School Directors Warn Belgian School Year ‘Not Organizable’
School directors across Belgium’s French-speaking community (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles) are raising the alarm about the upcoming 2026-2027 academic year, warning that a combination of staffing shortages, unresolved technical details, and the chaotic passage of a controversial austerity decree have made the start of the school year effectively unorganizable. With the first day of school scheduled for August 24 — earlier than usual — and a union already calling for strike action on that date, the education sector is bracing for significant disruption.
Context: A System Under Strain
The crisis stems from the passage of the “Décret Programme 2” (Program Decree 2) on June 5, 2026, after a marathon 14-hour parliamentary session that stretched into the early morning hours. The decree, pushed through by the MR-Les Engagés majority with the entire opposition voting against, introduces sweeping austerity measures for the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, which faces a chronic budget deficit of approximately €500 million on a total budget of roughly €15 billion.
According to La Libre Belgique, the key measures include a 10% increase in teaching hours for upper secondary teachers — from 20 to 22 periods per week — without salary compensation, a less generous sick leave regime for statutory teachers, tightened end-of-career arrangements, and a tuition fee increase (minerval) from €837 to €1,194 for 58% of higher education students.
Key Developments: ‘Nobody Knows How to Organize’
Jean-François Nandrin, a professor at Collège Saint-Michel and former school director, captured the frustration of school administrators in stark terms. “Concretely, the start of the school year is not organizable,” Nandrin told La Libre Belgique. He explained that the decree has done nothing to resolve existing problems and has, in fact, created new ones, as schools now await a third decree — Décret Programme 3 — to correct errors in the second one. “For now, the circulars are not in order, nobody really knows how to organize themselves,” he said.
The situation is compounded by the introduction of the “Tronc Commun” (Common Core) curriculum reform, which takes effect for the first year of secondary school in September 2026. New courses in Digital Studies and Manual, Technical and Technological Training (FMTT) have been added, but teacher qualifications for these subjects have not yet been published, leaving school directors unable to assign staff.
Strike Action and Union Response
The Setca-Sel union, representing teachers in free and private education, has called for strike action on August 24 — the first day of school — and again on September 14. The union accused the Minister’s cabinet of “manipulation” during negotiations, stating that the government had acted “in disregard of consultation and its rules.”
Alexandre Lodez, Secretary General of Segec (the Secretariat General of Catholic Education), warned that the school year “will be disorganized anyway” and described the reforms as imposed on a teaching force already in deep distress. “The anger is not going to subside,” Lodez said. “I haven’t seen mobilization of this scale since the strikes of 1996.”
Analysis: A Perfect Storm for Education
The convergence of multiple challenges has created what analysts describe as a perfect storm for French-speaking Belgium’s education system. The late passage of the decree left schools with less than three months to prepare for sweeping changes. The procedural controversy surrounding the vote — including allegations that parliamentary rules requiring 84 hours between commission and plenary votes were violated — has further eroded trust between the government and the education community.
Constitutional law expert Céline Romainville of UCLouvain stated that, to her knowledge, there has never been such a flagrant violation of Parliament’s rules, raising the possibility of legal challenges before the Constitutional Court.
On the positive side, the decree does include some measures welcomed by educators: a 5% salary increase for future teachers (who will now train over four years instead of three), salary revaluation for school directors, and reduced teaching hours for early- and late-career teachers. However, these have been overshadowed by the broader austerity package.
What’s Next
With less than two months until the start of the school year, several critical questions remain unanswered. Will Décret Programme 3 be passed in time to resolve the technical issues? Will other major unions — CSC-Enseignement and CGSP Enseignement — join the Setca-Sel strike call? And can Minister of Education Valérie Glatigny restore dialogue with unions after months of confrontation?
Minister-President Elisabeth Degryse has promised no further austerity measures this legislature and has called for renewed dialogue, but with trust at a historic low and the clock ticking toward August 24, the path forward remains uncertain. What is clear is that Belgium’s French-speaking community is facing one of the most turbulent starts to a school year in recent memory.