The Flemish education system in Brussels needs to create no less than 40 new primary schools and just as many secondary schools by 2024, Minister Sven Gatz told the Dutch-speaking community commission of the Brussels parliament on Friday.
Gatz warned Dutch-speaking children may not have anywhere to go for education in their language in the Belgian capital, setting out a budget of €550 million to prevent this from happening.
Currently, a record number of children (650 of the 2,275 who registered) have no place in Dutch-speaking secondary education in Brussels due to this shortage, VRT reports.
Over the past 14 years, €480 million has already been invested in the creation of space for Flemish schools.
The minister believes that to achieve the objective of creating new Dutch-speaking schools, the intervention of the Flemish Community, the municipalities and the education authorities will be needed.
In Brussels, specifically in French-speaking schools, language education is not up to par, with less than 10% of pupils at those schools graduating with a decent knowledge of Dutch.
Some say that English could bridge the gap of a country linguistically divided between French, Dutch, and to a smaller extent, German - Belgium's three official languages.
But others argue that English can't take on a bigger role in Belgium until the country's French speakers first improve their Dutch.
The Brussels Times
