Private Schools as Public Provision for Education: School Choice and Marketization in the Netherlands and Elsewhere in Europe. Occasional Paper.

In the international discussion about expanding parental choice and the private delivery of education, the Dutch arrangement is regarded quite often as a "unique" system. This paper discusses the features of the Dutch arrangement as a variation of comparable schemes within the European Union, whereby parents can make a real choice among comparable schools, mostly between public and state-funded private schools, and do not pay very high school fees. School choice was one of the most important political topics in 19th-century continental European societies. These struggles had more or less comparable results, with public and religious-subsidized school sectors offering parents a choice between schools of the same curriculum and usually under comparable financial costs for the parents. Despite the increasing irrelevance of church and religion in the everyday life of most late 20th-century European societies, the religious schools in these societies did not dwindle away in the Netherlands nor in the rest of Europe. (Contains 36 references and 1 graph.) (RT)