Home Schooling Laws in Belgium.
Since the Beliens began to educate their children in the 1990s by themselves, the home-schooling movement in Belgium has been gradually growing. The amount of home schoolers in Belgium remains comparatively small – about 202 children of primary school age and nearly 311 of high school age.
Home schooling in Belgium was, basically, unregulated as the government supposed that it should not interfere in this right of parents. Though, the situation has changed since a new law was enacted three years ago.
The official requirements for home schooling parents are easy. Parents must agree to work together with inspections and are obliged to sign an official “declaration of home-schooling” in which they agree to school their children with “respect for human rights and basic freedoms and the cultural values of the child and others”.
A lot of parents refused to sign the declaration as they consider it is unclear and inaccurate. The declaration does not identify what “respect for the fundamental freedoms of others” it means. It led to the conflict between parents who selected home schooling and government inspectors. This is because government inspectors decided that if parents receive two negative reports from the inspectors they will have to send their child to the state school.
Although, the Belgian Constitution, written in 1831, allows parents to home school their children, a small number of parents select this way of education because of illegibility of law concerning home schooling.
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