A proficient level in the French language will become an obligation for all aspiring teachers in Wallonia and Brussels, regardless of their discipline, with a new requirement test set to come into force for teachers at the start of the next school year in October.
The project has been the topic of debate for years. In 2017, the former education minister Jean-Claude Marcourt was the first to bring attention to the issue of the level of French teachers in training or those who are freshly graduated.
"I am appalled by the lack of mastery of French, whatever the field or family background. In maths, there is not much text and, despite this, the majority do not understand the lecture notes", Marie Jaspers, a retired teacher working with pupils in need of extra support, told Le Soir.
During debates in 2019, the Minister's entourage referred to the issue as a "vicious circle in which the students who arrive in the pedagogical categories are not always the best equipped to become teachers, thus running the risk of giving courses with certain practical or theoretical gaps that initial or continuing training would struggle to fill".
Now, these gaps will be filled on the proposal of the current Minister for Higher Education, Valérie Glatigny. The Wallonia-Brussels Federation government (in charge of francophone affairs) recently adopted a decree implementing the reform of initial teacher training, which will be published shortly in the Moniteur Belge.
The decree organises written tests which will be scheduled every year from the beginning of the school year on the third Tuesday of October.
In concrete terms, a differentiation is made between future teachers who train to teach from kindergarten to the third year of secondary school, and those who teach from the fourth to the sixth year of secondary school.
The former will have the opportunity to take the French test on the third Tuesday of October, but will not be obliged to do so. If they pass, they will have demonstrated their mastery of the language and will be exempted from the French language course in their first year.
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Should they not pass the test, or choose not to take it, they will have to take the course of 5 credits and pass it at the end of the first year in order to continue their training.
Second-year students who intend to teach secondary 4 to 6 will be obliged to take the test at the beginning of their Master's degree. If they fail, they will have to add (and pass) a French language course to their programme.
The test will be identical for everyone and will be annually composed by a jury of nine experts, Le Soir reported. It will be calibrated on the C1 level of the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages).
