European Semester 2015/2016 country fiche on disability Belgium

1.3.1Early school leavers

The EU-SILC sample for the target age group (aged 18-24) includes the following number of people reporting activity ‘limitation’ (as a proxy for impairment/disability).

In a Report Vroegtijdig schoolverlaten in het Vlaamse Secundair Onderwijs. Cijferrapport 2009-2010 tot en met 2012-2013¹³ (in Dutch) the Flemish Government offers the following overview of the proportion of students in special secondary schools to the total group of early school leavers on secondary school level in the period 2009-13.

At the moment a great concern within Belgian society is for young adults, aged 20-24 and 25-29 who are ‘Not in Employment, Education and Training. This indicator presents the share of young people who are not in employment, education or training (NEET), as a percentage of the total number of young people in the corresponding age group. Young people in education include those attending part-time or full-time education, but exclude those in non-formal education and in educational activities of very short duration. Employment is defined according to the OECD/ILO Guidelines and covers all those who have been in paid work for at least one hour in the reference week of the survey or were temporarily absent from such work. Therefore NEET youth can be either unemployed or inactive and not involved in education or training. Young people who are neither in employment nor in education or training are at risk of becoming socially excluded – individuals with income below the poverty-line and lacking the skills to improve their economic situation. However, we do not have disaggregated indications for the share of persons with disabilities in these NEET-statistics yet.

1.3.2Tertiary education

The EU-SILC sample for the target age group (aged 30-34) includes the following number of people reporting activity ‘limitation’ (a proxy for impairment/disability) although the number of missing observations is larger than the number of observations for activity limitation.

Table 14: EU-SILC sample size for the target age group 30-34 versus 30-39

	Age 30-34		Age 30-39
	No activity ‘limitation’	Activity ‘limitation’	No activity ‘limitation’	Activity ‘limitation’
EU sample	23,851	2,866	50,496	6,732
National sample	796	90	1,580	224

Source: EUSILC UDB 2013 – version 2 of August 2015
Table 15: Completion of tertiary or equivalent education (indicative based on above sample)



Source: EUSILC UDB 2013 – version 2 of August 2015
The survey sample is not sufficient to provide robust trend data disaggregated by gender in the narrow EU2020 target age group. In only 11 out of 28 Member States are there more than 50 observations in the sample for both women and for men in aged 30-34 who also declare impairment/limitation.
The following table is indicative at the EU level but gender trends at the national level should be treated with caution. In all Member States except Austria the achievement of tertiary education was higher for women than for men in both groups.

Table 16: Trends in tertiary education by disability (aged 30-34)



Source: EUSILC UDB 2013 – version 2 of August 2015 (and preceding UDBs)

Fluctuations in the trend for people with impairments at national level should be treated with some caution. An illustrative trend line is added for disabled people in Belgium but should not be regarded as a robust indicator.
Alternative data on disability and tertiary education provided by the national expert:
In a recent report and action plan about international mobility of students in Higher Education institutions¹⁴ for the Flemish speaking part of the country students with disabilities become a specific target group as they are seen as under-represented. Within this report 1.5% of the student population in Higher Education Institutions are seen as ‘having a special status due to an impairment’.
In a report on debates within the Flemish Parliament (questions and answers to Ministers)¹⁵ we can follow a debate about three significant thresholds for students with disabilities within the Higher Education system in the Flemish part of the country:

• 
  Going back to a traditional diagnosis of ‘handicap’ (decided by the Flemish administration VAPH) only 0.07% of the students studying in Higher Education have such a diagnosis (in Flemish society 2.4% of the citizens have a VAPH certified diagnosis). So a lot of persons with this diagnosis seem to miss the opportunity to enter Higher Education systems.
  
• 
  36.3% of the students with these diagnosis take less than 40 credits/academic year – in comparison to 24.63% of the total student population. So if they enter the Higher Education system they have a longer study trajectory
  
• 
  Students with these diagnosis are early leavers within the higher education system (3.2% are leaving before the end of the academic year in 2014 in comparison of 1.5 to 1.75 of the global student population)
  

In parallel with the situation on employment ‘persons with mental health problems’ become a specific target group for Higher Education Institutions. A very recent research initiative at the KULeuven offers following statistics about first year students at KU Leuven:¹⁶

• 
  1 in 5 students tends to be depressed
  
• 
  1in 6 students have anxiety disorders
  
• 
  1 in 10 students have got suicidal thoughts
  
• 
  1 in 100 students attempted to commit suicide
  

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