Islamitische scholen in Nederland maar ook in andere Westerse landen staan al decennia lang in de (kritische) belangstelling. Michael Merry & Geert Driessen hebben de balans opgemaakt. Daarbij kijken ze naar de achtergronden, motieven, context, ontwikkelingen, opbrengsten en toekomst. Hun artikel “On the right track? Islamic schools in the Netherlands after an era of turmoil” verschijnt in 2016 in het tijdschrift Race Ethnicity and Education. De post print versie kan hier worden gedownload. Hierna volgt de samenvatting:
“The Netherlands currently has 43 Islamic primary schools. All of them are fully subsidised by the government. Yet since the first school was established in 1988 Islamic schools have been confronted with obstacles by the Ministry of Education, bad press and increasingly strict state supervision. Under pressure to improve their image, Dutch Islamic primary schools since 2008 have turned their attention away from expanding their numbers and instead focussed on improving school quality. In this article we describe the various developments and draw upon large scale empirical research to demonstrate the present state of affairs both in terms of cognitive and non-cognitive pupil achievements. We argue that the present results offer reasons to be cautiously optimistic.”