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Waiting list for Brussels after-school homework help

11:21 08/09/2014

Homework classes organised for children in Brussels schools by 220 non-profit associations are overfull, the groups concerned have reported. “The desire to succeed is enormous,” one spokesperson told Brusselnieuws.be.

The groups organise after-school classes in French and Dutch to allow children a quiet, supervised place to do their homework. Some children lack a quiet space in their own homes or the help they need when parents speak another language.

“We’ve been on the waiting list for two years,” one mother explained. “I didn’t study myself, and children nowadays learn things we knew nothing about.”

Yann Conrath, co-ordinator of D’broej, the only group operating in Molenbeek for children from Dutch-speaking schools, recognises that many non-Dutch speaking parents send their children to Dutch-speaking schools to offer them the advantage of being bilingual.

“But it’s more complicated than that if the language is never used at home,” Conrath explained. “The children we deal with in the Dutch-speaking ASO [general humanities] programme study hard in the homework class, yet their scores are disastrous. The hours they spend studying are all for nothing. That’s discouraging."

Conrath hopes for a change at policy level with new ministers installed in Brussels and Flanders since the last election.

Written by Alan Hope