Students in the Netherlands are slightly less positive about their courses in general this year, with the quality of lecturers’ English in particular being marked down.

More than 270,000 students took part in the annual survey, giving their courses an average mark of 76.6%, down from 78.8% a year ago.

But when it comes to the internationalisation of the higher education system, students were much less happy. Just over half (51.8%) said they were pleased at the attention being paid to making education more international, which is down slightly on last year.

And the mark for lecturers’ English also slipped slightly but remains just below four points out of 10.

‘Satisfaction with internationalisation has dropped and remains very low,’ said Tom van der Brink, chairman of student organisation ISO. ‘Given that internationalisation is being given a bigger role, this is worrying. It should be the case that if you take an English language degree, that your teachers speak proper English.’

Earlier this month, education minister Ingrid van Engelshoven gave the go ahead to the Dutch higher education system to offer more courses and degrees in English, as long as it leads to an improvement in standards and that Dutch students are not forced out.

In particular, she said, efforts would be made to boost the English skills of teaching staff.