About us

TopTaal is a national educational organization for adult Dutch language education. What began over twenty years ago at a kitchen table has grown into an organization with more than 35 locations across the country and over 300 employees. In those twenty years, we have helped tens of thousands of students improve their language proficiency and find their place in society. Our motivation has remained the same throughout: ensuring that everyone can participate.

Our story

When founder Monique Deenik was teaching language classes herself, she saw how fragmented many courses were: groups were not well-matched, teaching materials were unsuitable, and there was little cohesion. Her conviction that customization would make the difference became the foundation of TopTaal: homogeneous groups, thorough intakes, and a focus on the student’s learning objective.

In Utrecht, TopTaal was given the opportunity to provide language courses for the welfare organization Doenja. The major breakthrough followed in Amsterdam, with the municipality’s 10,000 Language Trajectories assignment and the project ‘Niemand Aan De Kant’ (No One Left Behind). The kitchen table was exchanged for a teaching location with nine classrooms — and TopTaal now has more than 35 locations spread across the country.

“We are more than a language school. We are a social enterprise: for us, entrepreneurship is about social value, not about profit maximization.” — Monique Deenik, founder and director

Participation leads to happiness

Participation allows you to develop yourself. And we see that people who develop themselves and participate are happier. Insufficient proficiency in the Dutch language and culture acts as a barrier in this process. That is why we are committed every day to making people sufficiently proficient in Dutch — whether they are non-native speakers or native Dutch speakers.

Social entrepreneurship is in our DNA

Making money is not a primary goal for us, but a means to make the world a little better and more beautiful. TopTaal is a member of Social Enterprise NL and achieved Level 3 on the Social Entrepreneurship Performance Ladder (PSO). We do not only invest in learning tools, but above all in people: talented students among our cursists are given the opportunity to work as employees or teachers at TopTaal. Former students who start with us as teachers or office colleagues — that is when we know: this is what we do it for.

Read more about our quality marks and accreditations.

Continuing to innovate

Innovation is inextricably linked to TopTaal. Our online language lessons started out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have become indispensable. With ‘Competent in Taal’, we developed our own online teaching method that structurally links language to self-reliance and participation. With five fixed Learning Tracks, we streamline group placement across the entire organization. And we are researching how we can use AI responsibly in language education — for example, with a virtual conversation partner that students can practice with safely.

Our method

To realize our mission, we commit ourselves to four promises:

1. Theory & practice are integrated into everything we do
2. Caring for our students and unburdening our clients
3. We work exclusively with top-tier teachers
4. We contribute positively to public opinion

Stichting Leren Helpt!

Because TopTaal believes that everyone should be able to participate in society, TopTaal founded the Stichting Leren Helpt (Learning Helps Foundation). The foundation complements TopTaal’s language offerings by organizing a weekly Language Café and deploying language buddies. In addition, the Foundation is committed to reaching people who fall outside the organized language offerings, so that they too can master the language better and thereby improve their future prospects. We invite our partners to help us in this endeavor.