Sociologist Gijs Custers has been studying inequality in Rotterdam for years. He works as a university lecturer in criminology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. In his scientific research he studies the NPRZ, with special attention to the extension of learning time in primary schools. He is a man of numbers.
Give him a large set of data and he will dive right into it. With the right data, he can then determine whether there is a causal relationship between certain policy interventions and specific developments in the city. In a sober meeting room on the Woudestein campus, we discuss the expansion of NPRZ’s learning time. The extension of learning time is one of the key points at primary schools in the so-called focus districts. Pupils go to school for an extra 10 hours per week with the main aim of improving the school performance of these pupils.
“It is urgently necessary for the learning time extension within NPRZ to investigate which policy has what effect. That is exactly why I chose this topic for my scientific research,” says Custers.
Is that right? Is the program monitored? On the NPRZ site, data is available about developments in, for example, citoscore, school advice, unemployment and much more.
“This monitoring does not involve scientific research. What you see in those reports is all descriptive. Then it says, for example, that there are more people with a higher education living in South Rotterdam than a few years ago. What is missing next is a scientific analysis. Is this increase caused, for example, by people moving to South Rotterdam from other areas? Or are there residents of South Rotterdam who are rising socially thanks to the measures taken by NPRZ? These kinds of analyzes are lacking or are only carried out to a limited extent.
You can also criticize the monitoring method. Fellow researchers have already pointed out that there are strange calculations that give a distorted picture. But my main criticism of NPRZ is that there is no research into the relationship between NPRZ policy interventions on the one hand and developments in South Rotterdam on the other. We just don’t know which measures are effective or not.”
Custers: “Scientific research shows that in most cases extending learning time does not contribute to school performance, or only to a very small extent. Only in the minority of cases of extension of learning time do we see a strong positive effect on learning performance.