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Some 182,000 secondary school pupils will hear on Thursday whether they have passed their school leaving exams – and whether a rucksack can go up the flagpole outside their house.
The figure, from national statistics agency CBS, is slightly up on last year, when 181,000 teenagers sat their finals.
Most candidates, almost 95,000, are in the vocational vmbo stream, while just over 51,000 took pre-college havo exams and 36,000 are in the pre-university vwo stream, hoping for a place at university in September.
The exams started on May 8. Pupils who narrowly missed out can resit one or two subjects from June 16.
Bags on flagpoles
Newcomers to the Netherlands might wonder why there are school bags dangling from flagpoles in the coming days, often alongside the Dutch flag, balloons and streamers. The display means someone in the house has passed their exams – and that their school days are over.
The tradition dates from around the 1960s, according to culture historian Piet de Boer.
Schools began hanging out flags to mark exam success after World War II, he told the AD, but it was not until 1965 that the Parool spotted the first school bag on a flagpole, on Amsterdam’s Amstelkade. The practice has spread ever since.
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