The Netherlands: Benefits and Costs of Privatized Public Services - Lessons from the Dutch Educational System

The evolution of the Dutch system of primary and secondary education is unique in the western world. (The best historical summary is presented in Lijphart, 1968.) From a relatively secular public monopoly at the beginning of the nineteenth century a shift is seen to a highly pluralistic private religious-based system by the end. While secular public school systems were clearly in ascendancy in the rest of the western world, the Dutch system was moving in the opposite direction and has remained there to the present day.