Hi there,
We are moving to Brussels in a couple of months. My husband will be working in Etterbeek near Parc du Cinquantenaire. We would love to put our three children in a French-speaking public primary school in the next school year. We'd love to live and have the children go to school near him. I have a list of schools in Etterbeek. I also have lists for Ixelles, Woluwe Saint Pierre, and Woluwe Saint Lambert if we find there is nothing available for us in Etterbeek.
I realize we may have trouble getting into a school, but we had very little notice with the move. However, I would really love any recommendations for good schools in those areas, preferably Etterbeek. Or, any schools we should avoid.
The children have been homeschooled thus far, so we are very open-minded to Steiner or Frienet schools as well. I don't know if any of the schools use those methods. I just found one in Uccle on a search, so I thought I should mention.
Thanks in advance.
Seeking good public primary school in Brussels
It is practically irrelevant recommending particular schools, concentrate in getting any school places and be prepared to do masses of phoning and emailing.
Make sure you have full lists of schools. I've posted the map of them on this website dozens of times, take a look for it.
You'd find it hard to find a school which doesn't used Freinet ideas here, so it is also pointless chasing "active pedagogy" that so many expats in particular seem to get so fixated with, missing out often great schools simply because they do not deem it necessary to market themselves as being a fan of a particular methodology.
Thanks so much for your reply tervurener.
I'm so sorry, but after searching through a page of your posts I was unable to find a map of the schools. But, I'm pretty sure we have been able to compile a decent list of schools by going to the commune websites for Woluwe Saint Pierre, Woluwe Saint Lambert, Etterbeek, and Ixelles. We have already started the process of emailing the schools to see if they have spots available for our children.
I'm also sorry if I was unclear. I don't really care about the pedagogy of the school at all. I was only saying that we were open to any format of schooling, while others may be solely interested in a traditional format.
I was mostly curious, if after finding that we have found a spot, if there were particularly poor schools in the area that we would not want to put our children in. There are some very poor schools in the US, but we have a way to search their rating, and I'm not familiar with a rating system in Belgium. If all of the schools in the Etterbeek area are fantastic, then we're all set, and we'll just cross our fingers that we get into one.
Hi!
I am in the exact same position as you were a couple of years ago. Could you please let me know if you ended up finding a nice school in any of those areas and whichever tip you have?
Thanks a lot!! I am totally lost here!
Best,
Berta
Hello Berta, we are moving in this summer. I would like to kindly ask you if you have found any good school for your kid? Thank you Vladimir
Hello, I would like to kindly ask you if you have found any good school in the Etterbeek area? Thank you, Vladimir
Hello honlades,
I would advise you to create a new topic on the Brussels forum to ask your question as you may not get any reply from BertaA soon.
Cheers,
Cheryl
Expat.com team.
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