Education: what do Belgium's 10 parties propose in 2026?

What do Belgium's parties propose on education in 2026?

In 2026, Belgium's ten main parties fall into two families on schooling. On one side, the PS, Ecolo, Groen and the PTB·PVDA defend a common school, a long common core and more public funding, and refuse the savings imposed on education. On the other, the N-VA, MR, Open VLD and Vlaams Belang bet on standards, earlier streaming of pupils and spending control. The CD&V, Les Engagés and Vooruit, closer to the centre, look for a compromise between demandingness and an accessible school.

This dividing line does not pit a "good" manifesto against a "bad" one. It pits two answers to the same question: how to raise standards and reduce educational inequality without letting already-stretched Community budgets spiral. The first answer runs through the common school and public investment. The second runs through streaming, school autonomy and accountability. Both camps say they want pupils who read, count and write better; they simply pull different levers.

By the numbers, the year is marked by budget tension. In June 2026, the French Community parliament passed, after a fourteen-hour debate, a programme decree imposing savings on education, majority against opposition, amid strikes. That tension between stated ambitions and constrained resources shapes the whole debate this year.

Why is education not a federal debate in Belgium?

Because school does not depend on the federal government, but on the Communities. The French Community runs French-language education, the Flemish Community runs Dutch-language education and the German-speaking Community runs education in the east of the country. The federal level keeps only a few levers: compulsory schooling, diploma conditions, part of the funding and teachers' pensions.

This architecture changes everything for a comparison. The same party can govern school on one side of the language border and be in opposition on the other, or not exist at all in the other Community. The MR and Les Engagés run the French Community, with Valérie Glatigny (MR) at Education and Elisabeth Degryse (Les Engagés) as minister-president; in Flanders, a coalition led by the N-VA holds education. Comparing "the parties on school" therefore means reading two governments in parallel.

In practice, this explains why the strikes, reforms and savings of 2026 do not look alike from one Community to the other. In the French Community, the debate revolves around the Pact, the programme decree and the workload; in Flanders, around the decline in standards ("niveaudaling") and the overhaul of teacher training. The ideological families remain comparable, but the concrete files differ.

How do you read these positions without taking sides?

Each party gets a sign per lever here: a green + when it clearly backs that approach, an amber ~ for an intermediate or conditional position, a red − when it opposes it. This system replaces stars or marks out of 5, which would suggest a moral ranking.

The key point: no column designates a "good" party. A party marked with a + on the common school is often marked with a − on budget savings, and vice versa. The two levers answer different priorities — equality and a shared foundation for one, excellence and spending control for the other — backed by different voters. Reading the table means spotting the lever each party favours, not handing out a prize for virtue.

For example, Ecolo gets a + on the common core and a + on refusing savings. The N-VA has the opposite profile: it wants earlier streaming and accepts tight budgets. Neither is "in the lead": they are not playing on the same field, and often not in the same Community.

The common core: should the common school last longer?

The common core is the heart of the French-speaking debate, and the parties are clearly divided on it. Stemming from the Pact for Excellence in Teaching launched in 2015, it creates an identical path for all pupils from the first year of nursery to the third year of secondary school, in order to delay streaming into tracks and give everyone a broad, polytechnic foundation. It rolls out in secondary education from the 2026 school year.

Its defenders — the PS, Ecolo, and on the Flemish side Groen and the PTB·PVDA — see it as the main tool against inequality: the earlier you stream, they say, the more you relegate children from disadvantaged backgrounds to the least valued tracks. Its critics — the N-VA and the MR foremost — argue on the contrary that a common school lasting too long drags standards down and prevents early help for pupils with a genuine manual or technical project. The debate is therefore less about equality as a value than about the best way to achieve it.

The first secondary year example shows the nuance. In 2026, the MR·Les Engagés government reorganised this pivotal year: one extra hour of mathematics, two hours of digital education and one hour of cultural and artistic education, with stronger support for struggling pupils. For the majority, this is a modernisation of the common core; for the PS, whose group leader spoke of a "buried" Pact and "ten years of work thrown in the bin", and for Ecolo which denounces an "unravelling", it is a disguised step backwards. The same text is read as progress or as a retreat depending on which bench you sit.

How do the parties want to fight the teacher shortage?

Every party acknowledges the shortage, but they do not offer the same remedies. Primary school teaching is in shortage in every zone of the French Community, and secondary lacks teachers of Dutch, English, mathematics, science, geography and music. The difficulty is worsened in 2026 by the initial-training reform, which extended it from three to four years: few new graduates come out that year, until the reform produces its first cohort.

On the French-speaking side, minister Valérie Glatigny (MR) relies on several tracks: returning around 270 teachers currently seconded to various bodies to the classroom, two extra teaching periods a week for upper-secondary teachers (aligned with their lower-secondary colleagues), easier entry for "second-career" teachers with recognition of part of their seniority, more than 320 posts added in primary, and a "CLÉ" test (calculate, read, write) to spot difficulties early. On the Flemish side, the N-VA wants to secure jobs for beginners, remove barriers for career changers and strengthen training.

The disagreement is about the diagnosis as much as the solutions. For the left, Groen foremost, the shortage is the primary cause of the school's difficulties, and demanding two extra hours or cutting budgets only speeds up departures and discourages vocations. For the majority, spreading the effort better and bringing teachers back to classrooms is a realistic way to hold on without spending more. Unions, for their part, speak of "anti-teacher measures"; the government, of a shared and temporary effort.

Should there be savings in education?

This is the question that put teachers on the streets in 2026. In June, the French Community parliament passed, after a fourteen-hour debate, a programme decree imposing a savings plan on education, majority (MR·Les Engagés) against opposition (PS, Ecolo, PTB). Federal measures on pensions and end-of-career arrangements added fuel to the fire.

For supporters of consolidation, the budget constraint is not ideological but arithmetic: the French Community cannot keep spending on credit, and a better-run system can preserve quality while trimming. They stress that priorities are kept — basic learning, support for struggling pupils — despite the cuts. For their opponents, cutting into an already short-staffed school means preparing its decline: fewer replacements, fuller classes, a less attractive profession, and therefore even more vacant posts.

The religion and ethics classes example shows how sensitive the topic is. In Flanders too, teachers of these subjects demonstrated in 2026 against savings, asking how to teach properly in classes of 36 pupils. The same word, "savings", means responsible management for some and a direct threat to learning conditions for others. No single figure settles the two readings.

What do the parties defending the common school and more funding propose?

Left-wing parties want a State that funds school heavily and refuses to sort pupils too early. The PS and Ecolo, now in opposition in the French Community, defend the long common core, more supervision, gradual free schooling and rejection of the 2026 savings. On the Flemish side, Groen stresses fighting the shortage as the precondition for everything else, and the PTB·PVDA calls for a strengthened public school and smaller classes.

For this camp, the right lever is not selection but investment: a well-funded common school reduces, in its view, the gap between advantaged pupils and the rest, a gap that international surveys place among the widest in French-speaking Belgium. Cutting budgets or streaming early would carve social inequality into school paths.

The opposing criticism is twofold. On one hand, spending more does not mechanically improve results if the money does not go to the right measures. On the other, prolonging the common school can, its opponents say, delay concrete help for pupils who would thrive earlier in a technical or vocational track. The left replies that these tracks mainly suffer from a lack of recognition and resources, not from a common core that lasts too long.

What do the parties betting on standards, streaming and spending control propose?

Centre-right and right-wing parties want first to raise standards and hold the system accountable, then contain spending. In Flanders, the N-VA has made the decline in standards its flagship issue: it replaced the primary final objectives with minimum goals, and is preparing a teacher-training reform with, from 2027-2028, a binding Dutch-language test and basic knowledge tests in mathematics and French on entry. On the French-speaking side, the MR owns the French Community reforms and savings, which it presents not as abandoning school but as a jolt of demandingness and management.

For this camp, the right lever is measured quality and useful orientation: better, it argues, to assess clearly, help early those who fall behind and let everyone find their path, including a manual one, than to keep everyone in the same mould until 15. The Open VLD shares this priority on school autonomy and parents' freedom of choice. The Vlaams Belang, for its part, insists on standards and transmission, while being critical of savings that directly hit teachers.

The opposing criticism is that early selection and entry tests risk pushing aside useful profiles and reinforcing inequality, and that "doing more with less" is sometimes wishful thinking when classes fill up and posts stay vacant. The same word, "demandingness", thus means for some a fairer school because it is clearer, and for others a school that sorts.

Education: what do the votes and actions say?

Beyond the manifestos, the 2026 actions confirm the dividing line. In the French Community, the MR·Les Engagés majority passed the savings programme decree and the reorganisation of the first secondary year; the PS, Ecolo and the PTB voted against and backed the mobilisations. In Flanders, the coalition led by the N-VA carries the training reform and the focus on standards, while Groen and the PVDA/PTB contest the savings and point to the shortage.

Testing promises against actions is the best antidote to electoral marketing. A party can praise "excellence" or "equality" in both camps; it is the votes, the Community policy declarations and the budgets that reveal the lever actually pulled. The case of Les Engagés is telling: heirs of a party that co-built the Pact, they now govern a French Community that reworks its common core and imposes savings, in the name of coalition cohesion and budget constraint.

To dig further, the comparator lets you put two parties side by side on education, the ranking sums up positions theme by theme, and the quiz starts from your priorities rather than a manifesto. The methodology details how these positions are gathered and remains open to challenge.

What this comparison does not settle

This table does not say which approach "works" best: the real effect of a long common core, early streaming or a savings plan depends on the quality of implementation, teacher training, the classroom climate and social factors that go beyond school. Nor does it factor in your situation — parent of a struggling or a very able child, teacher, general or vocational pupil, French- or Dutch-speaking — which often weighs more than a Community average.

So the right reflex is not to remember a winning camp, but to link each position to the lever it pulls, then to test this overview against what you expect from an education policy.