Staatsexamen NT2: two levels, four parts, and no deadline to finish

Programma I is B1. Programma II is B2. That is the whole ladder.

There is no A1, no A2, no C1 and no C2 Staatsexamen. Nothing certifies elementary Dutch here and nothing certifies mastery. The exam exists to answer one question — is this person's Dutch good enough to work or study in the Netherlands — and it answers it at the two levels where that question actually turns.

DUO ties each programme to a destination rather than to an abstract level. Programma I is the one chosen for MBO vocational training at levels 3 and 4. Programma II is the one chosen for HBO or university study, and for professional work.

So the choice is not how good is my Dutch. It is what am I about to do with it. Picking the level you feel you are, rather than the level your destination requires, is the mistake this design invites, and it is the expensive one.

The exam is set by the College voor Toetsen en Examens and administered by DUO. Both programmes are computer-based.

Both programmes consist of the same four components: Lezen, Luisteren, Spreken en Schrijven — reading, listening, speaking and writing.

Two rules govern how those four become a qualification, and DUO states both in single sentences. Als u voor een examenonderdeel geslaagd bent, kunt u een certificaat opvragen — pass one component and you can request a certificate for it. And bent u voor alle vier de onderdelen geslaagd, dan krijgt u het diploma staatsexamen Nt2 thuisgestuurd — pass all four and the diploma is posted to you.

So a partial pass is not a failure with nothing to show for it. It is a certificate. You keep what you earned and come back for the rest.

Note also what is absent: there is no aggregate score, no total to fall below, and no compensation between parts. A strong reading mark does not lift a weak speaking one, and a weak speaking mark does not destroy a strong reading one. The four results simply stand.

This is the sentence worth the whole page. DUO's wording is de certificaten en het diploma zijn onbeperkt geldig — the certificates and the diploma are valid without limit.

That applies to the component certificates, not only to the finished diploma. Which means the four parts can be spread across years with nothing expiring underneath you, and the diploma assembles whenever the last one lands.

Set that against the German exam documented on this site, because the contrast is exact and it runs the other way. From B1 upward the Goethe-Zertifikat is also four separable modules, also sat individually, also each producing its own certificate. But a single certificate listing all four requires all four passed within one year, and within the EU, the same country, or the same cooperation partner centre. On the Goethe, splitting is free and reassembling is not.

On the NT2 both are free. There is no window, no geographic constraint, and no clock running against your earlier passes. That is, as far as our first-party reading goes, the most permissive modular structure of any exam in this series — and the comparison is ours, drawn from the two bodies' own rules.

The practical consequence is a strategy the German exam forbids: sit the two parts you are ready for now, take a year over the other two, and lose nothing.

DUO publishes the fee outright, in two sentences that leave nothing to a centre's discretion: Elk examenonderdeel kost € 50,-. Een compleet examen kost € 200,-. Each component costs €50; a complete exam costs €200. And then: Dit geldt voor Programma I en voor Programma II. This applies to Programma I and to Programma II.

Three things follow, and each of them is unusual against the rest of the table.

One: the price is national and published. Not a range, not a per-centre figure, not a ceiling — a price. Most of the exams surveyed here cannot or will not do this. telc states in writing that because centres set their own fees, it cannot give any information about the costs. CAPLE names no figure at all. The Goethe-Institut attaches fees to date-specific booking listings. Brazil's Celpe-Bras publishes a maximum that centres may not exceed. The NT2 just tells you the number.

Two: €200 is exactly four times €50. There is no bundle discount for sitting everything at once and no surcharge for splitting it up. The modularity is genuinely price-neutral, which is what makes the no-deadline rule usable rather than merely technically true. An exam can offer modules and then price them so that only the all-at-once route is affordable; this one does not.

Three: B2 costs the same as B1. This is the one that breaks the pattern hardest. On the DELE, fees rise with level, and reading four Instituto Cervantes centres' own 2026 pages showed the higher levels dearer at every centre. Here the harder exam and the easier one carry an identical price, because the fee is attached to the act of examining rather than to the level being examined.

One caveat DUO states and we will not soften: als u vanuit het buitenland betaalt, moet u vaak meer betalen — paying from abroad often costs more, and international transfers can take weeks. A payment that arrives late can cost you the sitting. The €50 is the exam fee, not necessarily the total you part with.

Two exams on this site now have no beginner certificate, and they are opposites in every other respect.

Brazil's Celpe-Bras has no level below intermediate but runs upward to Avançado superior, awards the level from your performance rather than your registration, and sets it at the lower of your two halves — so the weaker half governs the stronger.

The NT2 has no level below B1 and none above B2, you choose your programme deliberately, and the parts never interact at all.

On validity the NT2 sits with the DELE and the Goethe-Zertifikat, all of which are permanent, against the TOPIK's two years and against Inep's refusal to say anything at all about the Celpe-Bras. But the NT2 is the only one where the components are separately and permanently certified, which is a different and more useful kind of permanence.

Ask the institution — the MBO, the HBO, the university, the employer — which programme they require, and get it in writing. Programma II is not simply the better one to have; it is the one certain destinations require, and Programma I is sufficient for others.

If you are close on two skills and far on two, sit the two you are close on. The certificates keep, without limit, and there is no financial penalty for splitting.

Put the preparation into speaking and writing. Reading and listening you can score yourself against practice material; production you cannot mark alone, and on this exam each part is passed or failed on its own with nothing to compensate for it.

We sell conversation lessons, so weigh that last paragraph accordingly and check it against DUO's own component list rather than against us. On the JLPT, which tests no speaking or writing production at any level, this site says the opposite — and it costs us to say it.

And nobody can promise you a pass — not a school, not an app, not a teacher, not us. Anyone wording it otherwise is selling something they do not control.