Several French-speaking crèches in Flanders have had to close or are currently threatened with closure. Staff say it is because they do not have a high enough standard of Dutch to facilitate a thorough inspection, Le Soir reports.
According to the paper, in the space of just a few months several French-speaking crèches in the municipality of Rhode-Saint-Genèse, which account for a total of 132 children, have had to close or have been threatened with closure. The Flemish town is located just outside Brussels and near the border with Wallonia.
The municipality is on the outskirts of Brussels and is situated in the Flemish Region, meaning the childcare facilities are overseen by the Flanders healthcare inspection agency Zorginspectie.
Le Soir has highlighted that negative opinions issued by the inspection authority have one thing in common: a lack of Dutch knowledge among staff, which sometimes makes it impossible to complete a full inspection.
Nursery managers in childcare facilities in Flanders are required to have a ‘B2’ level of Dutch, enabling them to communicate spontaneously and fluently with a native speaker, and express themselves clearly and in detail on a wide range of subjects.
However childminders working through French have said they struggle to reach this level of Dutch, despite taking evening classes after the nursery closes.
Fabienne Wauthy, a former childminder, told Le Soir that she is not bilingual but understands Dutch and knows how to answer.
"When an inspector asked how much time the children spent outdoors per day, I replied ‘from time to time’. She then insisted , asking how many minutes per child per day. I said I didn't know. She wrote in her report that I hadn't understood the question," she said.
Arielle Steyls, whose nursery was closed by the authority, said she was particularly shocked by the way the checks are carried out. She said that inspectors are only trained in administrative matters and do not have knowledge or interest in childcare tasks.
"While the inspector was insisting on obtaining my papers, even though I had a child on my lap, he told me 'you could hit him, it's not my problem'," she said.
Another crèche owner in the Rhone area speaking on condition of anonymity said that they performed poorly on two inspections "that lasted five minutes and weren't even really carried out, because of the language".
"Our skills as nursery nurses weren't called into question, it was our Dutch skills that were," she said.
Among the French-speaking crèches in the municipality, two were forced to close, two decided to stop because of the pressure they were under, and the two remaining crèches (one of which is divided into two sites), the largest in terms of number of places (85 children in total at the three sites), are under threat of closure.
Despite the large number of closures raising questions, the Flemish administration forcefully rejects the language argument.
