The government of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (FWB) on Thursday approved a bill committing it to earmark €1 billion on an exceptional basis, in the next few years, for the renovation of school buildings.
To this end, the text provides for the launch of four calls for projects targeting all networks and education levels combined.
It also sets a number of eligibility criteria for projects to be able to benefit from the allocation, including the need for them to be in line with an energy and climate transition objective, architectural quality and the well-being of pupils and teachers.
Projects that are part of an approach to sharing spaces or a desire for inter-network collaboration will also be favoured, while the state of dilapidation or advanced deterioration of the buildings will be taken into account.
Prioritisation will further be guided by two other elements: the completion of a full energy audit of the location concerned, and the fact that the buildings submitted were severely damaged by the floods of July 2021.
This exceptional investment of €1 billion over the next decade will be in addition to the structural budgets that the FWB devotes to its school buildings each year, as well as the €269 million received from the European Union as part of its recovery plan.
In this legislature alone, some €2 billion worth of work has already been planned for schools, but according to the minister in charge of school buildings, Frédéric Daerden, these massive investments will not be enough to bring the entire stock of school buildings in FWB back into shape.
Due to chronic under-investment over the past four decades, schools in Wallonia and Brussels are now in a very advanced state of disrepair and highly energy-intensive.
According to Daerden, total needs actually amount to €8 billion or €9 billion over 20 years, a more than considerable sum for a Wallonia-Brussels Federation with fragile, degraded finances.
The draft decree validated on Thursday in government should be submitted again this month for adoption in the FWB parliament.
