Positive attitudes toward homosexuality have fallen among Dutch pupils. Meanwhile, 32% of secondary students have migration ties and 15% of older teens are Muslim

The share of Dutch pupils with a positive attitude toward homosexuality fell sharply between 2021 and 2025. The national HBSC report , published on September 21, 2026, says the figure among boys aged 12–16 in secondary school dropped from 40% to 22%, while the figure among girls fell from 78% to 51%.

Utrecht University and the Trimbos Institute conducted the study with funding from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The final analysis covered 5,103 secondary pupils aged 12–16 and 1,510 pupils in the final year of primary school. “Positive attitude” was measured through three statements: whether gay young people could be the respondent’s friends and whether seeing two boys or two girls kiss was considered disgusting. In 2025, 36.5% of secondary pupils scored positively and 15% negatively. The share who thought gay and lesbian pupils could be open about their orientation at school fell from 59.6% to 44.9%.

In the HBSC sample, 28.4% of secondary pupils had what the authors call a “migration background,” meaning at least one parent was born outside the Netherlands. Of this group, 72% were themselves born in the country. A positive attitude toward homosexuality was recorded among 31% of pupils with a migration background and 40.1% of other pupils; 39.7% and 47%, respectively, thought pupils could be open about homosexuality at school.

Broader administrative data give a somewhat different share. According to provisional figures from Statistics Netherlands , of 919,810 secondary pupils in the 2025/26 school year, 187,390, or 20.4%, were born in the Netherlands but had at least one foreign-born parent; another 109,380, or 11.9%, were born abroad. Together these groups account for 32.3%. A separate CBS religion survey for 2025 found that 15% of residents aged 15–18 identified with Islam, 14% as Protestant, 6% as Catholic and 58% with no religious group. Those figures cover all residents in that age range, not only pupils, and HBSC did not record participants’ religion.

The HBSC authors say the decline occurred among adolescents both with and without a migration background, while the group’s share of the 2021 and 2025 samples was similar. The study therefore does not support naming migration or religion as the cause of the overall change. Attitudes also differed by education track: 27.8% of pupils in the more vocational vmbo-b/k tracks scored positively, compared with 45.9% in the academic vwo track.

HBSC lead researcher and Utrecht University professor Gonneke Stevens told RTL Nieuws that the result came amid a coarsening public debate, although the survey did not establish a specific cause. School GSA coordinator Rozanne Vleugel separately cited the online “manosphere” as a factor.

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said at a September 25 press conference that intolerance exists in some extremist Islamic groups, mosques, regular schools and weekend schools, but that it would be too simple to attribute the decline only to people of non-European origin. He also pointed to hostile content and social-media algorithms. The government plans measures aimed at schools and online platforms. An international comparison is not yet available because 2025/26 HBSC data collection is still under way in other countries.