How to choose the best school for your child in Belgium

Belgium offers a large number of different school types and finding the perfect school for your child as an expat could be a difficult choice. This article will provide you with a guide on how to choose the best school and it will give you an overview on how we chose our children’s schools.

The following guidelines are designed to help you find the right school for your children. Here are a few factors to take into account:

• How long will you be staying in Belgium

• How old is your child when you move here

• What local languages does he / she speak - if any

• How much money do you have for school tuition

• Where in Belgium will you be living

• What kind of teaching method is better for your child

• What type of higher education do you plan for

Watch the video here:

How long do you plan to stay in Belgium?

In case you plan to move to another country in a couple of years, and the stay in Belgium is only short-term, you might need to think about the continuity of your child’s education. In this case you should pick an International or an European school where your country's educational plan is taught. You should also take into account the price of their education.

If you plan to stay in Belgium long-term, a local Belgian school may be the best choice because it gives your child the chance to integrate in the local culture, become proficient in the local languages and make local friends.

Before choosing a local school you need to consider that being enrolled there might be difficult for an older child who is in late primary school or secondary school, especially if they don’t speak the local language.

What age are your children?

If your children are in preschool, less than 6 years old, a local nursery may be the best and most convenient choice. They are likely to adapt relatively quickly, even if they don’t speak the language. Older children are more likely to have difficulty adapting to the curriculum in French or Dutch unless they already speak the language.

The children that are 12 or older have to enroll in secondary school. The process for finding a school is a bit different because you have to be aware of the perspectives the school offers for higher education.

Also middle school children are more autonomous and can travel alone by public transportation. In Brussels it is quite common for children from 12 years old to take the bus and metro to go school unaccompanied.

When we arrived in Belgium for the first time, in August 2018, we enrolled our children in a French community school.

Stefan, my youngest son, was 4 years old, and he started first grade of kindergarten (premiere maternelle). Usually at 4 years old the kids should be enrolled in 2nd kindergarten (deuxième maternelle), but the head mistress at the school, recommended to enroll him in the first grade because he didn’t know any French at all, and it would be easier for him to adapt to the new language, new environment and the different school activities.

My oldest son Mihai was 9 years old and we enrolled him in 4th grade primary school (quatrième primaire), although he just finished the 2nd grade in Romania. Here, when assigning students to classes, the year of the student's birth is taken into account, not the class attended in the previous year, in the country of origin.

He also didn’t know any French because in Romania he was enrolled in a private English school.

Do your children speak or understand the local language?

If your child knows one local language, then the choice would be obvious, but choosing a school in Belgium is more complicated if the child doesn’t know any of the local languages, as it was our case. What would be better, a Dutch or a French school?

It’s a known fact that, in the Dutch schools of Brussels, more that 78% of children come from French speaking families, because a lot of them want their kids to learn Dutch, the second main language of the country. That is also correlated with the big number of French speaking families that live and work in Brussels. Actually, the main spoken language in Brussels is French, but you can get by easily with Dutch and English. It also depends on the neighborhood and district.

Also, the Dutch schools have a reputation of a higher level of education, so Belgian citizens are more inclined to enroll their children there.

French schools offer immersion classes in Dutch, as part of their mandatory curriculum to help children become bilingual when they graduate. On the other hand, Dutch schools don’t usually offer immersion classes to learn French.

We chose a French school for our boys because we knew some French and the language is similar to Romanian, thus easier for them to learn it.

They didn’t know any French at all and they had to learn on the way to understand a new language, make friends, do homework and adapt to a totally different way of living than they knew before.

I won’t lie, the first year was very hard for them, and of course, for us as well. Anybody who tells you that kids adapt fast and learn a new language quickly, that it won’t take them more than 2-3 months to adapt and make friends, it’s not telling you the whole story.

Initially, we looked at English-speaking schools, but English is not a vastly taught or spoken language in Belgium, not even in Brussels. You won’t find any free or subsidized schools that teach English or even have some English classes.

So any school that has English classes is private and has high fees, like International schools, European schools and alternative method schools.

For our kids it took more than six months to adapt to the new way of living. Not knowing the language was a big impediment and I wouldn’t advise anyone to move to a country not knowing the local language at least at a basic level. Both my children knew English well, but in the community school there was no one to talk to in English.

Mihai’s teacher didn’t know English at all and we had to enroll him in immersion classes which were 1.5 hours per day, twice per week, with a different teacher that spoke English. During that time he would revise in English the lessons his teacher was teaching in class. But that wasn't nearly enough.

For Stefan there was no immersion class, because he was too young, so the school didn’t provide any help at all.

What is your budget for education?

As you may already know, community schools are free – but you still need to pay for child supervision daily, during lunch time at least. See this article for more info.

International and European schools tend to have very high fees. They easily reach 10,000 euros per year per child and even up to around 30,000 euros.

Some employers will offer to pay the school fees or a part of them as a benefit for relocation. In our case, we came to work as freelancers, so that was not an option.

If International schools are not an option for you due to the high fees, you should look for a local subsidized school, which still has fees to pay, but is a lot more manageable and the standard of education is higher than community schools.

What area in Belgium you choose to live in?

Wherever you choose, you will have easy access to local Belgian schools. While you do not need to live close to a school for your child to go there, priority for nursery and primary school will be given to children living closer if the school has a waiting list.

To check the waiting lists for the French schools you can look here, but this site is not always up to date, so, the best way to know, is to ask each school you are considering.

If the children followed nursery at the same school they will have priority when they pass to primary school. But the same is not valid for secondary school. If the children followed a primary school that also offers secondary education, then they would go through the same registration procedure as any other child.

The majority of international and European schools are located in and around Brussels and Antwerp. They usually offer bus service for students, so you should ask each school about what they can offer in terms of transportation.

Brussels schools

In the Brussels area there are 19 communes (districts), each having its own vibe, housing prices and school performance variations. Local schools in Brussels are taught in French or Dutch as the primary language.

When we came to Belgium in 2018, we got jobs at the European Commission in Brussels, so we had to choose a neighborhood near Schuman and the European Institutions. We chose to move to Woluwe-Saint-Pierre district because this is a great commune for families and you can find a lot of houses to rent, quiet and safe neighborhoods, and good schools for children.

Because we didn’t know much about the differences of school types we chose the nearest community school from our home, thinking that a community school would be the best place for our children to integrate into the Belgian lifestyle.

After a while we learned that subsidized catholic schools actually make up the largest number of primary schools in Brussels and, moreover, the schools with a catholic affiliation are preferred among the locals and expats. They almost always have waiting lists and the enrollment process can start up to two years in advance.

Also you should know that most types of schools in Belgium base their compulsory religious education on Catholicism, the national religion.

The idea that a catholic school will indoctrinate the child to the catholic religion is a misplaced one. Here, children of all religions can study freely in a catholic school. There are, indeed, 2 classes per week, that teach Catholicism and the school usually belongs to a church nearby, but the class is taught just like any other class - reading, or math.

Our experience with the community school was not pleasant, the toilets were always very dirty and smelled awful, the teachers were not willing to help us or our children, at lunch time the supervisors weren't paying attention to the children, they would let them fight and not intervene until it was too late.

For the next school year we decided to enroll both of them in a French catholic school, close to our home, so we were put on the waiting list with both our sons.

Of course, this was our experience, that doesn't mean every community school has the same procedures, I'm convinced that there are many community schools which are very good.

Here, some schools have nursery (maternelle), primary school (primaire) and high school (secondaire) at the same school, as in the case of our community school. The catholic school we chose had only maternelle and primaire, which was perfect for us, because Stefan would be in third grade kindergarten (3ème maternelle), and Mihai, in fifth grade primary school (5ème primaire).

At the end of the summer vacation, in August, we received the news that they were both accepted, mostly because we lived 100 meters from the school. Later we found out that this school is one of the best French catholic schools in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, and in the top primary schools in Brussels.

For us, and for them, this was one of the best decisions we made since coming to Belgium.

More details about the catholic school system you can find here.

If you want to know more about choosing the perfect school in Brussels here is an online tool (in French) supported by the Walloon-Brussels federation.

What about alternative method schools?

Belgium has a wide variety of alternative method schools, which may be worth considering depending on your child’s needs.

Most alternative method schools are found in Brussels and the big cities of Belgium: Antwerp, Ghent, Leuven and Waterloo.

Celstin Freinet schools teach the children to learn through direct experience, rather than in a formal setting, through discovery and the liberal arts.

Montessori schools focus on creative thinking and holistic child development but they offer only nursery and primary education.

Steiner Waldorf schools take a humanistic approach to education, blending intellectual, practical, and artistic development.

It is up to you what type of school method to choose for your child but you have to consider the final certifications provided by these schools if your child will pursue higher education.

Is higher education an important concern for you?

If your child is likely to pursue higher education in your home country, or another country, you need to think about what certifications will be most valuable to them.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a certification given in International schools and is recognized worldwide for university admissions.

The European Baccalaureate (EB) is a certification given in European schools and is recognized throughout the European Union.

Belgium schools issue two certifications. The first is given at the end of 6th primary, called CEB - Certificat d’Études de Base (in French) and getuigschrift basisonderwijs BaO, 1A or 1B (in Dutch), based on which the students go to secondary school.

The second certification is the diploma given at the end of the 6th secondary, after the exam called CESS - Certificat d’Enseignement secondaire supérieur (in French): and Diploma van Secundair Onderwijs (in Dutch) based on which the students go to Belgian Universities.

Download now the Free Action Plan we created to help you choose the perfect school for your child!

Tips & tricks to help you choose the best school

• Each school has a website with all of the important information, so read everything you can about it, and find reviews online from other parents.

• Reach out to each school and ask them about the nationality of the children that will potentially be in the classroom of your child. We wanted our sons to have Romanian speaking children in their classes or at least children that spoke English, so they wouldn’t feel too isolated.

• Each school has Open Doors, Info Sessions and Fancy Fairs which help raise awareness of the school environment and help you feel its vibe:

  • Open Doors are organized throughout the year, depending on the school

  • Info Sessions are organized on demand

  • Fancy Fairs mostly take place between April and June and they are a sort of party or celebration where the school raises money from the participant parents for the benefit of the school and its students.

• It’s also possible to choose to go to a less expensive private school until a place in the local school of your choosing (where you are on the waiting list) opens up.

• First find a good school where you know your child is safe and well taken care of and after that try to find accommodations near that school.

• If one of your children is enrolled in the school of your choice then all his / hers siblings will have the priority guaranteed in that school if they are on the waiting list.