Challenges in the education system
Cultural divides in Belgium led to the formation of school divisions not only on a linguistics level but also between different groups within these language communities that wanted religion and culture associated or disassociated with their children's education. This divide in educational systems has led to some disparities not only between languages but also within language communities. Educational policy including assessment of students, teachers, schools and pedagogy vary between these systems and have led to a differences in achievement between them. Although overall the achievement for the country is above average, schools in the Flemish part of Belgium do significantly better than those in the German speaking schools who again achieve higher scores than those in French speaking schools.
According to a study by the OECD even in the top achieving Flemish school systems there is a lack of established criteria or quality indicators to evaluate teacher performance, there is also a need for teacher and school leader professional development to help undertake and overlook self-evaluation and improvement. These processes need to be more centralized, possibly by the government and occasionally performed by third party inspection. These different divisions need clarity on what is important in order to gather information and share/compare with other schools and councils to develop improved educational policies throughout the Belgian school system. The Flemish community now uses "School Communities" which are designed to offer collaboration and organizational efforts outside of schools educational networks. Although almost all schools in Flemish Belgium now belong to a larger "School Community" there are still more efforts needed to centralize educational policy.
According to a study by the OECD even in the top achieving Flemish school systems there is a lack of established criteria or quality indicators to evaluate teacher performance, there is also a need for teacher and school leader professional development to help undertake and overlook self-evaluation and improvement. These processes need to be more centralized, possibly by the government and occasionally performed by third party inspection. These different divisions need clarity on what is important in order to gather information and share/compare with other schools and councils to develop improved educational policies throughout the Belgian school system. The Flemish community now uses "School Communities" which are designed to offer collaboration and organizational efforts outside of schools educational networks. Although almost all schools in Flemish Belgium now belong to a larger "School Community" there are still more efforts needed to centralize educational policy.