Contrasting approaches to educational equality: An intersectional perspective on educational policies in Belgium

Since the beginning of the 20th century, fostering equal educational opportunities has been one of the driving forces of the development of education policies in many European countries. While at first this mainly comprised the fight against socio-economic inequality, over time other types of inequality in education have been challenged. This paper uses an intersectional lens to cast light on the representations of complex inequalities in educational policies in the two main educational systems in Belgium. Our analysis demonstrates that both the Flemish and Francophone education policies in Belgium have adopted a fragmented and deficit-based approach to inequalities and pay limited attention to complex and intersectional inequalities. Yet, we also observe a trend towards diverging approaches to equality in the two main Belgian education systems. While in Francophone policy we find an evolution towards the recognition of the role of the school system in creating structural and accumulative inequalities, in Flemish policy we detect an opposite trend towards a reinforcement of the deficit-centered approach. By connecting these policy trends to the political context, we show how the case of Belgium can provide a new perspective on policy discourses around educational (in)equality in the European context.