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EACEA National Policies Platform:Eurydice
National reforms in early childhood education and care

Belgium - French Community

15.Ongoing reforms and policy developments

15.1National reforms in early childhood education and care

Last update: 10 June 2022
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2022

Update in March :

Covid 19 crisis

24/02/2022 The Government definitively approved, in 3rd reading, the draft decree on the adaptation of annual school rhythms, from the start of the 2022-2023 school year, for all types and levels of compulsory education. This text sets out the various provisions necessary to ensure the practical implementation of the reform of annual school rhythms and establishes the principles that will govern the organisation of the school year and school holidays in the future. It also establishes the calendars for the next two school years. The draft decree also includes a series of adjustment measures for out-of-school care and will be accompanied by additional measures for the youth sector to ensure a harmonious and coherent application of the reform. The text also presents transitional mechanisms allowing to favour as much as possible the convergences between the school calendar of the French Community and those of the other Communities, without however derogating from the essential principles of the reform. The philosophy of the reform, designed to better respond to the well-being of the child, is to follow the "7+2" model, alternating 7 weeks of classes followed by 2 weeks of holidays.    

2021

Update in September :

Covid 19 crisis

09/09/2021 The Government of the French Community has decided to renew the financing of the "Itinérances" project. This project, run by the Belgian Red Cross in collaboration with the Relais enfants-parents and the services for prisoners, aims to take care of the journey of prisoners' children to prison when their families or relatives are unable to take them there.

09/09/2021 The Government of the French Community has approved a guidance note on the prevention of bullying and school climate. The ambition is to be part of a broader vision of school climate, which includes factors of school violence but also school justice, cooperation, coeducation and quality of life at school. This approach makes it possible to develop a framework for action that is appropriate for each school and that looks beyond the author-victim relationship to include the school community as a whole. 

15/07/2021 The Specialised Early Childhood Services subsidised by the ONE (Office for Birth and Childhood) will be strengthened in terms of childcare staff. This decision of the Government of the French Community is part of the more global framework of the special attention given to the most vulnerable children and the fight against child poverty.

24/06/2021 MANAGEMENT CONTRACT OF THE OFFICE FOR BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD 2021-2025 The new management contract of the Office for Birth and Childhood (ONE : Office de la Naissance et de l'Enfance) comes into force.  The new management contract extends, but does not reproduce, the decree and regulatory provisions applicable to the Office, and focuses on the changes it intends to achieve and identifies the means to achieve them. To this end, the new management contract is structured around three levels : 1.    Childhood in 2025 sets the horizon for the ONE's action and its contribution to children's policy. This vision is in line with the ambitions of the Community Policy Statement 2019-2024 ; 2.    The strategic objectives and operational objectives define, on the basis of this vision, the priorities for action for ONE in the years to come ; 3.    The mechanism sets out, in legal form, the mobilisations aimed at achieving these strategic objectives and operational objectives. It also determines the means that the Community allocates to the Office to fulfil its missions. 

17/06/2021 The Government of the French Community voted the decree on the creation of the Territorial Poles in charge of supporting ordinary schools in the implementation of reasonable accommodation and permanent full integration and the decree amending the Decree of 3 March 2004 organising special education in order to abolish temporary full integration.

12/05/2021 The Government of the French Community approved the guidance note on the revision of annual school rhythms, which confirms the decision to revise school rhythms for all types and levels of compulsory education from the start of the 2022-2023 school year. The philosophy of the reform is to follow the "7+2" model, alternating 7 weeks of classes followed by 2 weeks of holidays.  The consequences are the lengthening of the All Saints' and Carnival holidays (two weeks instead of one for each of these holidays) and the shortening of the summer holidays.  The 2022-2023 school year will therefore start on the last Monday of August (29th) and end on the first Friday of July (7th).  This is an important change that will only affect pupils in the French Community.   This organization of the year is designed to better respond to the well-being of the child, and is defended, in particular, by several chronobiologists and pedagogues.  According to them, the summer holidays were too long for the pupils, who were disconnected from school and learning for too long.  Conversely, a single week's holiday in the first and second terms was too little to allow pupils to breathe effectively.

11/03/2021 The Governments of the Brussels-Capital Region, the French Community and the College of the French Community Commission agreed to draw up a cooperation agreement with a view to strengthening the joint commitments made by the Region and the Communities to meet the specific needs of education and early childhood in Brussels. Five priorities are highlighted as challenges to be met in order to guarantee a quality school, free and accessible to all : - meeting the demographic challenge ; - supporting the school retention of young people in difficulty and fighting against school segregation ; - fighting against child poverty and deprivation ; - revolutionising language learning ; - adopting a specific approach to early childhood. The Governments of the French Community, the Brussels-Capital Region and the Collège of the French Community Commission initiated a joint work to support the creation of early childhood places for the period 2021-2025. This strategy aims to create 2,100 places by December 2025 in the Brussels-Capital Region. These new places are part of a more global strategy covering the entire territory of the French Community and continuing the work begun under the Cigogne III plan adopted during the previous legislature.  

2020

September update :

Covid 19 crisis

09/07/2020

As a result of an adjustment of federal legislation, compulsory education in Belgium begins from the age of 5 years old – instead of 6 – as of the school year 2020-2021.  With this measure, the federal government aims to ensure that all children have attended the kindergarten level for at least one year, to facilitate their adaptation to the primary education and making this transition as smooth as possible. As a result, all children born in 2015 – hence turning 5 in 2020 and regardless of their actual birth month – are subject to compulsory schooling as of 1 September 2020. In concrete terms, compulsory schooling implies a regular attendance in kindergarten and in a full-time basis.  Per principle, all absences must be documented by medical certificates, however, absences may be approved in certain cases – depending on specific school regulations.

March update :

20/02 On the proposal of the Minister of Education, the Government of the French Community approved, on first reading, the preliminary draft decree lowering the age of compulsory education to five years, in order to ensure the implementation of the federal law on the age of compulsory schooling. Above all, however, this change is an opportunity to respond in concrete terms to many of the structural concerns of the Pact for Excellence in Teaching. The Pact for Excellence in Teaching set as a priority objective investment in the quality of pre-primary education. It is, indeed, essential to tackle school inequalities and to create the conditions to promote a better learning capacity of children from an early age. This approach has already been translated into various measures, such as the improvement of pre-primary school supervision and the provision of additional resources to detect and correct difficulties in learning the language of schooling as early as possible. The adoption of reference guidelines for pre-primary schooling, which is currently under way, is also part of this process. The entry into force, from the start of the school year in September 2020, of the lowering to five years the age at which compulsory education begins is also an opportunity to raise awareness among those legally responsible for children aged between three and five years of the importance of regular attendance at pre-primary school. This is an essential first step that enables children to discover the school codes, to appropriate the language of instruction and to prepare themselves as well as possible for learning.

20/02 On the proposal of the Minister of Education, the Government of the French Community approved, on first reading, the draft decree on the implementation of differentiation and personalised support systems in primary and secondary education. As a reminder, a pilot project was launched with a view to developing the most appropriate tools and methods for generalizing two periods of personalized support in the timetable of all pupils as part of the gradual implementation of the common core curriculum from September 2021. In order to carry out the experiment, the schools benefit from additional resources and an evaluation of all the elements is carried out by a university research team. The Government decided to extend this pilot experiment for another year. Personalized support is an extremely important measure for meeting the objectives of improving student performance while taking into account the needs of each individual and fighting school inequalities and repetition. In concrete terms, for both primary and secondary education, the Government will continue to provide the resources in 2020-2021 to carry out these pilot experiments. For basic education, the aim will be to inject a further 1,500 class periods :

  • 500 periods will be reserved for the schools enrolled in the project initiated in 2019, in order to ensure a follow-up and transition before the arrival of the Common Core in first and second primary. These schools will also benefit from the monitoring of 2 university researchers in order to continue the collection of information and to allow the implementation of structural support within the framework of the common core ;
  • 1,000 periods will be used to relaunch the pilot experiment in some fifty new schools, with an extension to basic skills, whereas previously only reading was targeted.