Schools for thought
If for personal or professional reasons, sending your child to a Belgian school is not for you, what are the alternatives? We provide an overview of the three main options you have
Choosing a school for your children is an important business, and if you’re living away from home, the path can seem less than clear. Belgium has plenty of schooling options besides the traditional local school, and here is what you need to know about each one.
If you are a hardcore expat (or let’s say a ‘highly mobile international professional’), you will probably be best served by an international school, such as St John’s International School of Brussels in Waterloo (1,500 pupils) or the similarly sized International School of Brussels in Watermael-Boitsfort. Both enjoy an excellent reputation and prepare their students for the International Baccalaureate (IB). The IB curriculum and qualification were established by the International Baccalaureate organisation that was founded in Geneva in 1968. Originally set up as an instrument for peace education through international understanding, today the IB programme mostly serves the needs of the most mobile layer of the globalised business world.
As a result, corporations are usually willing to pay for the service: 93 percent of the International School of Brussels’ invoices (which can be steep – between €11,000 and €24,000 per year, depending on the grade and number of siblings in the school) go straight to the multinationals where the parents work. A network of 2,000 IB schools around the world allows parents both to enrol and withdraw their offspring from a school at any time during the academic year. The International School of Brussels estimates that each year 25 to 30 percent of its pupils (from 70 countries, aged between two-and-a-half and 19) change schools and countries.
Next you have schools following a national curriculum. These can also be part of an international network, allowing relative ease of movement. The Lycée Jean Monnet in Uccle, for instance, is part of a worldwide network of French schools called Agence pour l’Enseignement Français à l’Etranger, comprising 250,000 pupils in 130 countries. National curriculum schools are usually accredited and, to a varying extent, funded by the relevant national education authorities. Typically, it is only the ‘strong economies’ that have their own primary and secondary education available in Brussels. The city’s Spanish (33,000) and Portuguese (23,000) communities, many of whom are blue-collar migrants, have no school of their own. The Portuguese, for instance, only fund and organise extra language lessons on Saturday in Brussels via the Council for Portuguese Communities.
However, some national groups here, even though they may be relatively small in terms of numbers, are able to send their children to schools offering a home-style education. The schools usually receive the necessary financial backing from national authorities.
For the 15,000 Germans of Brussels, there is the Deutsche Schule Brüssel in Wezembeek-Oppem, which has 700 pupils. The Finns, Swedes and Norwegians (numbering together some 5,000) have joined forces to found the Scandinavian School of Brussels, which provides what it calls a ‘dynamic Nordic education’ to about 400 pupils. (The almost 2,000 Danes of Brussels are not part of the organisation, but are nonetheless welcome as pupils – and are taught in Danish.)
The largest, and oldest, school of this type is the aforementioned Lycée Jean Monnet. It has been a Brussels institution since 1907. Today, the French are, with more than 84,000, the largest foreign nationality group in Brussels. The school has 2,400 pupils, aged two to 18.
‘National’ schools can charge high enrolment fees – though they are generally less than those of IB schools – thanks to the help from home authorities. The Lycée Jean Monnet, for instance, costs, depending on the grade, between €4,000 and €6,000 per year. The British School of Brussels in Tervuren (which opened in 1970) is considerably more expensive: from €6,800 per year (for kindergarten) to €26,400 (for the higher grades).
The British School is not a British-only establishment. Some 50 percent of the pupils are British, the remainder comprise 70 nationalities. In the final years, pupils are presented with the choice of following the IB curriculum, or the UK A-level curriculum.
Brussels also has four European schools in Uccle, Ixelles, Woluwe and Laeken (temporarily situtated in Forest) with a combined population of 9,000-plus, and rising. This number represents 42 percent of the total population of European schools across the continent. European schools are a complex attempt to reconcile two ambitions: to promote a ‘European’ citizenship, and to pass on the culture of the pupil’s country of origin. Education starts in the mother tongue and gradually opens up to more languages, and more nationalities to interact with. In all, Brussels today has 15 language sections, which means that eight of the 23 official languages of the EU are not represented (see box, above).
European schools have existed, in Brussels and elsewhere, since 1958, but, as a result of the ever-changing and broadening nature of the EU, they always have to overcome new challenges. According to leading Belgian philosopher Philippe van Parijs, this can cause parental worries. Parijs takes a keen interest in European schools at both a professional and personal level, having sent three of his four children there. “I heard a lot of complaints about the language sections, especially about the English and French sections, where there are many non-native speakers, with no section of their own.
“There was a demand by parents to organise separate sections for native and non-native speakers, but school authorities refused to comply. Quite rightly, in my opinion. The level of non-native speakers quickly improves through contact with the native speakers. As I see it, European schools are an excellent instrument to produce multilingual speakers.”
EU founding father Jean Monnet set the goal for European schools: “They [pupils] will become in mind Europeans, schooled and ready to complete and consolidate the work of their fathers before them, to bring into being a united and thriving Europe.” These words, on parchment, are encapsulated in the founding stone of every European school.
But critics say that in the schools, as in the EU as a whole, the ideal has had its ups and downs. Van Parijs thinks otherwise. “I think the schools have a dynamic of their own. Inevitably, and that has certainly been the experience of my children, pupils have more contact with children who are citizens of other member states than would have been the case had they gone to a national school. And that stays for the rest of their lives. Call that idealism if you like, but it’s simply a matter of fact, and it hasn’t changed since the early days.
“And what I also find fantastic in European schools is that history and geography lessons are always taught in a language other than one’s own. My children were taught history alongside Germans, Italians, Spanish, French... resulting in all kinds of interesting discussions, which they also brought home with them. That’s certainly a great plus – the development of the continent is not seen through the lens of any one particular nation.”
Another common parental worry at the European schools is the general academic level. Van Parijs: “Parents often make the comparison between the European schools and the best schools in their own country. This is most clear with French parents, who complain that the European schools can’t live up to Lycée Louis-Le-Grand or Lycée Henri IV in Paris. But that’s of course the wrong comparison to make.
“A European school is there for all children, the academically strongest as well as the weakest, because there are no technical or vocational schools running in parallel. My experience is that European schools have a better level than the average in the countries of the European Union. But in countries with large internal differences in educational levels, they do not rise to the levels of the best schools, no.”
In principle, European schools are open to all, but for children of non-EU personnel, the enrolment fee is high: between €4,700 and €9,000 per year. Not only that: the scarcity of places means that in practice Brussels’ European schools are almost exclusively limited to the sons and daughters of European civil servants. Between the four schools, such children make up between 88 and 96 percent of the intake, whereas in the European school attached to the EU nuclear research centre SCK-CEN in Mol, Antwerp, only 20 percent of pupils are from this category.
Also striking is the academic background of the Brussels pupils’ parents: 83 percent have a higher education degree, and 21 percent a PhD – which is four to five times higher than the EU19 average (that is, of the 15 EU countries before the 2004 enlargement plus the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia).
Van Parijs is a true believer in European schools, but he has had crises of faith, most controversially when he asserted two years ago that European schools effectively installed an “apartheid regime” in Brussels education. But surely, it’s more the international schools that could be accused of that? “Yes and no. You get access to the European schools as somebody’s son or daughter, so in fact you belong to a specific caste. In the international schools, you can get in as long as you pay enough. International schools are, in a sense, more socially mixed [children of civil servants do not predominate] but at the same time less so: among the EU civil servant parents, you also have drivers, caretakers or doormen, which means there’s a greater mix in terms of professions.”
In an attempt to try and unify the fractured Brussels educational system, Van Parijs would like to see “a network of European primary and secondary schools, which are also open to the local population, and which can be easily reached – so you don’t need special buses to get there. The European schools of type II, which can be co-financed by national and European authorities, could be turned into this. But that won’t be easy. You’d need to move gently in that direction, and use careful diplomacy.” Naturally.
