Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen, together with 113 school boards and the parent umbrella organization VCOV, submitted a petition to the Constitutional Court with the request to suspend and annul the final attainment levels of the second and third stage of secondary education. The education umbrella reports this on Wednesday.
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In February, Catholic Education Flanders decided to go to the Constitutional Court to have the attainment targets for the second and third stages of secondary education destroyed. These will come into effect on September 1.
However, the umbrella organization could only formally submit a petition once the new attainment targets had been included in the Belgian Official Gazette. This has still not happened, as the text has not yet been translated into French. The decree is not expected to be published until June. But the dome set a precedent from 2013 that no longer has to wait for publication.
Director-General of Catholic Education Flanders, Lieven Boeve, says she finds it a shame “to have to use state-of-the-art legal technology to enforce our constitutional rights”. “The attainment targets were already largely set for the summer of 2020 and given the urgent nature, the translation could already start at that time,” he explains.
The CEO also emphasizes that it is important that the schools have clarity about the learning outcomes as soon as possible.
Fair question?
The learning outcomes are the minimum of what students should know and be able to do. The new, tightened final attainment levels for the second and third stages of secondary education have been worked on for more than two years, in consultation with the umbrella organizations and education experts, among others. According to Katholiek Onderwijs Vlaanderen, the attainment targets are “so overloaded that schools and teachers are restricted in their freedom”.
In the first instance, the Constitutional Court will determine whether the question to suspend the learning outcomes is justified. If so, it becomes decree on hold and the Court is given three months to give a ruling. It can decide to quash the decree in whole or in part.
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