Abstract
SUMMARY In Belgium, the French and Flemish Communities differ in the way pupils’ failures are identified and dealt with, the two communities being widely autonomous in terms of educational policy. The Flemish Community clearly prefers to promote pupils rather than hold them back. While the French Community has long favoured a policy of holding pupils back, efforts are now being made to reduce such practice. Owing to the resistance of a large number of families in refusing to have their child redirected along socially less popular educational paths, these efforts have met with little success so far. How can these differences between the two communities be explained? Although it suggests a few explanatory hypotheses, this paper is mostly a descriptive account, comparing the two communities in terms of the laws and policies they have implemented, and in terms of statistics. Such a comparison has never previously been attempted systematically.
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