Priority Education Policies in Belgium: Two Modes of Regulation of the Effects of a Market Logic

Abstract

An important feature of the Belgian context is the ‘communautarisation’1 of education policies. Since 1989 teaching has fallen within the competence of the communities, whereas until then it came under the Federal state. It is the three language-based communities (the French-, Flemish- and Germanspeaking communities) that manage similar but completely independent education systems, each covering part of the country.2 In this chapter we will base our account on the French and Flemish communities. The first part deals with the general context of the education systems of these two communities and recounts their joint move towards equity up to 1989. The second part is centred on the priority education policies in the French Community. The targeted populations and the actions prescribed are analysed on the basis of official documents. Their effective implementation and the evaluation of their effects (whether desired or not) is then discussed on the basis of research and the scientific literature available. The third part of this chapter analyses, in the same way, the priority education policies in the Flemish Community. The chapter concludes, as a summary, by examining the similarities and divergences which exist between the two communities.