The Dutch school system chart: ages, groepen, levels and streams on one page, with the Indian class beside each

The Dutch school system chart below is the one page we send every family that asks how Dutch school works, because the words, groep, brugklas, vmbo, havo, vwo, doorstroomtoets, make no sense until they sit next to an age and an Indian class. The chart runs from 4 to 18, one row per year, with what the year is for and the test or decision that falls in it. The sections after it explain the primary groepen, the secondary streams, the bridge years, the bilingual and international routes, and how the Dutch levels map to CBSE, IGCSE and IB, so that a parent can place their own child on it in a minute.

The chart

Two rules make the chart work. Groep equals Indian class plus two, so a 9-year-old from Class 4 is a groep 6 child. And the Dutch count age on 1 October, so a child born in September is a year ahead of one born in October; how that line is applied to a child arriving from India, and what to do when a school proposes a groep lower, is in which groep your child goes into.

Primary school: groep 1 to 8

Dutch primary school, the basisschool, runs eight years in one building with, usually, one teacher per groep. There is no exam at the end; there are the twice-yearly monitoring tests, Cito or IEP, from groep 3, reported as levels I to V or A to E, and the doorstroomtoets in February of groep 8. The school's advice for secondary school is formed on the monitoring scores of groep 6, 7 and 8, the child's work habits, and the teachers' judgment, and it is largely settled by the end of groep 7. What is taught in maths each year, and where a child from India is ahead or behind, is in Dutch primary maths groep by groep; how to read the levels is in Cito score explained.

Secondary school: the three streams

At 12 every Dutch child is placed in a stream, and the streams have different lengths and different ends.

• vmbo, four years to 16, in four levels from practical to theoretical (the theoretical level, vmbo-t or mavo, is the one that keeps academic doors open), leading to mbo, the vocational colleges, and from mbo-4 onwards to hbo.
• havo, five years to 17, leading to hbo, the universities of applied sciences, which award bachelor's degrees in engineering, business, nursing, teaching and most professions.
• vwo, six years to 18, in two flavours, atheneum and gymnasium (with Latin and Greek), leading to the research universities.

A child can move up: vmbo-t to havo year 4, havo to vwo year 5, mbo-4 to hbo, hbo to a university master's. The routes exist and are used, and they cost a year each time. What each stream means for an Indian family's plans, and how the advice can be appealed or improved, is in VWO, HAVO or VMBO explained.

The bridge years and the profile choice

The brugklas, the bridge class, is year 1 and sometimes year 2 of secondary school, in which a school may combine two streams, havo/vwo or vmbo-t/havo, and place the child definitively at the end. Many Dutch schools use it to give a child with a havo advice a chance at vwo. In year 3, havo and vwo pupils choose a profile, a fixed set of subjects for the upper school: nature and technology, nature and health, economics and society, or culture and society. The profile decides which university courses are open, so an Indian family aiming at engineering or medicine wants the nature profiles, which need the maths and the physics from year 2 onwards. What changes in maths and science at 12 is in brugklas year 1.

The routes beside the chart

Tweetalig onderwijs (TTO), bilingual education, is a stream inside Dutch secondary schools, mostly vwo, in which half the lessons in the first three years are in English. It sits on the same chart with the same diploma at the end; who gets in and what it is for is in TTO schools in the Netherlands.

International schools run beside the chart on the IB programmes, PYP to age 11, MYP to 16, Diploma to 18, or the British system with IGCSE at 16 and A-levels or the IB Diploma at 18. They are the choice for a short posting or an older child arriving without Dutch, at two very different prices; the fees are in international school fees in the Netherlands 2026-27.

Newcomer classes are the entry point for a child arriving without Dutch: a language year at primary age, the ISK at 12 and over, and then the chart resumes at the child's age.

How the Dutch levels map to CBSE, IGCSE and IB

The vwo diploma is accepted by Indian universities and by universities abroad in the same way as Class 12 or the IB Diploma. The havo diploma has no exact Indian equivalent; it is a complete secondary education aimed at hbo. A family that may return to India should keep the CBSE sequence alive alongside the Dutch one, especially in science and English; the plan is in how to keep your child CBSE-ready.

What we do

Our job is the maths and science row of that chart, in English, Hindi or Punjabi, in the Dutch order, a term ahead of the school, so that the advice at 11 says vwo and the profile at 14 can be the nature one. Bring the child's age, the current groep and the last report to the free demo and we will show you where they sit on the chart and what the next test will ask.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →