This post was triggered by messages today on Dutch national Television and other NL media, such as NOS, IPON and DutchNews.nl presenting the NEON Project.
This initiative aims to develop a cooperative educational publishing organization facilitating schools to develop their own textbooks through a new publishing initiative. This will give them greater control over the content and is expected to make textbooks and related materials more affordable and sustainable.
Key points covered in their messages include:
🎯 Target Audience
Primary and secondary education, with the ambition to develop teaching materials for all subjects, including vocational education.
💰 Cost Savings
From an average of €300 per student per year to approximately €20–30.
🖥️ Technology
Digital environment with the option to print; teachers can customize materials themselves.
📊 Scale
By the end of 2025, NEON aims to represent 50 school boards, covering about one-fifth of all Dutch students.
🗣️ Reactions
Positive feedback from school boards; skepticism from traditional publishers regarding the feasibility of the pricing model.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/11/schools-set-up-non-profit-publisher-to-win-back-textbook-control/ https://nos.nl/artikel/2589247-scholen-gaan-zelf-boeken-maken-beter-goedkoper-en-duurzamer
https://www.ipon.nl/artikelen/NEON-geeft-scholen-regie-over-lesmateriaal
As we, at TELLConsult, continue to explore the evolving landscape of AI-supported instructional design, the emergence of initiatives like NEON—where Dutch schools reclaim control over their teaching materials—underscores the urgency of equipping educators with the right digital and pedagogical competencies.
Having monitored (language) teachers’ Communities of Practice related to AI in Education on social media and beyond since 2022 we anticipated the rise of AI-powered Lesson Planning Tools and in that context recently started this internal project aimed at developing an Evaluation Framework for this type of EdTech applications: https://www.tellconsult.eu/reviewing-ai-powered-lesson-planning-tools/
N.B. Picture is the unadapted version of Lesson Planner tools as visualised by ChatGPT
For Phase 1 of validating our Lesson Planner Evaluation Framework we are currently writing up the findings of analysing and evaluating some 40 generic, discipline-specific Lesson Planners and Custom AI Apps for a paper to be submitted for (inter)national publication.
One of the insights is the need for promoting and/or enhancing specific teacher competences needed to arrive at educational methodologies and materials that are well aligned to curriculum standards and local needs.
The process also strengthened our motivation to support the AI literacy development of practitioners while raising their awareness of the role and educational limits and potential of technologies they are being offered and mobilise them to provide feedback to producers of tools they work with and/or share their needs and design suggestions with initiators of new edTech products in line with evolving strategies as also recently reported by Philippa Hardman.
We consequently have also developed our course ‘Getting better results when using AI for lesson planning and materials production’ addressing these and other issues and added it to TELLConsult’s offer in the ErasmusPlus Courses catalogue at ESEP, the European School Education Platform.
Aware of the NEON project and informed about the initiators’ ambitions earlier this year, we have been keen on spotting initiatives with similar features and came across the UK national site with free curriculum materials (for an impression see e.g. these units KS3-4 English Edexcel curriculum unit sequence | Oak National Academy) and its experimental Oak AI Experiments.
We have been following them since then, included their experimental product in our Lesson Planning Tools evaluation research and also analysed other project components and policies to establish overlap and differences of the shared aspects: national initiative, spanning the full curriculum and a shared context with similar challenges: the implementation of a revised national curriculum.
Both initiatives represent a timely development that resonates with educators navigating similar transitions across Europe.
For more information about the NEON project and its current vacancies go here: Neon – Nederlands Onderwijsinstituut
And before you know it they may be informing you about their resources (inspired by the message, I received from OAK National Academy, the National Curriculum content provider in the UK)
