Flemish Government Invests €10 Million in AI Education Strategy
Flemish Minister of Education Zuhal Demir (N-VA) has announced a €10 million investment to develop a comprehensive, joint artificial intelligence strategy for education across Flanders. The five Flemish universities — KU Leuven, UGent, VUB, UAntwerpen, and UHasselt — will collaborate with university colleges, research institutions, and private sector partners to design a coordinated AI roadmap over the coming months, as reported by VRT NWS.
Why a Coordinated Approach Matters
AI has already entered Flemish classrooms at a remarkable pace. According to the imec.digimeter 2025 report, 91% of Flemish students have used generative AI for their studies, 81% use it actively for school purposes, and 71% say it helps them understand difficult material faster. Among teachers, roughly half in secondary education and a quarter in primary education already use AI tools — yet formal guidelines governing its use remain absent.
“AI can strengthen teachers, better guide students, and better inform policy,” Demir said. “But that can only happen within a safe environment, with clear agreements and with humans at the wheel.” The minister emphasized that protecting children does not mean keeping AI out of schools, but rather teaching young people and educators to use it critically and responsibly, as IT Daily reported.
The Five Pillars of the Strategy
The joint AI strategy will be built around five core objectives:
- Digital Literacy & Critical Thinking — Teaching students to use AI critically, safely, and consciously
- Future-Ready Workforce — Aligning education with a labor market being transformed by AI
- Teacher Support — Providing organizational and administrative backing to educators
- Pedagogical Enhancement — Using AI to strengthen learning and teaching outcomes
- Evidence-Based Policy — Enabling rapid identification and scaling of what works
Infrastructure First: The “Railway Network” Approach
Demir stressed that the foundation must be laid before any applications can be deployed at scale. Drawing a vivid analogy, she explained: “You don’t build a rail network by letting loose trains run everywhere without tracks, signals, or safety rules. It’s the same with AI in education. First, the safe foundation must be in place. Then strong applications can run faster, connect better, and scale up more safely.”
Rather than replacing existing digital systems, the government will build a secure shared infrastructure — a “digital railway network” — on which AI applications can be developed, tested, and deployed safely. This approach ensures data protection, access control, and consistent quality and safety standards across all applications.
Policy Context and Evolution
The €10 million initiative marks a significant shift in Flanders’ approach to technology in education. Minister Demir has previously taken a cautious stance: in May 2025, she scaled back the “Digisprong” program that had heavily promoted laptop use in schools, replacing it with a more measured “Digiplan.” In November 2024, she paused an AI pilot project by Smartschool, the dominant digital learning platform in Flemish schools.
This new investment represents a move from reactive caution to proactive strategy-building — an acknowledgment that AI is already in classrooms and that a coordinated, safe framework is urgently needed rather than a patchwork of individual institutional responses.
Implications and Outlook
The €10 million is framed as a catalyst to kickstart the process rather than the total implementation budget. The joint approach across all five universities signals a coordinated Flemish response to AI in education, contrasting with jurisdictions that have either banned AI tools outright or left adoption entirely to individual institutions.
Flanders is positioning itself as a proactive region on AI in education. The “safe infrastructure first” model could become a template for other regions grappling with similar challenges. However, significant questions remain: whether €10 million will prove sufficient for meaningful transformation across five universities and all associated colleges, how teacher training will be delivered at scale, and how equity concerns will be addressed to ensure all schools benefit equally.
The rectors of all five Flemish universities have backed the initiative, and work on the strategy will proceed over the coming months. The outcome will likely influence AI education policy not only across Belgium’s other language communities but potentially across Europe as well.