The Social
Innovation Agenda
for Education
The Netherlands
Daisy Satijn
Ministry of Education, Culture
and Science
Content
• The Dutch Social Innovation Agenda for Education
• Six impediments for innovation
• New policy strands: examples of the strategy
• Measurement: development of indicators (a Dutch attempt)
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Social Innovation Agenda for Education
 Programme of the present government: Social Innovation
Agendas for a range of crucial subjects (e.g. water, energy,
health, mobility, etc): one of them for education
 Been brought about in consultation with different ministries,
the directorates within the ministry of education,
organisations in the educational field (school leaders,
teachers, educational ICT, etc), and education scientists.
 Presented last June; implementation started in September.
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Innovation in Education: why?
 Some challenges can’t be met by launching a special
programme or just by putting more money in the system
(e.g. teacher shortage)
 A lot of knowledge about possible improvements, how to
arrange things ‘smarter’, is hidden in the education field
 The education field itself has to be strengthened, so they can
use their expertise to cope with forthcoming challenges.
 In the Netherlands schools have a lot of autonomy.
The stronger the schools (teachers, school leaders), the less
policy from the ministry is needed.
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Innovation in education: where?
Sustainable improvement possible at three levels:
- Executive level:
learning environment and teaching
- Organisational level:
processes in schools
- Institutional level:
the system (steering and giving incentives to the other two
levels by funding, regulations, etc.)
Misconceptions in the education field: ’innovation is something
difficult with ICT’, ‘Innovation is some kind of big plan from the
ministry’, ‘Innovation costs extra time so it will increase
workload’ etc. -> teachers in the Netherlands are quite sceptical
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The innovation strategy for education
A twofold policy:

Special programmes for specific challenges (e.g. teacher
shortage, arrears in language skills, drop outs, etc.)

Strengthening the innovation capabilities of the field.
 Removing the six impediments
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Innovative strength of the education field:
6 impediments
1. Resistance to innovations
2. Shortage of time to think about how to optimize processes
in the school
3. No feeling of urgency and necessity
4. The reluctance of professional school leadership
5. The educational and financial risks that come with
innovation
6. A lack of knowledge about what works and what not
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Three principles
Basic strategy: autonomy of the school as starting point
Depth strategy: trying to find out what works best, using
experiments
Dissemination strategy: using proven interventions in
other areas (make applicable for an other situation)
Special attention for evidence based policy and practice
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What’s new about the strategy?
The basic, depth and dissemination strategy for programmes
in all education levels: from implicit practise to explicit strategy
Always reduction of one or more impediment(s)
Always attention for evaluation (gathering evidence)
Always attention for sustainability (so in the future schools will
be a little bit less dependant on all the support organisations)
With the aim of empowering the field (so in the future, less
policy is needed)
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Examples of implementations
• Innovation Impulse: tackling the teacher shortage
• WikiWijs: open source for digital educational resources
• Onderwijs Bewijs
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Innovation Impulse
•
•
•
•
•
Subsidy to stimulate schools (teachers and school leaders) to come
up with innovative solutions for the future teacher shortage
Executed by external organisations
For primary and secondary education
Focus on solutions that organise the work in an other way, without
an increase of workload or a decline of school quality
Progress:
• Innovative concepts are now being developed en judged
• Good concepts will be translated to specific school situations
(early 2010)
• Experiments start in January 2010
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WIKIWIJS
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WikiWijs - WikiWise
An open, internet-based platform for educational resources
 Based on open source software, open content and open standards
 By teachers and for teachers
 Scope: the whole Dutch educational system, from primary education
up to universities

Progress:
 Still in trial phase
 only for mathematics and Dutch language
 School year 2010-2011 expected to be fully operational
Role of the government:
 Make a platform as Wikiwijs possible. Content is the responsibility of
the education field.
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Onderwijs Bewijs
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Onderwijs Bewijs



Programme to stimulate experimental research in education
For early childhood, primary education and secondary education
Meant to obtain knowledge about what works and what not
Role of the government:
 The government sets the topics, but the interventions/experiments
are ideas of the schools
 Organisation of conferences and an online tool for matching
researchers and schools
Progress:
 First round started in December 2008
 Implementation of the selected projects started in June 2009
 Second round will start in February 2010
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Measuring innovation in education
- a Dutch attempt -
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measuring innovation in education
Two approaches possible:
1. Starting from outside the education sector:
service industry >public/non-profit services > educational services
2. Starting from within the education sector:
looking into the educational practice: which factors are the most
influencial ones
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areas for specifying indicators
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input
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MICRO (class
level)
MESO (school
level)
MACRO (sector
level)
NATIONAL (level
of education)
teachers
- specific competencies
such as examining
attitude, external
orientation
- percentage ‘thinking
time’ scheduled for further
training, external contacts,
study travel etc.
knowledge management
- access to knowledge
(Internet, library)
- knowing who knows
what
material
- modern equipment
- interactive learning
methods
pupils/students
- percentage receiving
personalised approach
school climate
- functioning as a team
- appreciation of diversity
- openness concerning
errors and learning of it
- well functioning
suggestion box
- satisfaction of employees
- moral notion of
responsibility
knowledge management
- ict-datainfrastructure
- access to knowledge
(Internet, library)
- knowing who knows
what
school leadership
- transformational
leadership
- specific HRM
competencies to promote
creativity and
entrepreneurship
finances
- expenditure for
improvement processes
and products
- expenditure for training
- expenditure for new
equipment
financially
- percentage innovation
subsidies of total financing
- nature and unambiguity
of the incentives
- budgets for further
training and R&D
curriculum
- creativity/dissolvent
capacity explicitly in
attainment targets
regulation
- flexible rules for renewal
- development of
knowledge about managing
risks
management
- sufficient basis (research
and practice)
- access to knowledge
(Internet, library)
financially
- time and money for life
long learning
- (co)financing by third
parties
commitment
- involvement
stakeholders
input
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MICRO (class level)
MESO (school level)
MACRO (sector level)
NATIONAL (level of
education)
teachers
- specific competencies
such as examining
attitude, external
orientation
- percentage ‘thinking
time’ scheduled for
further training, external
contacts, study travel
etc.
knowledge management
- access to knowledge
(Internet, library)
- knowing who knows
what
material
- modern equipment
- interactive learning
methods
pupils/students
- percentage receiving
personalised approach
school climate
- functioning as a team
- appreciation of
diversity
- openness concerning
errors and learning of it
- well functioning
suggestion box
- satisfaction of
employees
- moral notion of
responsibility
knowledge management
- ict-datainfrastructure
- access to knowledge
(Internet, library)
- knowing who knows
what
school leadership
- transformational
leadership
- specific HRM
competencies to promote
creativity and
entrepreneurship
finances
- expenditure for
improvement processes
and products
- expenditure for
training
- expenditure for new
equipment
financially
- percentage innovation
subsidies of total
financing
- nature and
unambiguity of the
incentives
- budgets for further
training and R&D
curriculum
- creativity/dissolvent
capacity explicitly in
attainment targets
regulation
- flexible rules for
renewal
- development of
knowledge about
managing risks
management
- sufficient basis
(research and practice)
- access to knowledge
(Internet, library)
financially
- time and money for
life long learning
- (co)financing by third
parties
commitment
- involvement
stakeholders
MICRO (class level)
MESO (school level)
MACRO (sector level)
NATIONAL (level of
education)
output
educational performance
Manual (OECD)
provision of education
- new product/process
performances in
introduced in last three
schools and
Netherlands in
innovative areas
year
(combinations of)
innovation ranking
courses existing less
(WEF)
than five years
- more higher educated
(adaptation PISA-test
questions?)
teachers
- existing activities
organised in a new way
- new marketing
- percentage new
- percentage schools
- higher productivity
technique introduced
with a particular profile
- less absenteeism
applied to education
- diversity in teaching
- positions graduates in
further education and
profession
- reputation benchmark
and learning methods
- renewal of (parts of)
- position of The
people with constant
level of quality
social outcomes
- improved social
functioning
curricula (for example
- smaller percentage
robotics, genetics)
unemployed people
- saving in expenditures
results
economic outcomes
- higher productivity
- percentage students
- saving in expenditures
- less absenteeism
in programmes started
- higher productivity
less than five years
- less absenteeism
- adoption curve of
policy measures (for
example social training)
external cooperation
- connectivity: number
of and nature of the
connections (for
example companies,
science, foreign
countries)
- figures of the
surrounding area
economic outcomes
- saving in expenditures
- higher productivity
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competitiveness
- pupil/student
- less absenteeism
Discussion
• Overview is version zero: result of just one brainstorm
• What has to be done next:
compare the result of this bottum-up approach with the other
thinking about the coherence between the factors: which one is
conditional for others
thinking about priorities: which are must-haves, which nice-tohaves
thinking about the phase of the innovation process: which ones
are predictive, indicating acceptance, and which ones are
relevant for implementation of innovation
as one of the colleagues said: these factors influencing
innovation, are to be seen as a game of domino.
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Thank you