Page 13 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

2.2. Cooperation schools 1 Cooperation schools (in Dutch: samenwerkingsscholen) emerged in the Dutch
educational system in the 1960s and 1970s (Derriks, Roede, and Veugelers 2000).
In 2006, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science counted the number
of cooperation schools for primary education (Centrale Financiën Instellingen 2006). The list indicates that in 2002, twenty and in 2006, thirty cooperation schools for primary education were counted (0.28% and 0.43% of all primary schools, respectively). In the last year of our PhD research (2018), we identified 72 cooperation schools for primary education.
Cooperation schools are the result of a merger between one or more public schools and one or more nongovernment schools. Two distinct school identities, reflecting the core characteristics of each school, come together in a new school. A cooperation school is attended by students from a non-affiliated background and by students from a confessional background. We must emphasize that it is definitely not the case that all non-affiliated students originate from the former public school; in most cases, the former nongovernment (and confessional) school could also have been attended by non-affiliated students. Moreover, not all religiously affiliated students attended the nongovernment school before the merger. We see an increase in cooperation schools in those areas of the Netherlands where student numbers are decreasing: fewer people tend to live in those areas. As a result, schools find ways to survive and/or to maintain a school in the village. Figure 1 shows the decline in population:
In rural areas, most people are from a Protestant, Catholic or non-affiliated background. Other religions are more likely to be found in urban areas.
During the years of this research, a cooperation school was legally either a public school or a nongovernment school. Dutch education law makes it extremely difficult for schools considering merging to become a cooperation school in a formal sense: without belonging to one of both categories in the dual system (a nongovernment or a public school). The duality in the system is embedded in the Dutch constitution: exceptions are limited by strict legal regulations. Therefore, all the schools we investigated are either a public school or a nongovernment school in a legal sense. However, cooperation schools do not present themselves as either of these, but instead see themselves a third category school: an innovation within
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
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