Special needs pupils
Counted as special needs pupil. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science provides extra funding for schools teaching these children. There are four groups of special needs children, each with its own ‘weighting factor’. For an ‘ordinary’ pupil – i.e. a pupil who does not belong to one of the categories listed below - the factor is 1. When a pupil is accepted by a school a weight is determined corresponding with the category to which he or she belongs. Each pupil can belong to only one of the following categories:
- Dutch pupils with parents whose highest level of education is first-stage secondary education or lower, of whom the parent with the highest income does not have income from employment;
- Pupil at boarding school or in a foster family, whose father or mother is or has been a bargee;
- Children of caravan dwellers;
- Children with an ethnic minority background (see above note on inhabitants with a foreign background) whose parents have a low level of education or a low rated occupational status.
The weights are only allocated in normal primary education. Special need schools do not distinguish between these pupils