ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to consider some of the educational choices available to individuals in Belgium, the way these choices have changed and developed, and some of the limitations and problems which have been encountered. School reform in the post-war years has therefore been directed mainly towards creating structures or situations which delay choice, often by making it possible to modify choices, or which improve the quality of choice by means of guidance or participation. The idea of individual choice in Belgian education is consequently by no means recent. One reform which will actually reduce parental choice is the lowering of the starting age to five proposed in February 1980 and postponed several times. Criticisms of the renove reveal again the "double bind", the conflict referred to earlier, in which the Belgian education system, along with all other educational systems in democracies, finds itself with regard to choice.
