short-term solution to the problem of adequate teacher-levels due to regulation/unions etc. We parents should try our best to partially circumvent the entire issue by avoiding "permanent damage" is done by staying up to date with what the child learns and focus on rote-skills that are hard for teachers to supervise in large class-rooms but immensely important when those kids grow up: maths and writing. Perhaps this will get easier as teaching/assignments are increasingly interactive, allowing the parent to gain a better view of the child's performance and problems. Here's me hoping this e-learning thing takes off as soon as possible, with teachers perhaps evolving to simply guiding their pupils with extra support (if necessary), social interaction (digital age might not be all thats cracked up to be with encouraging social skills), learning techniques, and job planning as kids these days have no idea what they realistically are going to do for work later. EDIT: Added some perhaps off-topic personal vision of what a teacher should do in the future when MOOCS/e-learning takes off.