Lower educated Dutch face integration course

3 December 2004

AMSTERDAM — Every low educated person in the Netherlands — and not just newcomers — will have to take a compulsory integration course under plans being discussed by the Dutch Cabinet.

The ACVZ, a special committee on newcomers’ affairs, has advised that everyone with less than eight years of schooling in the Netherlands should take the course and sit an integration exam.

The committee said to only force immigrants to follow an integration course would be discriminatory.

Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk has accepted the ACVZ’s advice and was to present it to the government on Friday, RTL Nieuws reported.

In practise, the majority of people told to do an integration course will be immigrants because Dutch law prohibits children stopping their education before the school year in which they turn 17.

Verdonk wants immigrants who don’t speak Dutch well to do an integration course. It is hoped that improved integration of immigrants will help solve the social polarisation witnessed in the Lowlands in recent years.

Subject: Dutch news