Tougher foreign language exams in secondary schools?

She wants secondary school pupils to score higher and thinks the education standards for French, English and German need to become “more ambitious”.

According to research, the foreign language knowledge of the Flemish pupils is going downhill. Ms Crevits is pleading for change. “The education standards for French, English and German need to become more ambitious.”

This means that not only end-of-year exams will become tougher, schools will also have to change the methods they are currently using to teach foreign languages. “When looking at inspection reports, it seems that not all schools have an active policy in place to help boost the foreign language knowledge of their pupils.”

Elementary education

While these measures all pertain to secondary schools, Ms Crevits also hopes to integrate foreign language education into elementary school curricula. To them, she will point out the usefulness of English, French and German language initiations classes.

Ms Crevits’ predecessor, Pascal Smet (Flemish Socialist), shared the same ambitions. According to some experts, steps in the right direction were taken in the past couple of years, but Flemish pupils are definitely lagging behind in regards to language knowledge. when compared to their European counterparts.

Flandersnews.be / Expatica