Vier Jaar Voorrangsbeleid Brussel

Since the 1990's the schools in Brussels schools have had a considerable amount, sometimes 100%, of non-native speakers of Dutch who are not confronted with Dutch outside the school walls and for whom Dutch often is their third of fourth language. Teachers experience this educational setting as extremely difficult and unique. In order to structurally enhance the quality of education, the Priority Policy Brussels (PPB) was started in 2000. Its goal is to make up for pupils' learning and developmental arrears by increasing teachers' professionalism through practice- and needs-based, long-term and made-to-measure support of local school teams by expert school counsellors. The Centre for Language and Education was (in partial collaboration with the Centre for Intercultural Education from the University of Gent) appointed to conduct a longitudinal evaluation study of the PPB. Throughout various stages of quantitative and qualitative research the central research question considered the impact of the PPB on teachers' perceptions and on teachers' actions and pupils' language testing results. This article reports on this study and its (mainly positive) results.