The Platform to Combat Academic Failure brings together associative and union actors from and around the school world with the aim of transforming the school system, truly and concretely allowing it to play its role of public service: that of equal access for each student to the conditions of their success and development, in the refusal of any production of educational inequalities.
While the world of education is mobilizing massively this November 26 in the face of various budgetary saving measures in education, the Platform for the fight against academic failure relays its concerns regarding various measures taken or envisaged which give rise to the hope of teaching finally truly serving equality between students and the fight against academic failure. Exclusion of young people “late” from school without giving them the choice or guaranteeing support, maintaining the certifying nature of the CEB and increasing the success threshold to 60%, strengthening of selection measures during the students’ journey, weakening of the common core: more than ever, politics seems to want to combine education with relegation.
Already 10 years ago, the Platform called for an end to the school of relegation
In view of the 2014 elections, faced with the terrible observation that our education in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FW-B) was both the champion of repetition, relegation and the educational systems of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which produce the most educational inequalities, the Platform for the fight against academic failure, supported by numerous civil society associations, as well as by the General Delegate for the Rights of the Child and academics, called on women and politicians to affirm their desire to evaluate the 360° teaching situation in FW-B with all its components, with a view to refounding the School: objectification of data, identification brakes on change, plural debates without taboos for a global, concerted and planned evolution of the education system with the aim of moving from a school of massive relegation and failure to a school of success for all.
The rest, we know it. Ministers Milquet then Schyns (cdH) opened the major project which resulted in the development of two fundamental reports: an inventory, without concessions, shared by all the actors of the school put to work for two years , and a vision of a 21st century school. A roadmap that took place over several legislatures, opinion number 3 of the Pact for Teaching Excellence, was adopted by the government to fundamentally reform our education system. The flagship project, which underpinned all the other reforms linked to it: the establishment of a new common polytechnic core until the age of 15 with the aim of providing all students with the same basic foundation of knowledge and skills – which implied the removal of the certifying nature of the CEB test.
After several sprains, unraveling
A serious departure from this principle had already been made under previous legislatures, by not removing the certifying nature of the CEB test. Concretely, this means that to continue your journey in the common core, you must obtain a diploma. But why maintain a wedge in the middle of a course which is intended to be continuous and common to all students, when the very concept of a common core implies progressing together throughout it, and there is every way of assessments which allow the teacher to check the student’s progress and adapt their educational support to enable the acquisition of the material.
The breach was left open, Valérie Glatigny, new Minister of Education, rushed into it. The measures which will be voted on in Parliament this week, and many others which appear in the government agreement, foreshadow the return of the vision of a selective school, where success is not an objective for everyone and where we believes that students who are too late or in difficulty must be parked, who in the specialized (ce which is contrary to the objectives of the Conventions on the Rights of the Child and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities)who in a differentiated 1st, who in qualifying education… or even for those who are furthest behind, excluded from education.
The draft program decree currently under consideration by Parliament provides that 3rd and 4th secondary students who have not been regularly enrolled will be excluded from compulsory education. Students who already have a CESS, the same: it will be impossible for them to register for a specialization in 7th technical qualification or professional and they will be directed towards social promotion and work. And the future is paved with the same ” good “intentions: new external test “CLE” which would count for the report card in 3rd primary, raising the level of success of external tests to 60%, maintaining (until when?) the differentiated first level to relegate those who fail the CEB, strengthening /concentration of guidance activities in secondary 3 thus undermining the common core, etc.
Concretely, this means, for the students concerned, the break in the spirit of the common core: students who do not have the CEB will once again be separated from others upon entry into secondary school, despite the legal framework included in the Education Code. Maintaining the first differentiated, even temporarily, structurally organizes school segregation by creating permanent homogeneous groups! Exit social diversity and equal opportunities.
The school social contract must be rediscovered
Fears for the employment and status of teachers and the defunding of official education are not the only measures that worry education stakeholders. The implementation of the common core, which was the subject of unanimous agreement by all school stakeholders, is in danger. The concerted global reform is gradually emptying of its substance. The consequences of this decline will obviously impact the most vulnerable groups. Is this acceptable?
