Belgium Education

Education in Belgium is regulated and for the larger part financed by one of the three communities. The national legislator only kept a very few, minimal competences for education as the age for mandatory schooling, and, indirectly, the financing of the communities. All the three communities have a unified school system, with small differences between the different communities. The schools can be divided in three groups: Schools owned by the communities (GO! Onderwijs van de Vlaamse gemeenschap; réseau de la Communauté française) Subsidized public schools (officieel gesubsidieerd onderwijs; réseau officiel subventionné), organized by provinces and municipalities Subsidized free schools (vrij gesubsidieerd onderwijs; réseau libre subventionné), mainly organized by an organization affiliated to the Catholic church The latter is the largest group, both in number of schools and in number of pupils. Education in Belgium is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 18. Private home education is possible, and the numbers are rising slowly. For the year 2005—2006 the number of home schooled children in Flanders rose to 580 out of a total of 1 million. In the 2003 PISA-study by the OECD, the Belgian students scored relatively high. The results of the Dutch-speaking students were significantly higher than the scores of the German-speaking students which were in turn significantly higher than the French-speaking students.