How the secondary school learning path is put together
In short. Secondary school — vmbo, havo and vwo. Below you can read what the set-up rests on, which choices are ours and what is not finished yet.
The school type sets the goal, not the amount
What is fixed is the reference level at the end: 2F for vmbo, 3F for havo, 4F for vwo. The path is built around that. So a vmbo pupil in year 4 is working towards 2F and gets that as the exam target; a vwo pupil in year 6 has 2F and 3F behind them and is working towards 4F.
That looked fine for a long time and was wrong all the same. Every chapter carried a year label derived from its level band — 2F = year 1, 3F = year 2 and 3 — as if everyone were on the same timeline. For vmbo that does not hold, because there 2F is the exam level of year 4. All the 2F material was therefore called "year 1". The year is now worked out per school type: the exam band always runs on to the final year, and whatever lies below it is spread evenly over the earlier years. That last part is our choice, because there is no standard for it.
The subject package follows the system
The lower years have their own broad package. Business economics, NLT, social sciences and philosophy only exist from the profile choice onwards — vmbo from year 3, havo and vwo from year 4. Mathematics is split into A, B, C and D, but only in the years and school types where those variants exist. And the subject name follows the school type: nask1 and nask2 at vmbo, physics and chemistry above it.
What is not in it: physical education, the vocational profile subject and ckv. Those certainly exist at school, but you do not learn them behind a screen. Offering a subject with nothing in it is worse than leaving it out.
What is not finished yet
The app asks which leerweg you are doing — basis, kader, gemengd or theoretisch. In the learning path those four barely differ: basis and kader are identical, and gemengd and theoretisch differ on exactly one chapter (the analysis unit that is only in their central exam in social studies). So the question weighs more than the difference it makes, and it belongs later on — at the moment you choose that subject.
Joining halfway
If you start in year 4, you do not have to plough through three years of lower school first. Material below your entry level is shown as skipped on the path — dotted border, with "according to your entry test you have already done this" above it. You may go in, you do not have to. And if you already know a chapter, you take the skip test; if you know five of them, one test takes you past all five.
What is the same on every route
One chapter at a time: the next one opens once you finish the chapter test with at least 80%. Repetition runs per learning goal and stays within material you have already covered. Mistakes cost energy and it fills back up by itself — there is no button to buy lives, and the app never asks you to keep going.