For several years now, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation has been facing a demographic reality: the decline in birth rates. By 2028-2029, there will be around 32,500 fewer pupils in primary education (nursery and primary). This decline also has organisational consequences: some schools, especially the smallest, may struggle to maintain their pupil numbers. It also has a budgetary consequence: fewer enrolled pupils means less funding for the Federation.
A reminder of the rules
Every school must reach a minimum number of pupils to remain subsidised. These thresholds are set by law and vary according to the size, type of education and location of the school (for example, a school in a sparsely populated area benefits from more favourable rules). When a school or site falls below 80% of the required number of pupils, it is granted a two-year grace period to reorganise.
These standards guarantee equal treatment between institutions. As mentioned above, schools in sparsely populated rural areas benefit from more flexible conditions: an isolated school can, for example, be maintained with as few as 12 pupils in nursery or primary school, or 20 pupils for a primary school.
Closing a school: a rare occurrence that can be anticipated, or even avoided
Contrary to certain misconceptions, school closures remain exceptional. Over ten years, fewer than twenty primary schools have been closed out of more than 2,500 schools in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
A distinction must also be made between the closure of a site (a local establishment) and the closure of an entire school: sometimes a site is integrated into another nearby school within the same network, allowing pupils, teachers and the educational project to be maintained.
Concrete solutions for adapting
When a school or site falls below the standards, several legal solutions exist to avoid an outright closure:
- Merge two schools, to pool their teachers and resources, while keeping the existing sites.
- Transfer a site to another school within the same network, to retain pupils.
- Reorganise classes, for example by grouping certain levels together.
These steps are supported by the Directorate-General for Compulsory Education, which analyses each situation and helps organising authorities find the best solution. Between 2016 and 2025, more than a hundred school and/or site mergers were successfully carried out!
A responsible approach
Granting individual exemptions to keep this or that school below the standards would be unfair to others. The Federation advocates a transparent approach and recommends that schools take a proactive stance. Every school can monitor its situation via the PRIMVER platform, which shows whether or not it meets the required thresholds.
Similarly, a general moratorium would be unrealistic, as the Federation does not have the budgetary means to maintain subsidies for schools with only a handful of pupils.
The aim is not to maintain structures or management positions, but to guarantee schooling for pupils. That is the essence of our message to schools and organising authorities today: to remind them of the concrete solutions that exist and to help them anticipate the consequences of declining birth rates.
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