Many trainee teachers in Belgium—who may stand before classrooms in the near future—are failing primary-level tests for mathematics, French, and Dutch.
That is according to the results of teacher training starting tests, seen by Flemish daily De Standaard. The paper revealed that one in three trainees score less than 50% in maths tests designed for 12-year-olds. An even higher 43% score less than half marks in French tests, and 27% are ‘advised’ to take extra lessons. (But who will teach them?)
Perhaps even more concerning is that just 2.91% of the almost 7,000 participants scored between 85 and 100%.
Researcher Wim Van den Broeck said there has been a “silence” around this issue for some time, adding that “the drop in level is a massive and widespread problem, also at colleges and universities.” It is also by no means limited to Belgium.
Flemish education minister Zuhal Demir received flak online for reportedly “hiding” this report and later refusing to comment on its implications.
Biotechnology lecturer Suzy Eeckelaerts noted, however, that anyone surprised by the findings “has not been paying attention in recent years.”
The director of one teacher training college told De Standaard that the blame lay mostly with the poor state of Belgian secondary education.
This is not a disgrace to teacher training. It just shows how poor the quality of secondary education is today. And how much of a backlog the training courses have to make up for.
Demir did eventually respond to the findings, blandly noting that “we will also have to intervene and reform there in a targeted manner.”
