Policies for disadvantaged children under scrutiny: the Dutch policy compared with policies in France, England, Flanders and the USA

Dutch policies on socio‐economic and ethnic inequality in education

“…For instance, the evaluations of the USA programmes initially showed that the influence of the children's home environment outweighed that of the school programmes by far, and that the compensatory programmes were doomed to be, and in fact were, ineffective. Later, more sophisticated studies indicated that there were positive effects of compensatory programmes, although they were small and were evident only in the early years (for example, Day et al 1997;Karsten 2006).…”

Targeting Resources to Students with Special Educational Needs: National Differences in Policy and Practice

“…As a matter of course, schools in England that serve large proportions of disadvantaged pupils receive extra resources (often in the form of extra teachers, for example) as an increase in the standard allocation given to finance schools. England, however, has additional policies that serve disadvantaged pupils by (1) targeting extra funding to impoverished areas (or groups of schools) and (2) rewarding innovative ideas at the local level with grant money (EC, 2000;Karsten, 2006). The Eurydice report does an excellent job of highlighting the differences between these policies in various countries and indicating which are most prevalent.…”

“…In recent years, two key studies, one by Eurydice, the European Commission's Information Network on Education in Europe, and the other by Dutch researcher Sjoerd Karsten, have attempted to describe different European models for targeting additional funding (that provided on top of a general allocation for school funding) to students with special needs (EC, 2000;Karsten, 2006). While these studies are both explicitly concerned with the manners in which resources are targeted to socio-economically disadvantaged youth, they also provide useful lenses for viewing the policy mechanisms in place for delivering targeted resources to students with various other special needs.…”

“…Research conducted by the OECD, the European Commission, and a cadre of independent researchers has shed some light on the issues, but great gaps in the general knowledge about the success of children with special needs remain (European Commission, 2000;Roza & Hill, 2004;OECD, 2004OECD, , 2005Fordham Institute, 2006;Karsten, 2006). Considering this, the purpose of this article is threefold: First it will synthesise some of the progress that has been made toward understanding what education for students with disabilities, learning difficulties, and disadvantages looks like by describing how different countries serve and differentiate between these diverse groups of students.…”

Equal Opportunities?

“…These measures fall within the category of the "classic" positive discrimination programmes. Other studies have already explained (Karsten, 2006) that these programmes have only had limited success in recent decades.…”