Quality of English spoken by lecturers is sufficient

It is not yet perfect, but the quality of English spoken by lecturers at Dutch universities and other institutes of higher education is certainly improving. According to the Minister of Education, Ronald Plasterk, their language skills are already sufficient but will even get better. The Utrecht lecturers of the Pedagogical Sciences and Natural Science and Innovation Management programmes, however, score rather low.

 

A few programmes are given by lecturers whose English is insufficient, but this is certainly no reason to speak of a ‘consistent pattern of complaints’. This is evidenced by a programme assessment by quality monitoring organisation NVAO (Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders), says Plasterk. Moreover, an increasing number of lecturers is being sent to language training courses.

Nonetheless, the Minister thinks that the average mark of 6.9 out of 10, given by students for the English language skills of their lecturers, is ‘not all that high’. Last year, the National Student Survey for the first time asked students to grade their lecturers. University students tend to be slightly more positive (7.0) than their HBO counterparts (6.7).

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