Oudenaarde (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – All 30 teachers at the Oudenaarde hairdressing school oppose its closure, citing poor leadership, lack of transparency, and over 100 enrolled students. The provincial council decides today, April 30, 2025.
All 30 teachers at an Oudenaarde hairdressing school in East Flanders, Belgium have signed a complaint letter. They are against the school closing. The teachers are from both the day and evening classes. They sent the letter to the province’s complaints person. The teachers are upset about how and when they found out about the closure.
They say the education leader told them too late. They also say the way the closure was announced was not good. They felt the information was not clear. The teachers think the school didn’t think about the students. They don’t believe the school thought about what would happen to the staff or the students.
Is a leadership crisis behind the planned closure of Oudenaarde Hairdressing school?
Besides the school closure, the teachers have other worries. They have made serious claims about the leaders in the education system. The teachers say the leaders are creating a bad environment.
They say the director of provincial education is the problem. The teachers feel stressed because of the bad atmosphere at school. Many teachers are feeling burned out. Some teachers have left the team. They say the bad environment is making it hard for them to do their jobs.
“She is frequently guilty of disparaging remarks and verbal intimidation. This mentality contributes to a culture of fear, which falls under psychosocial work pressure. There is favouritism and unequal treatment, without transparent or objective criteria. This leads to unequal opportunities and undermines the principle of equal treatment,”
The teaching staff said.
According to the teachers at the hairdressing school in East Flanders, the leaders don’t listen to them. If teachers say anything bad about the director, they are threatened with being moved to another school. The teachers think this is to stop them from speaking out. They say it makes the school a bad place to work, where people can’t talk openly.
The teachers want someone else to look into how the school closure was decided. They want to know what the director and the deputy did. They also want to see all the documents and reports that were used to make the decision. They want to make sure the decision was fair and right.
The province wants to shut down the hairdressing school, saying not enough students are attending. However, the teachers strongly disagree, claiming the decision was made too fast and without considering the consequences. They are asking for changes to stop the bad leadership at the school from happening again. The provincial council will make the final decision on the school’s closure this afternoon.
“This is one of the smallest schools in Flanders, so it is better to opt for a centralisation in Ghent, where there is space to accommodate the students from Oudenaarde,”
The province says.
“That’s not right,”
the school itself responds.
“The school is aimed at 100 to 120 students, now we are above that. The school has used its capacity.”
