Educational staff responsible for support and guidance

The collective labour agreements for the education sector include provisions on the training and mentoring of staff, especially those starting out in the profession. They require employers to draw up rules on the training, induction and mentoring of staff, in consultation with the staff section of the participation council. The rules should stipulate who is to be involved in providing this support.  There are no provisions of law or regulations governing the responsibility for support and guidance.

There are two levels of training for support staff. The first is the level 4 secondary vocational education training course for teaching assistants, which began on 1 August 1998. Holders of a level 3 qualification in social and community work who have specialised in primary education can also become teaching assistants. Teaching assistants help the teacher with routine teaching activities and supervise pupils in the acquisition of practical skills. Their duties are primarily of an educational nature. Occupational profiles have been drawn up, on which the exit qualifications for the training course for teaching assistants are based. A higher level of training will be offered in 2009/2010 by a number of HBO institutions, through associate degree programmes. For the time being, however, the programmes of study will be exclusively geared to support staff in secondary and vocational education, since there are no higher-level teaching assistants in primary education.