improving teaching quality has been a policy priority in the netherlands in recent years as evidenced by the introduction of teacher competency requirements the obligation for school boards to monitor teacher competencies and the inspectorate s increased focus on monitoring teaching quality in schools going further the teaching profession in the netherlands could benefit from a revised and refined set of teaching standards strengthened schoolbased appraisal processes linked to professional learning opportunities especially for beginning teachers and an enhanced registration system that could be linked to teacher career development teacher appraisal refers to the evaluation of individual teachers to make a judgement about their performance teacher appraisal has typically two major purposes