03 Jan ADHD Assessment in Oegstgeest
ADHD Assessment in English in Oegstgeest
Getting an ADHD assessment in English in Oegstgeest is difficult, and the reason is not clinical. It is the queue. The Dutch GGZ produces sound, DSM-5-TR anchored ADHD diagnoses. The problem is reaching one. Access runs through the huisarts as gatekeeper, then a referral into the basis or specialistische GGZ, and the waiting times for ADHD are among the longest in the system.
The collectively agreed maximum, the Treeknorm, is four weeks from referral to a first appointment and ten weeks from there to the start of treatment.
The reality for ADHD is different. Around 100,000 people sit on GGZ waiting lists, the average wait for an intake alone runs to roughly fourteen weeks, and for ADHD specifically it frequently reaches up to a year. Some institutions have stopped accepting new ADHD referrals altogether.
Then there is language. A family content with a Dutch-language assessment uses the GGZ. The families who come to us are filtering for something the GGZ in Oegstgeest rarely offers and often cannot offer at all: assessment, formulation and a written report in English. That is the tweetalig-stream student, the English-dominant student, the family relocating abroad, the international-school student approaching an exam series, and the adult who has waited years for an answer.
ADHD is not rare. On the Trimbos-instituut’s NEMESIS-3 survey, the twelve-month prevalence in Dutch adults is 3.2 per cent, roughly 404,600 people, peaking between the ages of 35 and 44. In childhood the figure is 3.6 per cent. Applied across Oegstgeest, that is a substantial population whose academic, working and family life is being shaped by an underlying and often undiagnosed attention disorder.
Global Education Testing Oegstgeest
Global Education Testing Oegstgeest is a private psychoeducational assessment service staffed by HCPC-registered educational psychologists. We assess in English, we write the report in English, and we explain, in plain language, what is actually going on and what to do about it.
We work with families across the whole of Oegstgeest and the surrounding region, including the towns where no English-language practice exists. The assessment runs to the family’s timeline, not to the GGZ queue, and the whole process takes less than 21 days from start to finish, against a public-system wait that for ADHD is now measured in months and sometimes a full year.
The assessment fee for families in Oegstgeest is EUR 2,750, inclusive of the full clinical battery, the formulation and report, the recommendations, and the post-report feedback session. Global Education Testing Oegstgeest is a private provider and we do not accept insurance.
Clients in Oegstgeest choose us for immediate access to highly qualified HCPC-registered educational psychologists, and because our reports are recognised internationally by schools, examination boards and universities.
Why is an ADHD assessment in English so hard to get in Oegstgeest?
The honest answer is supply, not whether the Dutch system is any good. It is. The GGZ route is gated and slow. A diagnosis starts at the huisarts, who cannot diagnose ADHD but decides whether a referral is warranted. From there the student or adult joins a specialist waiting list. The agreed Treeknorm of four weeks to intake and ten weeks to treatment is routinely missed for ADHD, where the average adult diagnostic wait in the regular GGZ is around 23 weeks and the longest institutional waits reach 52. Where a clinic has declared an aanmeldstop, the wait is not long, it is closed.
English-language provision narrows the field further. The established English-speaking psychology practices cluster in the Randstad, in Amsterdam and Den Haag, and they are bound to the cities they sit in. A family in a smaller town in Oegstgeest that wants an assessment in English has, in practice, very few local options and a long wait for the ones that exist.
This is the gap Global Education Testing Oegstgeest closes. Private delivery removes the queue. English delivery removes the language barrier. The report that comes out the other side is written to be used.
Our ADHD Assessment
Our ADHD assessment for Oegstgeest is a layered battery of gold-standard instruments, administered by HCPC-registered educational psychologists. ADHD cannot be diagnosed from a single questionnaire, because the conditions it has to be separated from look almost identical on the surface.
Attention and executive function. The SNAP-IV-26 and Conners self-report scales measure the core symptom clusters against normed thresholds, the Executive Skills self-report profiles the day-to-day difficulties the label alone misses, and the MOXO Continuous Performance Test gives an objective measure of sustained attention and impulsivity that no questionnaire can reach.
Cognitive baseline. The WISC-V for students under 18, or the WAIS-V for those 18 and over. In ADHD the signal sits in the profile: Working Memory and Processing Speed depressed against intact Verbal Comprehension and Fluid Reasoning. That dissociation is the cognitive fingerprint.
Specific learning difficulty screening. The CTOPP-2 screens for a co-occurring reading difficulty, because ADHD and dyslexia overlap heavily and one is regularly missed behind the other.
Visual-spatial and working memory. The Taylor Complex Figure Test examines planning, organisation and visual working memory.
Autism differential. The DISCO rules an autism profile in or out. ADHD and autism co-occur at high rates, and a single ADHD screener does not look for it.
Emotional context. The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank captures the secondary impact, the years of being told to try harder, almost always present by the time someone reaches assessment.
The report runs to thirty or more pages, sets out conclusions against DSM-5-TR and ICD-11, and finishes with the recommendations and, where relevant, the exam-board accommodations the student or adult is entitled to.
Is it ADHD, or is it something else?
This is the single most important judgement the assessment makes, and it is the reason the battery is built the way it is. Inattention, restlessness, disorganisation and unfinished work are not specific to ADHD. They are the surface presentation of several different things, and getting the call wrong in either direction is costly.
Anxiety produces inattention that looks like ADHD but originates somewhere else entirely. So does chronic poor sleep. A bright student who is bored and under-stretched can present as inattentive when the issue is fit, not attention. And a twice-exceptional profile, high ability masking a genuine attention disorder, can hide ADHD for years because the marks stay acceptable while the effort behind them is enormous and unsustainable.
Language is important because a student taught in English who is not yet fluent can disengage in a way that reads as inattention.
The full battery, conducted in English by an HCPC-registered educational psychologist, exists to separate these layers properly. The objective attention measure, the cognitive profile and the autism differential together do what no screener and no single questionnaire can.
Who we assess in Oegstgeest
The work of Global Education Testing Oegstgeest covers three groups, and the report is shaped to what each one needs:
Dutch-national families in Oegstgeest who want assessment in English immediately. This is the largest group and the one the GGZ serves least well. These families want a clear, fast, English-language diagnosis without joining a waiting list measured in months. The school uses the report to set or review support under passend onderwijs, including the ontwikkelingsperspectiefplan, the OPP, where the family and school are working in English.
International-school students in Oegstgeest approaching an exam series. For these students the diagnosis is the document that opens the access arrangements process with their exam board, and it has to land before the deadline. The report is written for the specific board the student sits under.
Adults in Oegstgeest. ADHD in adults is the largest source of unmet demand in the Dutch system, and the 35-to-44 peak in the prevalence data is exactly the working-age group that has waited longest for an answer. We assess adult self-referrals using WAIS-V and adult-normed achievement testing, and the report supports self-understanding, workplace adjustments, and access arrangements for postgraduate and professional entrance examinations.
Exam access arrangements for Oegstgeest students
For an international-curriculum student in Oegstgeest, the diagnostic report is the evidence base for the access arrangements application. What it unlocks depends on the board, and the differences matter.
Pearson Edexcel iGCSE and A-Level. Arrangements are handled through a Form 8, the JCQ-aligned standard Pearson applies for international centres, submitted by your Oegstgeest school’s SENCO ahead of the exam series. Where the profile supports them, the arrangements include 25 per cent extra time, supervised rest breaks, a separate room, a prompter where attentional involvement is documented, and use of a laptop.
Cambridge International iGCSE, AS and A-Level. Cambridge runs its own framework, applied for through the centre’s Exams Officer in coordination with the SENCO. It accepts reports meeting the equivalent JCQ-aligned standard, and the arrangements track Pearson closely: extra time, rest breaks, a separate room, and use of a laptop.
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. With several IB World Schools across the Netherlands, this is a common route for Oegstgeest students. The IB operates its own Inclusive Assessment Arrangements policy, applied for centrally by the school’s IB Coordinator. On a qualifying report the IB grants additional time, rest breaks, prompting, and assistive technology, and the arrangements extend to internal assessment, the extended essay and Theory of Knowledge.
College Board SAT. For Oegstgeest students applying to US universities, accommodations are approved through the College Board’s SSD process, with the diagnostic report as the central evidence. Approved accommodations include extended time, extra breaks, a small-group or separate setting, and assistive technology. The same approval extends to AP examinations.
For adults and older students in Oegstgeest, the report also supports access arrangements for postgraduate and professional entrance examinations: the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, UCAT and the Oxford and Cambridge admissions tests among them.
In-school support in Oegstgeest
The application is not where the report’s usefulness ends. Underneath any exam-board arrangement sits a parallel set of provisions the report informs.
At an international school in Oegstgeest, that is the Individual Learning Plan or Student Support Plan, into which the cognitive and attention findings translate as specific classroom strategies and review milestones. At a Dutch school in Oegstgeest, it is the support arrangement under passend onderwijs and, where applicable, the OPP, which the school sets using the report as its clinical evidence base.
Classroom accommodations turn the diagnosis into something experienced differently day to day: instructions in writing as well as orally, chunked tasks with clear checkpoints, reduced copying load, permitted movement breaks, and extended time on internal assessments.
The SENCO or learning-support lead uses the report to brief subject teachers on the student’s profile and the strategies that work for them. This is where a full diagnostic report beats a screener: the screener gives the teaching team nothing to act on, and the report gives them a plan.
Working with schools in Oegstgeest
Global Education Testing Oegstgeest has worked with both international and local families that attending schools including:
- International School Het Rijnlands Lyceum Oegstgeest (ISRLO)
- International School Leiden (ISL)
- Elckerlyc International School, Leiderdorp
- The British School in the Netherlands (BSN)
- International School of The Hague (ISH)
Psychoeducational diagnostic reports from Global Education Testing Oegstgeest are also accepted by universities worldwide, including those with the most selective entry requirements and specialized entrance examinations including:
- MCAT – Medical College Admission Test
- LSAT – Law School Admission Test
- GAMSAT – Medical School Admissions Test
- ISAT – International Student Admissions
- GRE – Graduate Record Examination
- GMAT – Graduate Management Admission
- MAT – Oxford Mathematics
- STEP – Cambridge Mathematics
- TMUA – Math for University Admission
- PAT – Oxford Physics
- ENGAA – Cambridge Engineering
- NSAA – Cambridge Natural Science
- TSA – Oxford, Cambridge, UCL
- BMAT – Medical schools
- UCAT – Medical & dental schools
- LNAT – Law schools
- HAT – Oxford History
- ELAT – Oxford English
Why the Dutch GGZ route is not built for an English-speaking student in Oegstgeest
The Netherlands has a developed ADHD framework. The GGZ produces sound, DSM-5-TR anchored diagnoses through the basis and specialistische GGZ, and for a Dutch-speaking student inside the Dutch state system it works. It is not built for an English-speaking student in Oegstgeest, and the reasons are access, language and portability.
Access is gated and slow. The route runs through the huisarts, then a referral, then a specialist waiting list where ADHD waits routinely break the Treeknorm and reach up to a year, and where some clinics have closed intake entirely. A family in Oegstgeest that needs an answer this term does not have that time.
Language is the deeper problem, and it is the one a Dutch report cannot solve. The GGZ assessment is conducted in Dutch and its self-report instruments are normed against a Dutch-speaking population. For a student whose strongest language is English, or who carries Dutch as a second or third language, that adds noise to the very measures the assessment depends on.
A clinical interview and a symptom questionnaire answered in a weaker language do not isolate attention from language load cleanly. Our battery is administered in English, by an HCPC-registered educational psychologist, against the norms that fit the student.
Portability is the third gap. Even a sound GGZ diagnosis arrives as a Dutch-language report built for the Dutch system, the OPP, passend onderwijs and the local treatment pathway. That serves a student staying in the Dutch state system. It does not serve the international-school student in Oegstgeest whose SENCO needs an English report in the evidence shape Pearson, Cambridge, the IB or the College Board apply, and it does not travel with a family leaving the Netherlands. An English, HCPC-registered report does both.
This is the student the GGZ route is not built for: the one who lives in Oegstgeest, learns or thinks in English, and needs a report that works inside an international school and across borders. That is the student we assess.
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Alexander Bentley-Sutherland is the CEO of Global Education Testing, the leading provider of Learning Development Testing tailored specifically for the International and Private School community worldwide.