Non-school childcare facilities

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 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, revised in 2022). 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 (Dispositifs de Soutien à l’enfance (DSI)), 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.

Pre-primary, primary and secondary education

At the level of pre-secondary and secondary education, quality evaluation must be situated in the particular context of the Belgian education system, characterized by a high degree of autonomy for the school networks in the management of schools and in the definition of curricula and educational methods. In recent years, however, this autonomy has been consolidated within a more structured common framework, notably thanks to the full deployment of the steering bodies provided for in the reforms of the “Pact for Excellence in Teaching”, which work with the education networks, school administrations, and pedagogical teams according to clarified and coordinated missions, in order to ensure a consistent approach to evaluating and improving the quality of education. All institutions are now engaged in contracts of objectives, supported by Delegates to the contracts of objectives (reporting to the General Service for School Steering, which falls under the administration) and Advisers for Support and Guidance (Education Networks), with the aim of achieving the seven improvement objectives set for the education system. Each school defines its own objectives and action plans, implemented autonomously, with regular monitoring by the administration. This steering framework helps to strengthen cohesion and transparency across the system.

Furthermore, in the field of specialised education, reforms aimed at promoting the inclusion of pupils with specific needs in mainstream education have reached a decisive stage with the establishment of territorial support clusters. These clusters, tasked with supporting mainstream schools in assisting pupils, are composed of multidisciplinary teams that provide support to mainstream schools in the inclusion of pupils with specific needs. The territorial clusters also operate within a steering framework, with action plans monitored by the administration.

The General Inspectorate Service is responsible for carrying out audits in schools or educational institutions experiencing significant difficulties in their governance, as well as evaluation missions in samples of schools, based on the public policy evaluation agenda. Finally, the Inspectorate conducts monitoring and investigative missions in schools that appear not to comply with regulations.

The steering indicators, updated annually and produced by the administration, were developed from the outset of the steering framework and cover the entire education system. Drawn from existing administrative and statistical data, they are communicated confidentially to the relevant stakeholders and retain a multi-year record, enabling each institution’s developments to be tracked over time and, where relevant, to be benchmarked against reference points based on similar categories or profiles. Supported by additional information, they underpin diagnosis, guide the selection of objectives, and strengthen overall coherence. In this way, each school positions its own trajectory while contributing to the collective dynamic of improving the education system, within a framework that continues to evolve as the steering arrangements are rolled out, as illustrated by the introduction of specific indicators for the territorial clusters when their steering framework was established.

Higher education and Adult education

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 Adult 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 sfpme (the Training Service for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises) for the Brussels-Capital Region.