There is no evidence for the statement by the Vooruit chairman that there are teachers in Arabic in French-speaking education in Brussels. Conner Rousseau based that statement on one anonymous testimony. Minister Caroline Désir (PS) refers to the law that prescribes that teachers must be able to demonstrate a certain language level.
In an interview with Humo on Tuesday, Vooruit chairman Conner Rousseau made the following statement: “In Brussels, due to the teacher shortage, there are people in front of the class who teach in Arabic, because they do not speak French.”
His spokesperson Niels Pattyn says in a fact check by Knack that Rousseau had a long conversation last week with a woman who works in French-speaking education in Brussels.
According to her, there are a number of Brussels schools where the teachers do not speak enough French and therefore switch to Arabic on a regular basis during their lessons. “They can do that because most of their students also speak Arabic,” Pattyn said. It is not about lessons that are structurally given in Arabic.
The witness in question does not want to get her story in the media. Rousseau understands that it is annoying that he could only base his statement on that one anonymous source.
Teacher shortage is not combated that way
“The teacher shortage is a reality in all regions of the country. The Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles is combating this shortage in various ways, but certainly not by putting people in the classroom who do not speak the language of instruction,” reacts the French-speaking Minister of Education Caroline Désir (PS), competent for French-speaking education in Brussels. “That is an erroneous and contemptuous statement by Conner Rousseau,” she wrote on Twitter.
In French-speaking education in Brussels, it is legally forbidden to teach in Arabic. Article 13 of the law of 30 July 1963 on the language regime in education deals with this. “That article states that education providers may only recruit staff members who have demonstrated that they have a thorough knowledge of the language in which the school is taught.”
