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I am reading about the Dutch education structure, and noticed the name of the diploma for Secondary Education is divided into 3 main areas, VMBO (vocational), HAVO (high-school) and VWO (pre-academic) But how do you write the degree-diploma title? Do you separate the diploma from the main subject of study (the major in the States) or write the diploma plus the subject of study/major all together as one? Specially for VMBO that is separated into NLFQ (Dutch qualification framework, 1-4).

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    What do you mean with 'degree title'? A secondary education doesn't award any title or degree. Also, you write "the major in the States". As far as I know, they only have majors in college (i.e. tertiary education) in the USA. What do you mean with a major with regards to secondary education?
    – BrtH
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 21:33
  • Would Dutch sites like their government explain their own education system? May be worth looking...
    – Solar Mike
    Commented Aug 2, 2019 at 22:29
  • Yes the Diploma, because I saw some examples of CV's and under Education Dutch people write, HAVO - Economie that means the HAVO is the high school diploma and Economics is the major or subject of study? Commented Aug 5, 2019 at 14:20

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If I understood correctly, you are asking how one would put the title of ones Dutch secondary education on, for example, a CV.

A little introduction for those not familiar with the Dutch education system. The Dutch secondary education is split into three levels, depending on how smart the child is: vmbo, havo and vwo. Children start secondary education when they are about 11 or 12. Vmbo (nominally) takes four years, havo takes five years and vwo takes six years.

Vmbo

Vmbo is further split into four levels: vmob-b, vmbo-k, vmbo-gl and vmbo-t, also called mavo. Students can choose a specialisation. In Dutch these are called 'profielen', literally 'profiles', but a better translation might be 'subject clusters'. It is important to note that these specialisations are not a single course, but are a combination of courses that are followed in addition to some mandatory base courses (such as Dutch). Vmbo-b, -k and -gl have 10 of these profiles, vmbo-t has 4.

On a CV, you would write the title as the sublevel, e.g. 'Vmbo-t'. In brackets, or underneath it, you could write 'Profile Economy', but this is not part of your diploma title.

Havo

Havo has no sublevels and has 4 profiles. The diploma title would just be 'Havo', for the profile see above.

Vwo

Vwo has the same 4 profiles as havo. Vwo is split in two levels: atheneum and gymnasium. Gymnasium students take ancient Greek and/or Latin courses, atheneum students don't.

As a title you can either use just 'Vwo', or use the sublevel, i.e. 'Atheneum' or 'Gymnasium'. Especially gymnasium students often opt to do this, since it is seen as the higher level. For the profiles, again, see above.

PS

Al the abbreviations of the school levels are written in lowercase, except when at the beginning of a sentence.

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  • Thank you so much for the insight, so if I understood correctly, what it matters on a CV is the obtained diploma and not the 'subject clusters' is this correct? or perhaps it's optional to add the 'subject clusters'. Would the same also applies to secondary vocation education MBO and tertiary education HBO and WO? Commented Aug 8, 2019 at 16:11

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