Reader question: What does the school cost my Thai girlfriend for integration in the Netherlands?

So what does a car cost? You can make it as cheap or expensive as you want. Self-study is the cheapest but not for most people. I think schools quickly cost a euro or a thousand, rising to 4-5 thousand euros. It all depends on, among other things, teaching hours, quality, image (some ROCs were known as grabbers, expensive and then paid by the municipality with less quality. Capabel, for example, was a notorious example in the period up to and including 2013).

You can find schools with a quality mark at tinopwerk.nl. That was (is?) a requirement if you want to borrow money from DUO for your studies. Quality mark mainly relates to correct administration, they have no opinion about lessons or price quality or anything.

Find some courses Inburgering (Dutch at A2 level) or NT2 (Dutch at B1-2 level, if you aspire to and can handle a higher level of Dutch) and then look for reviews from others about whether it is a wise use of your money.

In addition, exam and re-exam costs for exams at DUO are added. So it can be somewhere in between
the 2 and 5 thousand euros cost.

Hello Casper

You can request a study attachment via DUO. This organization arranges everything for study and for the exam.
We also go to a ROC where you can find everything on the site.
Intake conversation costs 160,-
Integration course 690,- per quarter
Literacy course 900 per quarter
state exam courses 690 per quarter

The teachers see how far you are and guide you towards the exam, so if she picks up everything quickly, the costs are a lot lower.
The second part is that she is in class with refugees and they are not that motivated, because everything has been arranged financially for that.
Expect her to be done and passed in a calendar year for the best.
Good luck Ivan

It cost me nothing, the municipality reimbursed everything, but then I'm talking about 4 years ago, so if I were you, I'd go to the municipality and ask for some information

My wife was allowed to serve the course at the expense of the municipality, the only thing she had to pay for was the books and notebooks. Many municipalities in NL have a jar for that, so first inquire there because free is for free…..

Until the end of 2012, civic integration was the responsibility of the municipality. Since 2013, DUO has been responsible for integration (including training). The municipalities had an annual pot, but many municipalities ran out of that pot in the course of 2012. When my love came to the Netherlands permanently at the end of 2012, the answer was “sorry the pot is empty and in a month it will be 2013 and that is what DUO is about here, you can borrow money there”. On the foreignpartner.nl forum there were many from mid to late 2012 who were in the same boat “sorry pot is empty, try DUO”.

Some municipalities still have a fund. Some, such as Rotterdam and Amsterdam, reimburse an integration course for immigrants who are NOT required to integrate (Americans, Poles, Turks, etc.). They reason 'they don't have to integrate, but we want to motivate them to learn the language anyway, so we offer to pay for a course. Civic integration obligations.. are obliged to go to school, so we will not pay for that, they can borrow from DUO”. It's entirely up to the city council. A single social council may still partly reimburse the costs for people integrating, but that will be a rarity.

The rule since 2013 has been “immigrants have their own responsibility and must therefore arrange and pay for this themselves”. The 70% compensation (remission of DUO loan) if successful within 3 years has also been canceled by Rutte II as one of the measures to show that immigrants have to keep their own pants on and that the Netherlands does not 'give away free money to those immigrants'.

So count on having to pay for everything and find out for yourself. So google for the course options in your own region and make a choice.

Finally, a tip from my experience: When my love came here she fell into a hole. From working 40-50 hours a week in the office to sitting at home. Before the IND had confirmed her residence status (this used to be done separately when there was no TEV procedure: MVV entry visa and VVR residence permit were separate procedures) and a loan from DUO had been arranged, we had completed 2-3 months. That was difficult for her, so she started serving coffee at a retirement home. Was also good for her Dutch.

Thanks to the voluntary work on her CV, she was able to work as a cleaner later on and thus become even more in touch with the language. Finding work was not easy because even for cleaning and production work people asked for 'good knowledge of Dutch', never received an invitation until her CV stated that she did voluntary work and spoke Dutch there.

Later she started working among the Thai people, which was less good for her Dutch because the customers then mostly spoke English and the colleagues spoke Thai among themselves. That was not good for the smooth development of her language. It is therefore great for integration if you can find a job among the Dutch!

I understand the pitfall of 'speaking English if the stranger does not speak Dutch well'. I don't blame the customers because I did it myself. Until my love said, after a month in the Netherlands, “Rob, you only speak English to me. I do not want that. I want to learn Dutch otherwise people will think I'm stupid. I live here, I have to speak Dutch, speak Dutch with me.” . She also had hardly any contact with Thai in the first year, her argument at the time was that she would then speak too much Thai instead of Dutch and that a less positive image of the average Thai immigrant (gossip, showing off, money money money, sometimes not even came here out of love) and they did not want to come into such a hornet's nest. The Netherlands was her new home country and she wanted to become part of her new country, she said.

When my wife came to the Netherlands, the municipality had stopped offering integration courses. we were given a list and we had to make do with it. 6 of the 8 names on the list were stopped. because the municipality had stopped paying for the course. 1 was a school where status holders received their integration they asked for 1 year course 5000 euros including exam money. we could then get part of the money back from the duo. the other address of 1 woman who taught according to the Delft method and actually only taught Dutch language. she would like to give a course if we could arrange another 4 people after 3 months we had a group together and the students started working for 500 euros in the 3 months excluding books (150 euros) and exam money 300 euros after 6 months my wife passed. costs together about 1450 euros we got a base of 650 euros back from the duo so the integration cost us 800 euros.

Heinen 10.000 euros???? they'll pick her up in a limo for sure. If so, you've been tricked. Only for the integration course and exam I would not have spent more than 2013 Euro in 2100 and passed in 1x.