The government wants to split the country’s larger mbo vocational training colleges into smaller units, education minister Jet Bussemaker said on Thursday.

Several dozen mbo schools have over 5,000 pupils and these should be divided into several specialised colleges, the minister said.

Some mbo colleges currently have over 20,000 pupils and can seem like ‘impersonal education factories’, the minister said.

Smaller units will also be more familiar to students, parents, teachers and local industry, she said.