Education Minister Maria van der Hoeven plans to raise the age for compulsory education from 17 to 18. The move is intended to reduce the number of young people who leave school without any qualifications. At present around 60,000 pupils drop out of school each year.
Ms Van der Hoeven also wants local authorities to take […]

The mayor of Amsterdam on Monday wrote to his counterparts in eight European Union countries urging them to allow gay people to marry and hold public demonstrations.
In a letter to the mayors of eight capital cities, Job Cohen said the fifth anniversary of same-sex marriages in the Netherlands was an “appropriate occasion” to ask […]

Kosovar schoolgirl Taida Pasic has decided to leave the Netherlands.
Harry Meulenkamp, father of the family Pasic is staying with in the Dutch town of Winterswijk, said on Sunday that she is leaving voluntarily so that she is not deported by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) by Friday.
A court decided on Friday that Pasic is […]

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende - who appearance has often been likened to Harry Potter - has chided the media for not recognising his description of himself as boring and petty bourgeois was meant to be ironic.
The CDA leader said on the Christian Democrat Party’s website he was annoyed that many newspapers published his […]

Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has admitted he may be “a bit boring” but added that this was not necessarily a bad thing.
Speaking at a meeting of his Christian Democrat party in the town of Hoorn, Mr Balkenende conceded that “a bit of cheerfulness surely wouldn’t hurt”.
However, he turned down a suggestion to […]

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week granted a MATRA subsidy to the tune of EUR 2.4m to the University of Maastricht.
The MATRA subsidy will allow students from the former Eastern European countries to receive scholarships for a one-year Master course at the UM.
The subsidy will be divided between a Master of Public Health […]

A one-day meeting at the University of Liège between Bio-industries and young Life Sciences researchers.
Sharing knowledge is essential in developing new fields of innovation and opens the way to economic growth.
Since the first edition eleven years ago, the Bioforum concept has offered Life Sciences PhD students a chance to freely participate to a multidisciplinary meeting, […]

The Dutch biotech company PharmaCell based in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and cell therapy services company Cygenics from Singapore have announced top-level, formal collaboration agreement in the life sciences field between the two countries.
This project, a multi-national PACRIMA R&D collaboration, concerns the development of a new technology that will prompt the patient’s own immune […]

The municipalities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam have decided to finance a Chair in Criminology at the University of the Netherlands Antilles during the four coming years.
The scientific research will focus on the link between living conditions in the Dutch Caribbean islands and problems related to Dutch Caribbean youth in the Netherlands. A Chairprofessor will […]

A 44-year-old teacher at the Maastricht Hotel School, who is suspected of cocaine use, will be given another opportunity to prove his innocence.
The judge in charge of the case has allowed the teacher to present witnesses at a court hearing.
In the meantime, an Economy teacher has been fired from the Hotel School.
Both teachers are […]

The Dutch government is currently drawing public attention to the restitution of artworks repatriated from Germany after the Second World War and currently in the custody of the Dutch State (the NK collection).
Thousands of art objects were sold, robbed or confiscated and ended up in Germany during World War II. After the war, the […]

European Public Health (EPH), a new Bachelor programme of the Universiteit Maastricht will definitely start in September 2006. The Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science approved the proposal of the Universiteit Maastricht to begin this new bachelor programme.
In his letter to the UM State Secretary Mark Rutte clearly states the motivation for the approval: […]

History is in danger of repeating itself in Limburg, the Netherlands, where the sons of coal miners thrown out of work 40 years ago when the government closed uneconomic pits, now face redundancy themselves.
The 3,000 workers at Nedcar, the only large-scale car factory in the Netherlands, include many whose fathers worked at the plant at […]

Europe’s universities will end up as “beautiful museums” unless academics harness knowledge to economic forces, warns Ján Figel’.
The European education commissioner tells EUpolitix that universities need to forge partnerships with the private sector.
“We have glorious traditional universities, places where strong identities exist, but much of the time they are living in closed spaces,” he tells […]

Kosovar schoolgirl Taida Pasic lost her court appeal on Friday against the decision to expel her from the Netherlands.
Pasic has been involved in a high-profile battle with Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk since the start of the year.
The judge in Amsterdam found that the Minister acted correctly when she refused to grant Pasic, […]

Confessions of a Wildlife Photographer, is the independent sequel (part two) of the lecture Michael Leach, of WWF fame, gave for the Netherlands-England Socieity in Maastricht in May 2003.
This time his talk will feature magpies, hen harriers, badgers and many other animals. Michael will explain the basics of his art in this introduction to […]

The German government is turning up the heat on the European Union to ensure all official texts are also published in the German language, officials said Thursday.
“Germany has a right to have these documents in German,” the deputy foreign minister responsible for Europe, Guenter Gloser, told German news agency DPA, adding that he wanted […]

Do you ever wonder why your Dutch friends, housemates, fellow students or professors behave a certain way?
To help international students to better understand Dutch attitudes and behavior Nuffic, the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education, has published a booklet entitled ‘What?!! Aspects of Dutch culture that can cause friction’.
By explaining the distinctive features […]

Delft University of Technology, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and RWTH Aachen University have joined forces.
In September 2006, the three institutions will launch a joint two-year master’s programme in applied geophysical sciences.
What’s special about the new programme is that despite the differences in the education systems of the partners, they have developed […]

More secondary education students should be able to choose an international curriculum. The Education Council is therefore calling for complete, international curricula within the regular education system. This was one of the conclusions of a recently published advisory report entitled Learning Pathways and the International Baccalaureate (‘Internationale Leerwegen en het Internationale Baccalaureaat’).
The Education Council also […]

In 2005 three quarters of the Dutch population aged 25-65 belonged to the labour force. In 1996 this was only two thirds. Highly educated people are most active in the job market. The increase in the share of highly educated people increased the gross labour participation rate.
Virtually no growth in participation rate among the […]

According to figures from Statistics Netherlands, an average 460 thousand people in the Netherlands were unemployed in the first quarter of 2006. After correction for seasonal effects, unemployment comes to 438 thousand. This is 13 thousand fewer than in the period December 2005- February 2006.
In the last three months, 6.2 percent of the labour force […]

The Netherlands Christian College (CHN) is to open a hotel school in China for 5000 students. Wageningen University is likewise undertaking projects in China.
As a college (HBO school) in Leeuwarden, CHN was approached by Royalton Investments, which is engaged in hotel development in China. R. Veenstra of CHN yesterday commented that “they are in need […]

A Parliament majority continues to maintain that all state museums should offer free entry. Culture State Secretary Medy van der Laan is however persisting in her opposition.
Labour (PvdA), the conservatives (VVD) and the socialists (SP) consider that the cultural heritage should in principle be available for free. All the Dutch should receive a ‘cultural passport,’ […]

Take a walk around the Guesthouse Universiteit Maastricht’s campus near Annadal, and it is quite likely that you will hear nearly every language imaginable – except for Dutch. [continued…]

A group of students at the Delft University of Technology has created the largest 3D screen in the world.
The giant screen will be unveiled in the main square in the Dutch town on Sunday 23 April, the university’s electrical engineering association ETV said on Wednesday.
The display is 8 metres wide, four metres high and […]

Dutch scientist says patient data are increasingly recorded in an electronic form but confusion might arise from the use of varying terminology.
Ronald Cornet cites, as an example, giving one patient suffering from diabetes the label “diabetes mellitus type II” and another patient “DM type 2.” Therefore, a search query for “diabetes mellitus” would […]

The Indian government is planning to support a project to strengthen the longstanding ties between the people of Indian origin (PIOs) in Holland with the land of their forefathers.
The Foundation for Critical Choices for India (FCCI), also called ‘a think tank of overseas Indians’, celebrated its silver jubilee at The Hague last weekend.
Speaking at the […]

Wellfit is a project supported by the Dutch Province of Limburg, which is contributing EUR 100,000 to an Interreg subsidy of EUR 350,000. For the project, the Gilde Opleidingen in Roermond (NL) and the Vera Beckers College from Krefeld (D) will establish a cross-border diploma in the area of healthcare, wellness, beauty, and fitness. On […]

The Belgian Province of Limburg has brought out two new tourist guides. One covers the Hesbaye region and has 122 pages of information about castles, orchards and accommodation in this beautiful rural area. The other guide, 110 pages long, covers the former mining region. Don’t forget, Belgian Limburg also offers a bad weather guarantee, which […]