Education

Education is essential to the Dutch economy. Without high-quality education, the Netherlands has no future as a knowledge-driven society.

Trends and developments in education

The internationalisation of trade and industry, technological changes and demographic developments directly impact education.

Municipalities are responsible for the housing of primary education and are faced with major challenges in our rapidly changing society. Challenges that they must deal with while complying with complicated laws and regulations, such as the system of national legislation and municipal educational regulations (including the Primary Education Act, the Secondary Education Act and the Educational Housing Services Regulation). A wide range of legal issues are involved in educational housing, e.g. in the fields of new development, procurement, financing, transformation and asbestos. Municipalities faced with a decline in the population must draw up closure or collaboration plans. There is a nationwide trend among day-care centres towards increased collaboration with educational institutions in the form of an Integral Kids Centre (IKC). The current coalition agreement expressly addresses IKCs and many municipalities are actively promoting them.

Overspending in new development projects of educational institutions draws a great deal of media attention and often has personal consequences for the officers involved if major construction cost overruns give rise to personal liability of the officer in question.

Secondary education, professional education and scientific education are faced with the major challenge of ensuring that they interface with the ever-changing job market. The 2015 Quality and Diversity policy document of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science sets out extremely ambitious aims, while only a fraction of the funds required is available. School boards will nevertheless wish to achieve those aims, which calls for creativity and innovation, such as new forms of collaboration with trade and industry. Such collaboration may involve complex issues in terms of finance, governance, employee participation and liability.

The expertise at Banning

From a legal perspective these trends and developments pertain to several overlapping areas of the law and specialist areas. New development, for instance, requires knowledge of construction law, administrative law, procurement law, educational financing, landlord and tenant law, purchase and leasehold, and public-private partnerships. Successfully setting up new partnerships requires specialist knowledge of the regulations in the fields of governance, employment law, corporate law and competition law, among other things, with a focus on education and the interests of students and teachers. Banning has pooled all those specialist areas in its Education sector: specialized lawyers and tax consultants who are the best in their field and are dedicated to improving education in the Netherlands. We look forward to being of service to you.