More money for education will not change anything.

‘More money for education,’ says the coalition agreement. That’s great news! And it doesn’t really deserve a cynical title like the one above this article, either. And yet it is there. Why? Because this is the time to look beyond investment lists. Because without other choices in how we collaborate and organize, extra budget changes everyday teaching exactly nothing. Or do you, as a teacher, think otherwise?

In my previous article, I wrote about the bottlenecks that education professionals tell me about in trainings and trajectories. And then suddenly there is the coalition agreement with the total solution: more money for education. No, I think real change requires more than an extra budget. It requires a sustainable new way of working together and organizing on the floor. Because the real lever for impact ultimately lies in the middle of that daily practice. Where teachers, students and support staff meet.

The reflex: investing without organizing work differently

The first reflex is often predictable. New plans. Additional programs. Additional structures. It feels logical: there’s room, so we invest. But in my experience, this rarely leads to noticeable improvement in day-to-day teaching. The pressure shifts, but the work doesn’t automatically improve. And then before you know it, you get these kinds of reflective statements:

‘We suddenly had more hours and resources for the new program, but everyone kept working in the old routines. It felt like we were trying to put together the same puzzle with more hands’

The lever: in collaborating and organizing

You rarely find the sharpest insights about what can be done better in policy papers or strategy rooms. You find them in the work, on the floor, in the classroom itself. In teams that experience daily where there is chafing. In small frustrations that often have major consequences, but rarely reach the board. Those insights are already there. They just need to land in the right place. That is precisely where the opportunity lies. By making different ways of working together and different ways of organizing explicitly a strategic theme, room is created to deploy extra resources in a targeted and sustainable way.

From consultations to working sessions

In our practice we see what this brings. Existing consultations are critically examined: why are we sitting here and what really needs to be decided? Fragmented sessions are merged into focused work sessions. No more talking about education, but working together on concrete tasks within the time and resources that are already available. The effect is immediate:

Decision-making accelerates.
Alignment shifts from after the fact to beforehand.
Peripheral issues become manageable without burdening the primary process.

Not because people work harder, but because waiting time, noise and unnecessary transfers disappear. For education professionals, more focus and clarity is created. For the board and management, insight into progress, priorities and ownership grows. And for the organization as a whole, the ability to deploy resources effectively and predictably increases.

Landing additional resources in the primary process

Specifically, what could this mean for the additional budget?

Invest in the primary process, not yet another project: focus resources on what directly supports teachers and students.
Link budget to workable structures: recalibrate consultation times and organize working sessions rather than separate projects.
Make organization and collaboration explicitly strategic: support teams, staff and management in clear frameworks and responsibilities.

Thus, extra money does not become a loose pot, but an instrument that has a direct impact in the classroom or lecture hall. In this way, organizing differently is not about less support, but about better organization. So that time, attention and resources end up where they make the most difference: in good education.

The question before us now

The question for many educational organizations is simple:

Where is working together differently and organizing differently still an improvement initiative with you, when it should actually be a strategic theme?

I like to have that conversation. Not with a blueprint, but by looking together at the work that is already there. And exploring where you can start tomorrow.