Islamic schools in the Netherlands have improved

Islamic schools in the Netherlands have greatly improved the academic performances of their students in only a few years. The Dutch Ministry of Education has congratulated the schools for making rapid improvements, Radio Netherlands reported Thursday. In March 2011, one-fifth of Dutch Islamic primary schools obtained a poor performance score and 7.5 percent were deemed very poor in performance, noted the radio. Now, none of the Islamic schools in the Netherlands are considered to have a very poor performance and in September 2011 only one of these school was listed as having a poor performance. In 2008, Dutch education inspectors sounded the alarm about structural problems in Islamic primary schooling, including the quality of the education and the functioning of school administrators. The Islamic School Board Organisation, ISBO, an umbrella organisation of Islamic schools in the Netherlands, decided to push for structural improvements in the quality of Islamic education. Currently, 36 primary schools, with a total of 8,000 students, are members of the ISBO. An estimated one million Muslims live in the Netherlands which has a total population of around 17 million.