Teacher Discontent in Belgium: Two Crises, One Country, Different Realities

Teacher anger is sweeping across Belgium, but the storms battering the country’s two main education systems are strikingly different in nature and intensity. While French-speaking teachers have brought certification exams to a halt and clashed with police in the streets, their Flemish counterparts are engaged in a quieter — but no less significant — battle over the pace and direction of reform. A recent comparative analysis by RTBF explores whether Flemish education is suffering from the same systemic ailments as its French-speaking counterpart.

A Tale of Two Budgets

The most visible difference between the two systems is financial. Flanders allocates €17 billion of its roughly €70 billion budget to education — a substantial sum that reflects the region’s fiscal autonomy. In 1980, Flanders merged its community and regional governments, pooling resources and gaining greater flexibility. The French Community (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, or FWB), by contrast, maintains separate regional and community institutions, creating structural budget constraints.

The FWB spends €10.65 billion on education — fully 70% of its total budget — yet still faces a deficit that has forced €500 million in cuts over four years. These cuts include increased teaching hours, larger class sizes, and the abolition of permanent teacher appointments — measures that have sparked fury.

Reform vs. Austerity

In Flanders, Education Minister Zuhal Demir (N-VA) is pursuing reforms aimed at raising academic standards following significant PISA score declines. Her agenda includes mandatory Dutch language tests for teacher training, reducing pedagogical days, and tightening the gap between exams and holidays. These are substantive changes, but they are not driven by budget cuts.

In the French-speaking system, Minister Valérie Glatigny (MR) is imposing austerity. Teachers face 22 hours of classroom time instead of 20 — for the same pay — along with larger classes of up to 30 students and the end of tenure protections. As VRT NWS reported, Demir has acknowledged the need for reform while insisting “doom scenarios” in the press are inaccurate.

Protest Intensity: Worlds Apart

The difference in protest scale is dramatic. French-speaking Belgium has seen massive demonstrations of 10,000+ teachers, violent clashes at Brussels Central Station on 4 June where 10 people were arrested, and the storming of the FWB Parliament. The CE1D and CESS certification exams have been cancelled in multiple schools, throwing the academic year into chaos.

Flemish protests have been far more contained. A petition of 1,500 school directors asked Demir to slow reforms. Some 47,000 teachers joined a strike in January 2025 — but that was tied to national pension reform protests, not specifically education policy. About 20 threatening messages were sent to Demir, including one referencing the assassination of a Trump associate. Student protests at the Meertalig Atheneum Woluwe in January saw pupils wearing black and playing funeral music to symbolize education “dying.”

Why the Difference?

Political journalist Ivan De Vadder of VRT, speaking on RTBF’s Matin Première, explained that the most contentious issues — mandatory extra teaching hours and ending permanent appointments — were attempted in Flanders and withdrawn. “We tried it, it didn’t work on the Flemish side,” he said. “So we withdrew that reform.” Teacher tenure “is still permanent in Flanders, they don’t touch it.”

RTBF editorialist Bertrand Henne pointed to deeper structural issues. “Most of the observations we made about French-speaking education in the 90s are still there today,” he noted — organizational problems between school networks, early retirement, and insufficient classroom time compared to France and Germany. The Flemish system, he said, is “a bit like a boat that sails calmly,” while the FWB has endured constant upheaval from the “Pacte d’excellence” reforms followed by austerity.

A Cultural Divide

The two communities also differ in how they perceive protest. As RTBF reported, Flemish media framed the June protests as riots by “casseurs” (vandals), while French-speaking media focused on police violence. Journalist Alain Gerlache described it as a clash between a “culture of order” in Flanders and a “culture of social excuse” in French-speaking Belgium.

What’s Next?

For the FWB, the immediate crisis is acute. With exams cancelled and the school year in disarray, the government faces a crisis of legitimacy. The Mars Attacks teacher collective, formed in March 2026, shows no signs of backing down.

In Flanders, the situation is less dramatic but potentially more consequential over the long term. Demir’s reforms face opposition from teachers, students, and school directors, but she has avoided the red-line issues that have paralyzed the south. The question is whether Flemish education can raise standards without triggering the kind of explosion seen across the language border.

As Belgium’s two education systems continue to diverge — one struggling under austerity, the other navigating reform — the country’s linguistic divide is once again proving that what unites Belgians may be less powerful than what separates them.