EDDI Catalogue: ‘Unequal opportunities require unequal education’
The aim of the EDDI Catalogue is to support and compliment the EDDI e-platform and application. The EDDI catalogue (which you can find on the EDDi app) is giving lots of good examples. The Dutch good practise we have put forward is probably welll known: It’s about the Superschool, de Hugo de Groot school in Rotterdam: From the worst school in the Netherlands to one of the best schools in the Netherlands in five years.
Superschool
In 2009 Eric van ’t Zelfde became director of one of the worst schools in Rotterdam. A school with only 34 new student registrations, dramatic exam results, tired teachers and crime. Van ’t Zelfde tackled the problems off the beaten track. No less than 56 teachers left, 34 of whom in his first year as director. He introduced the ingenious rule of conduct ‘you behave yourself’, which is brilliant in its simplicity. He expelled a number of students against the law and had to answer to the judge. After several years, his school began to score at or above the national average. From the worst school in the Netherlands to one of the best schools in the Netherlands in five years.
| In Brief Erik van ‘t Zelfde wrote the book Superschool: Before the arrival of Van ’t Zelfde, the Hugo de Groot school in the disadvantaged district of Charlois was in a moribund existence. From being the worst school in the country with a huge amount of drop outs to one of the best schools in Th Netjerlands. The level has been raised enormously in 6 years (in the period 2009 -2015): The last school year, all VMBO, HAVO and VWO students passed in one go. Life expectancy in Rotterdam’s poverty-stricken neighborhoods is twenty years lower than average. If it is unsafe for a child at home, it makes little difference how things go at school. The teachers who roll up their sleeves make all the difference. “If you’re going to get out of your bed, you might as well work hard all day.” When Van ’t Zelfde shared his interest in the vacancy of a school director in a poverty-stricken Rotterdam neighborhood? Befriended directors had all the same advice: Don’t do it! The school is known to be weak, the building is in a very bad state and stabbings regularly take place. Van ;’t Zelfde ignores the advice. He finds a school with distraught teachers, a budget deficit, very poor cito scores and children with a ‘risk indication’. He also saw the many faces of poverty: “Poverty has bruises. Poverty has a smell. Poverty is hungry. I wanted to know the name and story of each child.” |
EDDI Main Outputs
The EDDI Project has resulted in the development and production of 3 main outputs:
- The EDDI E-Platform
- The EDDI Catalogue
- The EDDI Android Application
