Choosing between a Dutch school and an international one is the decision expat parents revisit most, and it turns less on which system is better than on a child's age and how long the family expects to stay. The difference in cost between the two is considerable, which raises the stakes on getting the reasoning right.
It depends heavily on age and how long you expect to stay, more than on any general verdict about which system is better. Younger children pick up Dutch fast and adapt well to full immersion — Dutch primary schools support newcomer kids through NT2 (Nederlands als Tweede Taal) instruction, sometimes via a dedicated taalklas, and within a year or two most are functionally fluent and socially embedded in a way that's hard to replicate from outside the system. Teenagers are a different calculation: an internationale schakelklas (ISK) exists specifically for newly arrived teens to learn Dutch before joining mainstream secondary education, but for a student close to exams, or on a posting with a known end date, dropping into an unfamiliar system in an unfamiliar language can cost real academic momentum — that's where an international or bilingual school genuinely earns its cost. The cost itself is real: Dutch public schools are free or near-free beyond a small voluntary ouderbijdrage, while international schools typically run into the thousands to tens of thousands of euros a year. If your stay is open-ended and your kids are young, Dutch school is usually the stronger long-term bet, both for language and integration. If it's a short, defined posting with older kids, international schooling often makes more practical sense.