1. Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Outcomes of Muslim Schools
Dr. Geert Driessen
ITS, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands
Paper Annual Meeting ECER 2014
Porto, Portugal, September 1-5, 2014

2. 1. Muslims in North-West Europe
Around 15 million
Origin:
 former colonies
 labor immigrants (‘guest-workers’)
 asylum seekers (e.g., Middle East, Africa)
 converts

3. 2. Muslims in the Netherlands
Non-western immigrants
11% of the Dutch population of 16.7 million:
 former colonies: Surinam, Antilles
 labor immigrants: Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Italy, etc.
 asylum seekers: Middle East, Africa
Socio-economic position
Overrepresentation: low level of education, illiterate, no job,
on social welfare, in crime-statistics
Muslims
825,000 or 5% of the Dutch population:
 Turkish: 285,000
 Moroccan: 296,000
 other: Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Surinam, native Dutch converts

4. 3. The education system in the Netherlands
Freedom of education
 to establish a school
 to teach according to a particular ideology, religious persuasion or educational principle
 to choose a school
 full equal funding of all schools by the government
Primary schools
 Public: 30%
 Protestant 33%
 Catholic: 30%
 Other (e.g., Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, Montessori): 7%

5. 4. The founding of Islamic schools
Islamic schools founded in NL: opportunties existed and no alternatives (like religious education in other countries)
1988: 2 Islamic primary schools
2014: 48 Islamic primary schools
Total number of primary schools (in 2013): 6,800 with 1,550,000 pupils (85,000 Turkish or Moroccan origin)
13% from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds
Islamic primary schools (in 2013): 43 with 9,300 pupils (30% Turkish and 40% Moroccan)
48% from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds

6. 5. Motives for and against
At existing public and denominational schools:
 No possibilities to fast and pray
 No clothing regulations
 Boys and girls mixed
 No attention paid to the own identity
 No Islamic religious instruction
 No religious emancipation
 Poor educational results
 No parental participation
Motives against separate Islamic schools
 They will lead to isolation and segregation instead of integration
 No real justice to Western norms and values
 Result in an exodus from existing schools
 More a political affair than a religious one
 For orthodox and fundamentalistic groups

7. 6. Goals 1. Religious and cultural personality development
in the spirit of Islam
2. Improving the quality of education and the pupils’ achievement levels

8. 7. Early* empirical studies: the schools
‘Liberal’ versus ‘orthodox’ Islamic schools
 15% liberal
 35% orthodox, focus on the Netherlands
 50% orthodox, focus on Islamic society
Links with very orthodox foreign political-religious organizations
* No recent data available

9. 8. Early empirical studies: the parents
Islamic schools: characteristics parents
 greater role of Islam in upbringing
 less focused on Dutch society
 less usage of Dutch language
 less integrated, more segregated

10. 9. Early empirical studies: the staff
Islamic schools: teachers and principals
 70% non-Muslim
 relatively young, less experienced
 traditional educational approach
 problems with Religious Instruction
(teachers: not qualified, in Arabic)
 difficulties with parental involvement and participation
 problematic position of principals:
non-Muslim team vs. (often) orthodox board

11. 10. Recent empirical studies: output
Domain
Grade
Islamic vs. SES comparable schools
Islamic vs. average Dutch school
Achievement
Language 2
- -
tests 5 - 8
Math +
Study skills
Total
Secondary education
Level
Attitudes
Self-efficacy
Task-motivation ++
Citizenship
Knowledge --
Reflection
+ +
Skills

12. 11. Recent empirical studies: summary output
Islamic schools versus schools with a comparable SES pupil population:
 Achievement: the same or somewhat better (math)
 Attitudes, citizenship: the same or somewhat better
Islamic schools versus the average Dutch school:
 Achievement: somewhat worse (language)
 Attitudes, citizenship: somewhat better to much better

13. 12. Developments  ‘9/11’, murder Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh
 Economic recession
 Political climate: change from left to right (populist anti-Islam party)
Immigrant policy: from integration with maintenance of own culture to assimilation
Widespread fraud and malfunctioning of Islamic school boards
Islamic schools under scrutiny
Theft of final examinations at an Islamic secondary school
Syria, Iraq; Jihadists, IS

14. 13. The future of Islamic schools
 Policy shift: quality instead of quantity, but now again: expansion
Quality school boards: younger, more experienced
Transparency
Quality teachers: more experienced, Muslims
Recent successes: positive evaluations by Inspectorate and Ministry of Education