Last month, Paul Belien was summoned to his local police station and questioned.

Education authorities have now asked the judiciary to press charges.

Belien, a lawyer, and his Irish-born wife Alexandra, a former university lecturer, have home-schooled four of their five children through high school believing — as do most home-schooling parents — that their children are better off learning at home than at the schools available to them.

These four children have now moved on to university while their youngest child is also being home-schooled.

New regulations

Since the Beliens started educating their children in the 1990s, the home-schooling movement in Belgium has been steadily growing.

The number of home-schoolers remains relatively small — about 202 children of primary school age and 311 of high school age — but the figure has risen four-fold in the past five years.

In Europe, the laws on home-schooling vary widely and, for a long time, home-schooling in Belgium was, basically, unregulated as the government's view was that it should not interfere in this parental right.

However, the situation has changed since a new law was enacted three years ago.

Both Wallonia and Flanders now have rules on home-schooling. Parents do not need to justify their decision to home-school. Nor do they need to have a teachers' certificate.

But what the 2003 legislation did was to impose educational standards on home-schoolers and provide for the possibility of inspections.

The formal requirements imposed on home-schooling parents are simple: parents must agree to co-operate with inspections and are obliged to sign an official "declaration of home-schooling" in which they agree to school their children with "respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the cultural values of the child and others".

It is this clause, which has incensed several home-schooling parents, including the Beliens.

"The declaration does not specify what 'respect for the fundamental freedoms of others' means," Alexandra Belien says.

"It states, however, that government inspectors decide this and adds that if parents receive two negative reports from the inspectors they will have to send their child to an official government recognised school.

"We have refused to sign this statement since we are unwilling to put our signature under a document that forces us to send our children to government-controlled schools if two state inspectors decide, on the basis of arbitrary criteria, that we are not 'respecting the fundamental freedoms of others'.

"According to the education ministry we have violated the law and might be taken to court."

Paul Belien added: "Three families we know have had to allow inspectors into their homes who interrogate and intimidate their children, then write a report that they are not in compliance with the minimum requirements set out in the signed document.

"It seems that inspectors are being set loose on families with no other purpose than to find fault and remove their children from their care."

Home-schooling inspectors

Others have also run into trouble with the authorities over the new law.

One Brussels-based expat family, who did not wish to be named, withdrew their youngest son from technical school where the eldest child had become a drug user.

They used an education ministry form to inform the authorities of their decision and, in doing so, unwittingly accepted the clauses of the 2003 law.

"Some months later the inspectors arrived. They said our son was using manuals unsuited for his age even though he was using the same manuals as his peers at school," the boy's father says.

"They were rude to his mother, who is of Polish origin, and claimed she could not educate our son because of her accent. They said they would return."

The parents continued educating their son and found — as many home-schooling parents claim — that he was "highly motivated" and learning faster and better than he had done at school.

"Four months later the inspectors returned. They conceded that they could see improvement but not enough and our son had to return to school."

Question of quality

The authorities say they are unable to discuss individual cases, but a spokesman for Flemish Education Minister Frank Vandenbrouke hit back at criticism of the legislation, saying: "Freedom of education is a crucial element of our educational legal framework".

"The constitution provides compulsory education, but not compulsory schooling. As a consequence, home education is allowed," spokesman Ward Verhaeghe continued.

"We believe it is important that all children receive high quality education, so our education inspectors closely monitor the quality of home education.

"It has become clear from the inspectorate's experiences that this quality is highly diverse."

Flemish school inspectorate official Kristien Arnout says that in Belgium, a parent has the right to home-school their child but, equally, "it is our job to ensure this is done correctly and that the child's rights are respected".

According to official figures, in 2004, 94 percent of home-schooling parents who were inspected received a positive decision compared with 70.5 percent of all inspected elementary schools.

About 75 percent of home-schooled children in Flanders go on to higher education.

Legal requirements

Other expats, who home-school their children, say they have had no problems with the authorities.

US lawyer Jay Modrall and his Dutch-born wife Johanna Modrall, who live near Brussels, have been home educating two of their three children since they moved to Belgium three years ago.

Johanna, who has written articles on home-schooling in the Netherlands where home-schooling is prohibited and parents who home educate are regularly prosecuted, says that in practice, the new rules give parents a lot of freedom as to what and how to teach their children.

"The law does not require the child to take exams, though most home-schooled children in Belgium take state exams that provide them with a high school diploma," she says.

"The legal requirements are easy to meet. Shortly after we registered our children, Daniel and Dora, as home-schoolers, we were visited by two very friendly inspectors.
 
"They were open-minded about home-schooling and we were 'approved'. We have heard similar positive experiences from other home-schooling parents."

"While Brussels has a wide range of schools, home education can provide a short or long-term solution for some families for a number of reasons.

"It has a number of advantages, both academic and social. One big advantage is that kids are less exposed to a lot of negative social behaviour that is unavoidable in schools, such as teasing and bullying."

Johanna Modrall's son adds: "Home-schooling is nice because you get to spend more time with your family".

Adaptability

Their comments were echoed by another expat couple, Robert and Deborah Rhea, who live in Brussels and home-school their sons, Steven, Jeffrey and William.

"Home-schooling makes it possible to experiment with different curricula and to choose the one that best fits the child's learning style at the particular time," Deborah Rhea says.

"Another plus is the one-on-one instruction and the possibility of giving immediate feedback."

Expats wanting more information on home-schooling can contact the Brussels Childbirth Trust at www.bctbelgium.com which has a list of contacts.

19 July 2006

[Copyright Expatica 2006]

Subject: Home-schooling in Belgium