Samen koersen naar Passend Onderwijs: Knelpunten in de samenwerking binnen een samenwerkingsverband
Summary
Background: On the 1st of August 2014, the policy ‘Passend Onderwijs’ set course in the Netherlands, bound for integrating pupils with special educational needs in regular educational settings as much as possible. This is arranged by so-called ‘samenwerkingsverbanden’ (SWV’s), collaborations in which schools are working together to fulfill their duty of taking care of pupils with special needs. Objective: The aim of this study is to detect bottlenecks in the collaboration between professionals in SWV’s in order to improve the functioning of these collaborations and therefore the functioning of the policy ‘Passend Onderwijs’. Method: In this case-study, 12 professionals of one SWV in the Netherlands were interviewed in depth about their views on three aspects of the collaboration of their SWV, namely: Shared beliefs, policy and communication. Results: The main bottlenecks of the SWV under scrutiny were lack of time and discrepancy between interests. Conclusions: This study underlines the importance of collaboration in the SWV in the functioning of the policy ‘Passend Onderwijs’. If the professionals in the SWV consider the bottlenecks in the collaboration, by being aware of and respecting each other’s interests and points of view, ‘Passend Onderwijs’ could become succesful.