Quality and Equity of Schooling in the German-Speaking Community of Belgium
The German-speaking Community of Belgium is in the process of developing an overall vision for its education system (the "Gesamtvision Bildung") to guide reforms across the education sector for greater quality and equity. To support this process, the OECD review offers an independent analy...
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| Autor Corporativo: | |
| Formato: | Libro electrónico |
| Idioma: | Inglés |
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Paris :
Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development
2022.
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| Edición: | 1st ed |
| Materias: | |
| Ver en Biblioteca Universitat Ramon Llull: | https://discovery.url.edu/permalink/34CSUC_URL/1im36ta/alma991009703575506719 |
Tabla de Contenidos:
- Intro
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and acronyms
- Executive summary
- Leverage the revised core curricula to raise the quality of teaching and learning
- Strengthen the monitoring of performance and resource use in schools
- Place students and their needs at the centre of learning and adopt a broader view of inclusion
- Strengthen teachers' professionalism and support their continuing professional growth
- Strengthen schools' capacity for pedagogical leadership and improvement
- Assessment and recommendations
- Context
- The school system achieves average to above average outcomes in international assessments but remains below its potential
- The German-speaking Community is in the process of developing an overall vision to guide reforms in a decentralised education system
- Strengths and challenges
- The development of an overall vision has the potential to provide the education system with clear goals to guide and lend coherence to reform initiatives
- The limited availability of data on educational performance and resources reduces transparency and makes it difficult to monitor and evaluate quality and equity
- The main school funding allocation mechanisms do not compensate for socio-economic disadvantage
- A range of efforts are undertaken to prevent school failure and facilitate students' transitions, but repetition rates remain high and career guidance could be strengthened
- Inclusion is seen as a priority by all stakeholders and recent reforms are going in the right direction but there is a narrow understanding of what inclusive education means
- The support system for students with special education needs and newcomers can be rigid and would benefit from greater coherence in the identification of students' needs
- The education system recognises the importance of multilingualism.
- There have already been encouraging efforts to make teaching and school leadership more attractive professions, but further reforms are needed
- The Community's core curricula are critical for high-quality education, but teachers feel little ownership over them and are not sufficiently involved in their revision
- School-wide training days are an important investment but teachers' engagement in other forms of collaborative professional learning remains limited
- School autonomy has the potential to foster pedagogical diversity and innovation, but requires further capacity building at the school level
- School leaders require more support to engage in pedagogical leadership and use their autonomy to improve educational quality
- Policy recommendations
- Use the development of the Gesamtvision to provide a renewed vision for the education system, strategic guidance for reforms and a basis for an actionable implementation strategy
- Align the revision of the core curricula with the development of the Gesamtvision and bring teachers on board for their successful implementation
- Explore the introduction of equity funding to compensate for schools' and students' disadvantage
- Consider simplifying funding mechanisms and creating a clearer division of responsibilities between the two public school networks
- Strengthen the system's data collection in line with the Gesamtvision and Master Plan, monitor student performance and equity and consistently evaluate the effectiveness of policies and practices, particularly in the area of inclusion
- Place students and their individual needs at the centre of learning
- Reform the school calendar and seize opportunities to reduce learning gaps
- Strengthen teachers' professionalism and support their continuing professional growth throughout the teaching career.
- Create the conditions for greater collaboration within and between schools to improve the quality of teaching and successfully implement a competency-oriented curriculum
- Reform the teacher recruitment process and service codes to enable school leaders to build successful teams, facilitate teacher mobility and create synergies across networks
- Expand elements of distributed leadership to strengthen school leaders' capacity for pedagogical leadership and create opportunities for professional growth
- Strengthen schools' capacity for self-evaluation and student-centred school improvement
- 1 The education system of the German-speaking Community of Belgium in comparison
- Governance, population and economy of the German-speaking Community
- Governance
- Population and student numbers
- Economy and labour market
- Main features of the German-speaking Community's education system
- Structure of the education system
- Stages and pathways in the school system
- Offer for students with special education needs (SEN)
- Higher education
- Structure of the school year and school day
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic
- Governance of the school system
- The school networks and the role of school providers
- School autonomy and school choice
- System-wide and student learning goals
- System-wide core curricula and student learning goals
- Curricula for 21st century skills
- School projects, school development plans and school-based curricula
- Student assessment and examinations
- School evaluation
- Internal school evaluation
- External school evaluation and school inspection
- Advisory services
- Afterschool support, enrichment and youth assistance
- Homework support
- Time-Out
- Kaleido Ostbelgien
- Performance of the education system
- Education performance
- Process quality in pre-primary education.
- Education performance is good overall but there are few top-performers and an increasing share of low-achievers
- Performance differences across schools are modest but there are considerable differences between tracks
- Access and participation
- Access to early childhood education and care (ECEC) is widespread
- Early school leaving has been reduced but grade repetition rates remain high
- Attainment and labour market outcomes
- References
- Annex 1.A. Additional Figures
- Notes
- 2 Governing and funding the education system
- Context and main features
- Governance of the education system and the school networks
- Funding of school education
- Overall level of expenditure on school education
- Education expenditure in international comparison
- The governance of school funding and its major components
- Distribution and use of staff hours
- Funding for school infrastructure and material resources
- Governing the opening and closure of publicly-funded schools
- Digitalisation and ICT infrastructure
- System-level monitoring of educational quality and resource use in schools
- Transitions across levels of education, between pathways and into the labour market
- Transitions across years and levels of education
- Tracking and transitions between educational pathways
- Transitions into the labour market, vocational education and career guidance
- Strengths
- The development of an overall vision has the potential to set clear goals for the education system and strengthen the coherence of future reforms and school improvement efforts
- The investment in education supports favourable learning conditions
- The school funding system supports parental choice
- School autonomy has the potential to facilitate innovation and foster a variety of pedagogical approaches.
- A range of efforts are undertaken to prevent school failure and facilitate students' transitions beyond school
- Challenges
- The education system lacks a clear vision to guide and lend coherence to reform initiatives
- The limited availability of data on student and school performance reduces transparency and makes it difficult to monitor and evaluate educational quality and equity
- There is limited transparency over the levels of funding across schools and school networks
- The school funding mechanisms serve overlapping purposes and create a high administrative burden for schools and central authorities
- The main school funding allocation mechanisms do not compensate for socio-economic disadvantage
- A lack of systematic co-ordination and communication between key actors in the system limits synergies and the spread of good practices
- Students' transitions across levels of education could benefit from a more systematic and sustained collaboration among educators
- Despite a strong VET system, the status of vocational education remains low and there are concerns that students are oriented away from vocational training
- Career guidance could benefit from greater co-ordination among its providers and a better integration into schools
- Policy options
- Use the development process of the Gesamtvision to provide a renewed vision for the education system, strategic guidance on education policy reforms and a basis for an actionable implementation strategy
- Articulate an overarching vision for the education system
- Identify challenges in key policy areas and formulate specific goals aligned with the overarching vision
- Link the goals to specific policy actions and turn the Gesamtvision into a implementation strategy based on meaningful stakeholder engagement.
- Align the revision of the core curricula with the development of the Gesamtvision and use it as a lever to implement the overall vision at the classroom level.
