Dutch Education Award

Since 2020, the Dutch Education Award (NOP) has been awarded annually by NRO to educational teams in higher education (hbo and wo). Since 2023, the award has also been presented to educational teams in secondary vocational education (mbo). 

The award is a sign of appreciation for teams in secondary vocational education and higher education. The award is presented to teams that have developed an initiative over the past six years that has led to innovation in education. The award also aims to encourage teachers to continue working on educational innovation and knowledge sharing. 

Up to 7.5 million euros is available for the Dutch Education Award. This amount will be divided equally between secondary vocational education, higher professional education and university education. For university education, the 2.5 million euros will be divided as follows: the first prize is 1.2 million euros, the second prize is 800,000 euros and the third prize is 500,000 euros.

Conditions

Like all other publicly funded Dutch universities, Utrecht University may nominate one team per year (Utrecht University and the UMCU count as one institution for NRO purposes). The educational initiative of the teaching team on which the nomination is based has not previously been awarded this this grant and must have been developed in the past six years. 

Criteria

The nominations will be assessed by NRO based on the following criteria:

  1. Educational initiative and educational team (50%);
  2. Impact within the educational field (30%);
  3. Evidence-informed approach (20%).

Procedure

The team nominated to submit a proposal on behalf of UU will be selected as follows:

  1. Existing projects and/or teams that are eligible based on their start date will be added to a longlist, which will be supplemented by the CAT Advisory Board where necessary;
  2. The complete longlist is submitted to the vice-deans of education, who supplement the list, if applicable, with teams and projects from their faculties that meet the criteria;
  3. A subcommittee of the CAT Advisory Board selects two to three teams based on the NOP assessment criteria;
  4. These teams will be approached to gauge their interest. If interested, each team will be asked to submit a half-page document briefly going over the NOP assessment criteria;
  5. Based on this, the full CAT Advisory Board advises the CAT MT for one team to be nominated, after which the CAT MT will make the formal decision;
  6. This team will be assisted in writing the nomination.

More information

Visit the website of NRO for more information such as additional conditions, procedures and the full call for proposals. If you are interested in competing for the award with your team, please contact the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning.