Community education plans to sell regarding 50 dilapidated school buildings in 2023. The proceeds go to new and modern infrastructure.
Those who would like to buy a castle have four days to make an offer. Not on the website of some real estate agency, but on that of the Community Education (GO!). There are currently regarding fourteen old school buildings or other plots for sale, including an old hotel school on a castle estate in Sint-Truiden and a project site of 13,600 square meters in Beersel. In total, one in five GO! buildings would be suitable for sale. Over the past three years, this has yielded the umbrella organization some 100 million euros. At least 50 school buildings would also be offered for sale in 2023.
Throughout Flanders and Brussels, the GO! owns regarding 3,700 school buildings. These account for 4 million square meters of construction area and 13 million square meters of ground surface. Two thirds of them are older than 40, one third even older than 55 years. The obsolete or dilapidated state of the patrimony has been a thorn in the side of the dome for some time. According to its own calculations, at least 260 million euros is needed annually to maintain all its buildings and replace them where necessary. The proceeds of a sale therefore flow back to the group of schools that owned the old building, so that they can invest in modern infrastructure.
But the GO! is by no means the only school umbrella organization that is struggling with a very outdated school infrastructure. A recent paper by professor of educational economics Kristof De Witte (KU Leuven) shows that in 2018 more than one in eight Flemish school buildings were more than a century old. A fourth was built before 1950, and only a small one in ten was built following 2014. Compared to the European average of 8 percent for primary and 7 percent for secondary education, the Flemish government also invested a lot less of its total education expenditure in education infrastructure five years ago (5 and 3 percent respectively).
“Some extra subsidies have been added in recent decades,” says De Witte. “For example, public-private partnerships have been set up since 2006 to help with the design, construction, financing and maintenance of school infrastructure.” For example, between 2020 and 2024, the government is also pledging 3 billion euros under the ‘Masterplan 2.0’. “But because far too little has been invested for years, that is still insufficient to clear the historic backlog,” says De Witte. There are also long waiting lists for many grants.
If a school demolishes an old building, the subsidies given can be reclaimed up to 30 years following payment. “As a result, schools do not dare to take the step towards demolition and new construction,” says De Witte. “While new construction is in many cases preferable to renovation. That it GO! now that buildings are being sold instead of being refurbished, I applaud them.”
According to spokesperson for Catholic Education Flanders Pieter-Jan Crombez, Catholic schools also do this exercise, and the umbrella organization tries to support them as much as possible as a network organization: “But of course it makes a big difference in terms of speed and efficiency if you do this from a central control point. can organize like the GO! and your infrastructure is fully paid for by the government.”
While the GO! as the official umbrella organization of the Flemish government owns most of its buildings, Catholic education only owns regarding one in four of its buildings. The other buildings are owned by non-profit organisations, private persons or organizations and are rented by the Catholic schools. Building a new school building or making improvements to the existing one can and does happen, but only if those owners agree.
And while the GO! if a capacity expansion is fully financed by the Flemish Government, Catholic schools must be able to contribute another 30 to 40 percent. Schools must obtain this amount from operational resources intended for the purchase of school materials, cleaning staff or energy costs.
Gap?
Are we not in danger of heading towards a gap between the two largest educational networks, where one – the GO! – will soon have modern, fully equipped buildings and the other – Catholic education – will lag behind? This might have consequences for the students, because we know from research that outdated school buildings have a negative impact on students and teachers. “It has been shown that a pupil sitting in an old classroom with broken windows and flakes of paint on the wall will be able to show less good academic performance,” says De Witte.
Teachers would also be more easily attracted to a school with a new infrastructure. Moreover, in such schools it is sometimes easier to move walls of a classroom, which makes modern forms of education such as team teaching more possible. “Some schools cannot implement their vision on education because their building is literally in the way,” says educationalist Pedro De Bruyckere.