A school set up by the far right political party Forum voor Democratie has been able to get government funding despite not being able to show enough parents wanted to send their children there, the Volkskrant reported on Friday.
The Renaissance school, which is opening in Almere in August, will be fully funded by the state, even though it could not reach the necessary 100 declarations of support, the paper said. Instead, the school’s backers used market research to show that the population of the area will increase, boosting the need for a new school.
An earlier attempt to open a Renaissance school in Almere, which was fully funded by parents and private sources, flopped, with just three pupils attending classes when visited by inspectors in 2022. It closed in 2024.
The school, the paper said, is part of the FvD’s efforts to set up its own “social ecosystem” which includes companies, a publishing house and in the future, “a parallel financial system”. Without this, party founder Thierry Baudet says, the “political change” needed for the survival of “our civilisation” will not be possible.
The school, Baudet told a party podcast, will ban “LGBT nonsense” and girls and boys will be given separate forms of education – competitive for boys and cooperative for girls. The Netherlands’ colonial past will be celebrated and the school will oppose immigration, climate policy and the “demographic downfall of Europeans”.
The school claims to have 10 pupils registered for the lowest class. In four years’ time it must have 139 pupils and in eight 277 in order to continue to qualify for government funding. The school guide does not mention its links to the far right party.
Junior education minister Judith Tielen told the paper that the school will be under government supervision and must not lead to inequality in any form. “I am sure the inspectors will do their job properly, as they do with every new school,” Tielen told the paper.
White nationalist links
FvD has come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks for its connections to white nationalist and fascist groups. It has seven MPs in parliament and made gains in the March local elections.
In the Netherlands, parents and religious groups are free to set up schools if they meet strict requirements. However, ast December, a narrow majority of MPs backed a motion stating that the constitutional ban on discrimination takes precedence over the freedom to establish faith-based schools.
That move followed concerns about teaching practices at some religious schools, including Christian and Islamic institutions, where pupils may be told that women are not equal to men and that homosexuality is a sin.
According to research by Nieuwsuur last year, the Netherlands has 186 schools which take the Bible literally, three Jewish schools, five Hindustani schools and 80 Islamic schools, all but two of which are primary level.
