Caroline Desir, Minister of Education in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB), was the guest of Fabrice Grosfilley this Friday before an unprecedented start of the school year (August 29), due to the change in the school rhythm.
7 weeks of lessons, 2 weeks off: will this really be a plus for the children?
“Yes, we are convinced of it. For the well-being of children and teachers, better regularity allows them to be placed in better learning conditions”.
This creates difficulties for some parents with children in Dutch-speaking education, but also in higher education. Are we all going to line up at some point?
“I hope so. Any change of habit generates difficulties, you have to adapt and we don’t always like that. We will evaluate this reform. I hope that the other communities will follow suit in the next agreements of government, it is also for this reason (that it didn’t happen at the same time as us). At the level of Minister Glatigny (higher education in FWB), there is work for a reform of their rhythm. The ambition is to bring the holidays closer to each other“.
The common trunk enters a force for the 1st and 2nd primary, then it will go up with them until 3rd secondary. Some speak of a leveling down: do we learn less with the common core?
“I disagree: there are a lot of ambitions in this common core. You have to go see the 9 new disciplinary references, they are online. We wanted to strengthen basic knowledge (calculation, writing, reading) , then new materials arrive, so manual, technical, digital training. And all our reforms will be evaluated each year”.