Belgium

Partners situated in Belgium:

• AVNet - K.U.Leuven
• EuroPace (BE)
• Audiovisual Technologies, Informatics and Telecommunications bvba (ATiT) (BE)

One of the universities in Belgium is K.U.Leuven.

Belgium as a federal state

Belgium is a federal state with a constitutional monarchy, founded in 1830. It has a population of 10 511 382 people in a total area of 30 528 km². Belgium is a double federation of:

Source: Original png on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Belgium_provinces_regions_striped.png

• 3 Communities which are responsible for the person-related issues such as education, welfare, public health and culture:
  •    (Dutch-speaking) / Vlaamse Gemeenschap
  •    the French Community (French-speaking) / Communauté Française
  •   the German Community (German-speaking) / Deutschsprachige Gemeinschaft

• 3 Regions which are responsible for the territorial issues such as economy, infrastructure, agriculture, environment and employment
  •   the Flemish Region
  •    the Walloon Region
  •   the Brussels-Capital Region (officially bilingual)

There are also four language areas:

•   the Dutch area: the provinces in Flanders: Antwerp, Limburg, Flemish Brabant, West Flanders, East Flanders
•   the French area: the provinces in Wallonia: Hainaut, Walloon Brabant, Namur, Luxembourg, Liège
•   the German area: the 9 municipalities of the “East Cantons” / Eupen-Malmedy
•   the bilingual area in Brussels-Capital with 19 municipalities

Belgium as a field of education

PUBLIC OR PRIVATE EDUCATION

The Belgian Constitution stipulates that everyone has the right to education and therefore established compulsory education. Belgium also provides that access to education is free of charge up to the end of secondary education.

Education policy in currently in the hands of the 3 communities.

Two groups organise the educational structure: the public sector (the communes, provinces and communities) and the private sector. In the public sector there are 3 educational networks:

• community schools (neutral on religious, philosophical or ideological convictions)
• subsidised publicly run schools (organized by communes and provinces)
• subsidised privately run schools: denominational schools and schools which are not affiliated to a particular religion: the Freinet schools, Montessori schools or Steiner schools, which adopt particular educational methods and are also known as ‘method schools’.

Education that is organised for and by the government (community education and municipal and provincial education) is known as publicly run education. Recognised education organised on private initiative is called privately run education.

A small number of schools in Flanders are not recognised by the government. These are the so-called private schools, which are not financed or subsidised by the government.

TERTIARY EDUCATION

Higher education in Belgium is organized by the two main communities, the Flemish Community and the French Community. German speakers typically enroll in institutions in the French Community or in Germany.

In tertiary education / higher education, the academic year starts between 1 September and 1 October. The academic year ends on the day before the start of the next academic year.

The student enrols in one or more autonomous course components. He/she chooses for the already existing educational programme of 60 credits per academic year or for a flexible combination of course components (= less than 60 credits per academic year).

Flanders

The higher education reform Act of 4 April 2003 thoroughly changed tertiary education in Flanders. The Act contains three major lines of action: the introduction of the bachelor-master structure, interinstitutional co-operation between a university and one or more colleges of higher education and the accreditation of training programmes.

The colleges of higher education and universities are gradually introducing the bachelor-master structure from the 2004 - 2005 academic year onwards. Higher professional education only offers bachelor courses and is only provided at colleges of higher education. Academic education consists of bachelor courses and master courses. Academic education is provided at universities and at colleges of higher education operating within the framework of an association. The educational provision in tertiary education is laid down in the Higher education register. that contains all the accredited higher education programmes in Flanders. The Flemish government distinghuishes between universities, colleges, and registered institutes of higher education. See http://www.highereducation.be/ for a list of all recognised institutions.

An association is inter-institutional co-operation between one university and one or more colleges of higher education. Associations facilitate improved interaction between education and research in the academic bachelor courses and the master courses provided at colleges of higher education.

There are five associations in Flanders:

• the K.U.Leuven Association

• the Ghent University Association

• the Antwerp University Association

• the Brussels university association

• the universiteit - hogescholen Limburg association

Wallonia

Also in the French Community the bachelor-master structure was introduced in recent years.

The French Community distinghuishes between universities (offering bachelor, master and doctoral courses) and higher education outside the universities (offering only bachelor courses): colleges (Hautes Ecoles), arts colleges, and institutes of architecture.

A list of all recognised institutes is maintained in the Annuaire de l'enseignement supérieur. See http://www.enseignement.be/citoyens/annuaires/sup/index.asp

CONTINUING EDUCATION

1. Part-time education in the arts (DKO)

Part-time education in the arts is aimed at the artistic education of children and adults and, in doing so, at providing a contribution to their personal development.

2. Adult education In Flanders there are several publicly funded education, training and developmental provision schemes for adults. Within part-time adult education, 3 different actors can be distinguished:

a continuing education (OSP): with more than 250,000 course participants, continuing education is the most important pillar in adult education. Continuing education is provided in centres for adult education which are recognised and funded by the authorities.

b supervised individual study (BIS): BIS has discontinued. It is however published in our research list.

c adult basic education: the 29 centres for basic adult education try to provide a broad and varied range of basic education programmes: languages, mathematics, social orientation, ICT, introduction in French and English and stimulation and student counselling activities.

In contrast with continuing education and BIS, courses in basic education are free of charge.

3. Lifelong learning On 31 March 2003, the Training and Alignment Information Service (DIVA) was launched. DIVA co-ordinates the educational provision for adults in Flanders. DIVA facilitates the co-operation between the policy fields Education and Training, Employment, Culture and Economy. DIVA’s partners are the educational networks, Flemish Employment and Vocational Training Agency (VDAB), Flemish Institute for the Self-Employed (VIZO) and Support Centre for Socio-cultural Work (Socius). These partners represent respectively adult education (including further higher education, OSP, basic education, BIS and DKO), the training courses set up by VDAB, by Syntra and socio-cultural adult work. An awareness-raising campaign was launched: http://www.wordwatjewil.be.

Virtual learning initiatives in Belgium

In the following table we would like to highlight three initiatives that we consider to be important virtual learning opportunities in Belgium

Table 1

Nr	Name	Institution	City	Type
1.	BIS Online	Begeleid Individueel Studeren (BIS) – Ministry of Education	Brussels	Distance learning. Inactive now.
2.	Open Universiteit Vlaanderen (subdivision of OUNL)	Coördinatiebureau Vlaanderen in the University of Ghent / OUNL	Ghent	Distance learning
3.	Toledo	the K.U.Leuven Association	Leuven	VLE, LMS, Student manual (PDF)

Furthermore, it is also interesting to see how a 'traditional university' as the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) in Belgium progressively organizes its educational support from a multicampus perspective.

Links

For more examples visit this page: Belgium Research or view our WORD document with detailed information for most of our examples.

Furthermore, for corporate e-learning there's the Belgian network for Open & Distance learning (BE-ODL).

Sources:

http://www.belgium.be/eportal/application?origin=navigationBanner.jsp&event=bea.portal.framework.internal.refresh&pageid=indexPage&navId=2489

http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/publicaties/eDocs/pdf/120.pdf “EDUCATION IN FLANDERS - The Flemish educational landscape in a nutshell”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgium

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communities%2C_regions_and_language_areas_of_Belgium

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