Flanders (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Flemish Minister of Five Days Education Zuhal Demir of the N-VA party has unveiled two major steps that have been prompted to improve the quality of education in Flanders.
In the year 2026, the central tests for sixth-year secondary school students, though the essential domains remain unchanged, will contain more difficult math problems beyond the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of basic arithmetic problems, as well as subjects like algebra, geometry, and statistics.
Flemish Minister of Education Zuhal Demir laid out changes, including early assessment of uneven levels and future Belgian maths scores from secondary students, new more difficult maths tests for students from 2026, adaptations of teacher shortage policy-making in which support staff for schools may be hired and principal leadership profiles. Apart from the changes in mathematics testing, De Lijn will prolong the existing measures towards meeting the ongoing teacher shortage up to the academic year 2029-2030.
“This is not about small niche subjects, but about the essence of different mathematics disciplines,”
Demir stated.
“We want to be able to measure our educational quality well. And challenge everyone during the test, including our math heads.”
He added.
According to the new regulations, schools will be able to hire other subordinated staff if they are unable to find qualified teachers. It also means that this support person can help supervise classrooms, thereby freeing up teachers already on staff to teach more. Additionally, schools may be allowed to get 20% of their empty teaching hours as well for this purpose. New measures also include bringing more precise School principals, which include requirements that are crucial for leadership, organisational talent, and motivation skills.
How will these measures impact Flemish education?
The increased testing in mathematics is likely to have a vast effect on highly mathematics-oriented programs like the Economics-Mathematics and Science-Mathematics programs. Through the introduction of these more ways of testing and ranking students, the Flemish government seeks to meet the worthy challenges that students might face in the future and also check on the competency of schools. The reforms are being implemented at a time when there is heightened concern about educational performance, especially after poor results were revealed on the ministry’s standard assessments.
To further bolster educational leadership, the new ‘core profile’ for school principals will help in identifying candidates who possess the necessary skills to lead effectively. An extension of notice periods for teachers is also in place so that teachers can spend anywhere between one and thirteen weeks before more experienced teachers can be trained to replace them. All these undertakings show that the Flemish government has been concerned with the quality of education but also the stability of classrooms faced with teachers’ staffing problems.
This is all part of a wider context of educational reform in Flanders. The government has come to realize that shortages in teachers are a real issue that threatens the quality of education and has promised to increase efforts towards training teachers to meet stock demands. Among such changes, certain attempts have been made to improve the situation with the teachers by cutting excessive paperwork, as well as to satisfy the school’s financial demands.
In other words, these new measures can be deemed to be consequent and desperate in responding to evaluation criteria within Flemish education, as well as in concerns to staff. In evaluating and improving mathematics as a subject, staffing needs, and working on solutions to teacher shortages, the Flemish government works towards developing an improved school system that will fit the needs of students as well as teachers.
