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EACEA National Policies Platform:Eurydice
Quality assurance

Belgium - French Community

12.Quality assurance

Last update: 9 June 2022

Responsibility for evaluating the quality of childcare facilities lies with the Office for Birth and Childhood (ONE : Office de la naissance et de l’enfance) and its agents.

Childcare facilities and their members are monitored, evaluated and accompanied by Office for Birth and Childhood’s agents. The evaluation mainly focuses on the implementation of the reception project drawn up by each childcare centre (based on the Quality Code Order - 2003). Quality improvement projects are worked on with Office for Birth and Childhood’s agents and childcare facilities.

The new legislation in force since 2019 also provides for the introduction of general operating assessments in all early childcare facilities in order to support the quality improvement dynamic.

With regard to early assistance for disabled children, the reference bodies are AViQ for the Walloon Region and PHARE for the Brussels Capital Region.  Child support schemes, formerly known as 'specific initiatives', set up by AViQ in collaboration with the Office for Birth and Childhood make it possible to support the inclusion of children in childcare facilities : these are schemes which aim to support teams in relation to the care of a child in a situation of disability. According to the project leaders, the intervention focuses either on awareness-raising, or on supporting the teams concerned by a particular situation via either reinforcements limited in time, or specific support.  In Brussels, "Phare subsidised support services" also provide support to the Brussels’ Childcare facilities at their request.

 

At the level of pre-secondary and secondary education, quality evaluation must be situated in the general context of the Belgian education system, which guarantees a significant degree of freedom to the networks in the management of schools and the definition of curricula and educational methods. However, significant progress has been made during the past decade in quality evaluation at the level of the system as a whole, and at the level of institutions, teachers and pupils. New bodies have been created, and the roles of the main actors in the system have been redefined in order to improve coordination between evaluation processes and the quality of education: the Steering Committee, the General Department of Inspection, the networks and the school heads, the educational teams and the class councils.

Some of the details of evaluation activities vary from network to network, but common compulsory guidelines ensure a better degree of consistency within the system.

In addition, various reforms have provided a framework for the integration of children and teenagers with disabilities into mainstream education and have adjusted special education. The implementation of these reforms and the collection of good practices in the field of integration are carried out by the Inspection Service.

 

In higher education, an important role is played by the Agency for the Evaluation of Quality in Higher Education as well as by various boards and committees.

The evaluation of the quality of adult education is one of the roles of the Higher Council for Social Advancement Education, of Forem (the Public Service for Employment and Training) and of IFAPME (the Walloon Institute of Dual Vocational Education and Training for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises) for the Walloon Region, and of Bruxelles Formation and EFPME (the Training Centre for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises) for the Brussels-Capital Region.