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In 2018 the Netherlands started the development of a new curriculum framework for primary, lower and upper secondary education. New themes in curriculum are Digital Literacy, citizenship and a strong focus on 21st century skills. Digital Literacy is defined as a combination of ICT skills, media literacy, information literacy and Computational Thinking. Starting with a vision on a theme such as Digital Literacy and using this vision as a starting point for describing big ideas. For Digital Literacy eight big ideas were described: data and information, safety and privacy, using and controlling, communication and cooperation, digital citizenship, digital economy, applying and designing, and sustainability. Computational Thinking is integrated in each of these big ideas. The underlying framework for Computational Thinking is based on ISTE and CSTA and each big idea is specified as a learning trajectory describing learning objectives leading to a new legal curriculum framework in 2022.

In 2015 a curriculum framework for Computational Thinking was developed for lower secondary education in the Netherlands. The framework is based on ISTE and CSTA, translated for the curriculum in the Netherlands and validated by experts, teachers, teacher educators and publishers. Based on this validated curriculum a new learning trajectory was designed for primary education, in collaboration with teachers and principals from three schools.

As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened in countries across the globe, most governments took the precaution of closing their schools in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus. Schools were forced to replace this time in class with online learning and home schooling, in most cases facilitated by teachers and parents. After weeks of school closures, some countries are now starting the complicated process of gradually reopening their schools. To support these efforts, this COVID-19 country note aims to bring together evidence from various OECD school education surveys conducted prior to the crisis and use it to examine how prepared teachers, students and schools were in Netherlands to face the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a view to informing and guiding future policy responses to the crisis.