Do educational reforms that politics intend to implement correspond to the ideas of schooling shared in Belgian society? If so, does the implementation of these reforms have more chance to succeed? Our paper tries to answer these questions by analysing the reactions in the press to two educational reforms in French-speaking Belgium: “renovated education” in 1971 and “contract for the school” in 2005.

This work is undertaken in a context of change, as well regarding the content of the corpus under study as the socio-political issues it addresses. A new educational reform is actually under construction since 2015 in French-speaking Belgium: “the pact for an excellent education”. One of the conditions of success of such an endeavour is understanding what Lessard & Carpentier (2015) have called “the cognitive framework of the education system”. Our work is a contribution to the understanding of this cognitive framework. It is in line with the works of notably Lessard & Carpentier (2015) and Dupriez (2015) but is applied to the French-speaking Belgian education system and uses the press as a valuable resource recording the reactions to educational reforms.

At the start of our analysis of educational reforms is the observation of depreciation of technical and vocational curricula and the impulse of change about this situation. In 2005, the “contract for the school” was given as one of its objectives to reassert the value of these curricula. More than 10 years later, the “pact for an excellent education” does the same observations and sets the same objective. Studying the history of education in Belgium, one can notice that this objective was already set in 1971, when the major reform called “renovated education” was devised and implemented. What are the factors explaining this “failed implementation” (Lessard & Carpentier) of yet generous ideas and reforms? Our hypothesis, in line with neo-institutionalism, is that there is a dissonance between the ideas underpinning the reforms and the cultural cognitive framework (Lessard & Carpentier, 2015). We think that the press is a useful and pertinent tool to grasp it.

It has been shown that Belgian technical and vocational education have a poor image among the pupils (Ferrara & Friant, 2014). This depreciation has its source in multiple factors such as access through relegation, culture of grade repetition, and a humanist culture favouring intellectual education against technical or vocational training. There is, however, an enduring political will to reassert the value of these curricula. In particular, two educational reforms have notably pursued this objective: “renovated education” in 1971 and the “contract for the school” in 2005 (the Pact for an excellent education is now a more ambitious and comprehensive reform, but as it is being designed at the time of writing, we haven’t got the necessary perspective to analyse the reactions to it). 

It is difficult to give a short definition of what was “renovated education”, born in 1971 and dead approximately ten years later. In his preface to a famous book by Anne Van Haecht (1985) analysing renovated education, Henri Janne explains that it forms the final outcome of a long historical process that he calls “progressist”, characterised by its search of social equality through education. Doing this, it leaned upon “new pedagogy” that criticised, in the name of equality, the encyclopaedism, memorising and authoritarian discipline promoted by  “traditional pedagogy” and favoured creativity, critical mind and personal autonomy. More than thirty years later, with the “contract for the school”, what has become of this idea of education?

Benzécri, J.-P. (1973). L’analyse des données (Vol. 2). Paris: Dunod. Cattonar B. et Mangez E. (2014). Codages et recodages de la réalité scolaire. Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, 66, 61-70. http://doi.org/10.4000/ries.3999 Dupriez, V. (2015). Peut-on réformer l’école ? Approches organisationnelle et institutionnelle du changement pédagogique. Louvain-la-Neuve: De Boeck. Ferrara M. et Friant N. (2014). Les représentations sociales des élèves du premier et du dernier degré de l’enseignement secondaire en Belgique francophone par rapport aux différentes filières. L’orientation scolaire et professionnelle, 43 (4). http://doi.org/10.4000/osp.4496. Lessard C. et Carpentier A. (2015). Politiques éducatives : La mise en œuvre. Paris : Presses universitaires de France. Marty E. (2010). Journalismes, discours et publics : une approche comparative de trois types de presse, de la production à la réception de l’information. Université Toulouse le Mirail-Toulouse II, consulté à l’adresse https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00542750/. Paillé P. et Mucchielli A. (2012). L’analyse qualitative en sciences humaines et sociales. Paris : Armand Colin. Reinert, M. (1983). Une méthode de classification descendante hiérarchique: application à l’analyse lexicale par contexte. Les cahiers de l’analyse des données, 8 (2), 187-198 Van Haecht A. (1985). L’enseignement rénové : de l’origine à l’éclipse. Bruxelles : Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles.