2024

Decree on the educational approach to guidance: 16/05/2024

The government is emphasising the educational approach to guidance.  This aims to :

• developing pupils' ability to take action on their career path, but also becoming aware of the constraints and limits on this ability to take action ;
• identifying and criticising the factors, explicit and implicit, which influence choices, including the choice of direction to be made at the end of the core curriculum ;
• transforming knowledge and observations into choices and the actions that make them a reality ;
• developing various scenarios for their future and be able to project themselves into them ;
• becoming aware of the open-ended nature of their choices and of the prospects offered by lifelong learning, particularly in the context of professional development ;
• discovering different professional environments and their diversity, and becoming aware of both the societal contributions and the ethical issues and prospects for socio-professional integration linked to these different socio-professional worlds ;
• linking knowledge, subject-specific or cross-curricular know-how or skills, worked on in class, with the streams and options that open up after the core curriculum and with professional spheres and occupations ;
• discovering the various training options available at the end of the core curriculum ;
  meeting different types of people to help them plan their careers.

Progressive free compulsory education : 22/03/2024

The Pact for Excellence in Teaching includes the objective of gradually making compulsory education free.
A specific lump-sum grant of €75 is already allocated to schools in March each year for each pupil enrolled in the first two years of ordinary primary education and in maturity level 1 of specialised education, with a view to purchasing school supplies for the following school year.
Since March 2024, this measure has been extended to the third year of ordinary primary education and level 2 of specialised education.

2023

Decree of 31st March 2022 on the creation of the Pupil’s Accompanying File (Dossier d'Accompagnement de l'Élève = DAccE) : entry into force in Septembre 2023

Launch of a groundbreaking tool known as the DAccE (Dossier d’Accompagnement de l'Élève = Pupil’s Accompanying File). Initially implemented for students from the 1st year of Pre-Primary education to the 4th year of Primary education in mainstream schools, its reach will gradually expand to encompass all students within the core curriculum of ordinary and specialised compulsory education. 
The DAccE plays a pivotal role in the new core curriculum, which is a part of the Pact for Excellence in Teaching. Its primary objective is to introduce a "progressive" approach to learning difficulties, ensuring that all students in need of it benefit from personalised monitoring and support. More concretely, each pupil will benefit from personalised monitoring and support, enabling them to receive more sustained and tailored attention. Through the DAccE, persistent difficulties can be identified, and the support provided can be monitored, evaluated, and adjusted accordingly. The DAccE enables educational teams to monitor the child's progress and ensure continuity of learning. It also grants parents access, allowing them to communicate with the educational team and closely monitor their child's needs. 
Being a digital and individual tool, DAccE will accompany all pupils from Pre-primary to the end of secondary school, in mainstream and specialised education, even if they change schools or move on to another level.

Education about relationships, emotional and sexual life (Evras) is compulsory in grade 6 (Primary education) and grade 10 (Secondary education) from the start of the school year 2023 : 07/09/2023

From the start of the school year 2023, all pupils in the French Community of Belgium will receive regular activities on education about relationships, emotional and sexual life (Evras). A cooperation agreement between the governments of the French Community, the Walloon Region and the French Community Commission has just been approved.
Education about relationships, emotional and sexual life in schools has been compulsory since 2012. A guide was drawn up for professionals to help them answer questions asked by pupils. From now on, these activities, mainly provided by family planning centres, will be organised in line with the new core curriculum. All pupils in grade 6 and grade 10 will receive at least one activity. This concerns 85,000 pupils in Wallonia and 25,000 pupils in Brussels. A total annual budget of €4.8 million has been earmarked to fund the activities, which will be tailored to the needs of schools.

2nd reading for the preliminary draft decree on the support, development of professional skills and assessment of teaching staff : 28/04/2023

On 28 April, the Government approved, at 2nd reading, the preliminary draft decree on the support, development of professional skills and assessment of teaching staff. The Government confirmed that the text would comprise two distinct mechanisms, in line with the guidelines set out by education stakeholders in 2017 as part of the adoption of the Opinion number 3 of the Pact for Excellence in Teaching :

• the professional skills support and development mechanism, which is aimed at the positive reinforcement of staff members ;
• the appraisal mechanism, which can only be activated in the event of clear and repeated failure on the part of a member of staff, after all the stages of the support mechanism have been implemented.

However, a number of other changes have again been made to the text with the same objective as those previously incorporated : to provide, at the heart of the appraisal procedure, guidelines that protect the rights of members of staff at least as much as those provided for in existing disciplinary procedures.  The decree will come into force on 1 January 2024, but summative assessment procedures will not be able to begin until the start of the new academic year in 2026.

Decree perpetuating free, sustainable and quality school meals in the schools of the French Community : 20/04/2023

At a time when various studies show that more and more children are finding it difficult to eat properly, the Government of the French Community has approved a decree aimed at making the system of free school meals permanent in the canteens of the schools of the French Community that cater for less well-off children.  This new decree will make the scheme permanent and will now cover the whole of pre-primary and primary education.  A budget of 21.4 million euros will be devoted to implementing this decree.  This decree will enable almost 28,000 children to have access to a full, healthy meal a day in their school.

Exceptional investment in school buildings : 06/04/2023

On 6 April, the Government of the French Community adopted on final reading the decree providing for exceptional investment of one billion euros in school buildings.  This measure provides for the launch of four calls for projects targeting all school buildings across all education networks and levels. These calls will mobilise €1 billion in subsidies, to which the Organising Authorities will add their share, resulting in an exceptional investment of around €1.5 billion.  In concrete terms, the conditions for granting subsidies are designed to guarantee the quality of the projects submitted and therefore the infrastructure renovated or rebuilt. To achieve this, a number of eligibility and/or obligation criteria have been laid down. The well-being of teachers and pupils and the climate transition are at the heart of the project. The main criteria and obligations include

• Guaranteeing a significant impact on the energy and climate transition ;
• Guarantee the architectural quality of the projects ;
• Ensuring high-quality connectivity in each educational facility ;
• Committing to a process of sharing spaces and/or inter-network or inter-Organising Authority collaboration ;
• Carry out an accessibility and inclusion audit ;
• Install low-carbon heating systems.

In addition, requirements will be determined on the basis of the current state of the building(s) being subsidised.
In addition to other parallel subsidy measures, almost €4 billion will be invested over the next ten years.

2022

Launch of a plan to fight structurally against harassment and cyber-bullying in schools and to improve the school climate : 10/11/2022

On the proposal of the Minister of Education, the Government of the French Community approved, in second reading, the preliminary draft decree on the improvement of the school climate and the prevention of harassment and cyber-bullying in schools. This text establishes a common reference framework programme for schools to carry out coordinated, sustainable and structural actions aimed at preventing school harassment and improving the school climate. It also provides for the selection and funding of operators who will be able to offer support for the development and implementation of a school's framework programme. In addition, the decree will also provide the French Community with a School Climate Observatory, whose tasks will include :

• Research and evaluation of the structural policy on school climate, prevention and fight against harassment and cyber-bullying in schools ;
• The provision of tools and the monitoring of framework programmes ;
• Networking of actors.

308 schools will offer healthy and sustainable meals to nearly 28,000 children from the beginning of the school year 2022 : 01/07/2022

The call for projects, launched for the years 2022 to 2024, aimed at offering free hot meals of high nutritional quality and integrating sustainability criteria in pre-primary schools and in the 2 first years of primary schools. With a view to equal opportunities, it was specifically the schools with a differentiated framework, ranked from 1 to 5 in terms of their socio-economic index, that were targeted.

Compared to the previous year, the measure has been extended up to the 2nd year of primary education and 90 additional schools, spread over 24 new municipalities, will be included in this approach, which promotes the health of children and the purchasing power of the parents.

The total subsidy for the 308 projects amounts to almost 12 million euros.

The aim is to continue to increase the budgets so that, at the end of the legislature, all pre-primary and primary school children in the most socio-economically disadvantaged schools will be able to eat a healthy meal at school.

Renovation of school buildings and European recovery plan: €269 million allocated to 149 schools : 23/06/2022

The Government of the French Community approved the list of files prioritised in the context of the call for renovation projects resulting from the European Recovery and Resilience Plan (NextGenerationEU).

The call for projects, launched in October 2021 among all the organising authorities, has made it possible to give priority to 149 school sites accommodating nearly 55,000 pupils who will benefit from this recovery plan.

In concrete terms, this involves 269 million euros of subsidies that will result in a total of more than 400 million euros of investment for school buildings in the French Community. In addition, the loan guarantee and the assumption of interest by the organising authorities are provided to finance the part of the investments that would not be covered by the Recovery Plan.

In order to select the renovation projects, objective criteria were used to emphasise the most qualitative files in order to contribute to the energy transition but also to the well-being of pupils and teaching staff.

Draft decree on the adaptation of annual school rhythms : 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 young learners, is to follow the "7+2" model, alternating 7 weeks of classes followed by 2 weeks of holidays.