Why the educational disadvantage policy fails. A case study of the Netherlands

For over half a century, the Dutch Ministry of Education has been implementing policies aimed at combating educational disadvantages linked to the socio-economic circumstances in which children grow up. The focus is on all children who meet the relevant disadvantage criteria, whether they have developmental delays or not. This policy has by now cost around forty billion euros. Unfortunately, student performance continues to decline. This in-depth literature review describes the manner in which those billions are disbursed to school boards and municipalities, and the way in which they are deployed. In view of this failure of a group-oriented approach, a plea is made for an individual-oriented approach. In contrast to the preventive group approach, the individual-centered approach focuses on the actual developmental delays of individual children and is more remedial in nature.