An educational team from Delft University of Technology has been nominated for the 2026 Dutch Education Awards alongside eight other teams from further education, higher professional education and university-level education. On 25 June, at the Comenius Festival in Nieuwegein, Education Minister Rianne Letschert will announce the top three winners within their respective sectors.
The Delft project ‘Robotics: I got it!’ makes technology accessible to students step by step, based on the MIRTE robot platform. This allows students to progress from simple construction and programming tasks to working on complex robotics projects.
The other nominees in the higher education category are teams from Leiden University and Erasmus MC. There, they developed e-learning modules on suicide prevention for psychology students and healthcare workers respectively, and innovated aspects such as assessment and evaluation within the medical training programme.
Theatre
In the higher professional education sector, the awards go to Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, The Hague University of Applied Sciences and Inholland University of Applied Sciences. The teams developed a ‘digital education lab’, used theatre to make difficult topics discussable in the classroom, and are tackling student dropout rates in teacher training through a complete overhaul of the curriculum.
Since 2023, vocational education (MBO) has also been participating. This year, DC Terra, Koning Willem 1 College and Gilde Opleidingen have been nominated.
The Dutch Education Awards are presented annually to teams from universities of applied sciences, universities and vocational education institutions that have “developed an innovative educational initiative”.
A total of €2.5 million is available per sector. The winner receives €1.2 million, the runner-up €800,000 and the third-placed team €500,000. The teams can use this money to fund (future) projects focused on educational innovation. (HOP, NB)
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