The first day of school will therefore be brought forward to the end of August, from this start of the 2022 school year. For the first time, students will return to school benches not in September, but a week earlier. ; in any case, in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
But this reform of school timetables has a very unpleasant consequence for schools offering immersion education in Dutch: Flemish teachers are fleeing Wallonia.
Coming to give lessons in Wallonia, for a Flemish teacher, already had two disadvantages: the distance and the salary. Walloon teachers are paid less than their Flemish counterparts. So here is a third disadvantage – and size – for teachers who have children: calendars that almost no longer coincide.
The start of the school year takes place a week earlier in the south of the country. It extends for one week at the end of the year. And, apart from the Christmas holidays, all other school holidays are staggered.
For the Flemish teachers who came to teach science, environmental studies or even history to Walloon students, that’s starting to mean a lot. At the Saint Pierre Educational Center in Leuze, several Flemish teachers have left.
The deputy director, Grégoire Auquier regrets it bitterly: “Unfortunately, we had to deplore the departure of our teachers, two in particular, some of whom had been here for ten years. Now the question arises of their replacement“.
Because recruitment is going to be difficult. This can also be seen at the Ursulines in Tournai. “For immersion courses, we must hire native speakersspecifies Damien Masquelier, the director. That is to say people whose original mother tongue is Dutch. And in fact it is very complicated to find even if in my case, I am relatively close to the linguistic border, it takes five to six times the time that I devote to the commitment of other teachers“. The number of teachers on the market for immersion teaching is in free fall. And it’s a bit of a reign of resourcefulness in trying to unearth them. “I believe that if there was coordination in all of education in Belgium, I think it might simplify things”believes Grégoire Auquier.
There are only a few days left for immersion schools to unearth the rare pearls.