A working group set up by the Minister of Education Caroline Désir (PS) is currently considering a new numbering for these years of study. A guidance note on this subject should also soon be submitted to education stakeholders, the minister said on Monday in a parliamentary committee.
As part of the Pact for teaching excellence, it was decided to introduce a new common core in order to offer the same educational continuum to all students, from kindergarten to the age of 15. , i.e. the current 3rd secondary.
The objective of this reform is in particular to eliminate the transition – which is difficult for a certain number of pupils today – between sixth primary and first secondary.
In this spirit of continuity, it would be logical to adopt a new numbering of the years which underlines this uniqueness, rather than keeping names which clearly compartmentalize them between primary cycles (which end with a 6th year) and secondary (which start once more with a 1st year).
Before the deputies, Ms. Désir also confirmed on Monday her desire to encourage the creation of “common core schools” in the future, which would be called upon to organize the 15 years of teaching the new common module.
This would constitute a real change in the educational landscape in Wallonia and Brussels where primary and secondary schools are now very often administratively independent of each other.
The Minister further specified that the working group she had set up was also studying the impacts of the new common core curriculum in terms of supervision, as well as with regard to the registration procedure.
Indeed, enrollments in secondary 1 are now subject to a regulated allocation of places (the now famous Enrollments decree). But for many actors, this will no longer have any reason to be within the framework of the new common core, the separation between 6th primary and 1st secondary being destined to disappear.