Belgium · Uccle
This is not a typical private school and it is not an IB school. The leaving diploma is the European Baccalaureate. Category I children of EU-institution staff are admitted and fee-exempt. Everyone else should read the Brussels enrolment policy before touring the forest.
Tento portrét je zatím v angličtině. České znění dopisujeme školu po škole.
Kurikulum, jak ho škola uvádí:European Schools curriculum · European Baccalaureate
Jazyky výuky:Section language as first language (L1), plus L2 and further languages as the European Schools prescribe
European School Brussels I is a European School, not an international-school marketplace and not an IB school. The leaving diploma is the European Baccalaureate. There is no IB Diploma, no PYP, no MYP on this campus. If a friend said “the European School is basically IB,” they were wrong. Stop there and reread the last three sentences.
EEB1 has two sites. Uccle: Avenue du Vert Chasseur 46, B-1180. Berkendael: rue Berkendael 70–74, B-1190 Forest. Berkendael is nursery and primary only. Secondary sits at Uccle. The Director named on the EURSC location page is David Tran. The school opened in September 1958 on rue du Trône, the Director’s letter says, with 26 pupils and 6 teachers.
Size depends on which official line you read. The Director’s letter says more than 4,000 pupils of 60 nationalities and more than 500 staff, across 12 language sections (including one Greek-language satellite class). Official 2026 recruitment notices print 4,250 pupils, 60 nationalities, 500+ staff, twelve main language sections. A 2025–26 secondary welcome brochure still says “around 4,000” with “over 2,000” in secondary and names eight secondary sections. Treat those as the school’s own snapshots of a two-site community, not a Uccle-only census we counted.
It is a day school. There is no boarding house.
The useful questions are not “is it prestigious.” The useful questions are: Is this child Category I? Which language section is their dominant language — and who decides that (the Director, not the parent)? Will the Central Enrolment Authority put them at Uccle, Berkendael, or another Brussels European School entirely? And if you are Category III, have you read the 2026–27 sentence that says new Category III children are, in practice, siblings only?
The Brussels European Schools exist first for children of staff of the European institutions. The 2026–27 Brussels policy repeats the Board of Governors’ line from 2005: even Category I families are not guaranteed the school of their choice.
Category I — children who have to be admitted, and who are exempt from school fees. The EURSC admissions page lists the usual set: EU officials and other servants, certain contract staff, seconded national experts, EIB and ECB staff, recognised EU organisations, teaching and admin staff of the European Schools, and others printed there. Accredited parliamentary assistants are Category I. Local assistants of MEPs are Category III.
Category II — children covered by a specific agreement, with specific fee rights. In Brussels, children of Eurocontrol staff from P1 are a named “Category II*” group. They are entitled to a Brussels school, not necessarily their first choice.
Category III — everyone else, only if places exist. For 2026–27, Article 7.4 of the Brussels policy is cumulative and tight:
If you are a Category III family without a sibling already inside, the 2026–27 policy is not a maybe. It is a no.
NATO civilian staff and UN international civil servants sit in a special annex: they may be enrolled at a Brussels school, not necessarily first choice, after Category I and II places are given.
Uccle is a large wooded site in the south of Brussels. Berkendael is a separate nursery-and-primary site in Forest. They are one school legally, two gates in practice. The 2026–27 policy is still moving groups between them: EN and IT nursery/primary migrating Uccle → Berkendael; DE nursery/primary migrating Berkendael → Uccle; FR and ES staying on both. A sibling pair can be split, one site each, when the CEA awards two nursery or primary places at EEB1.
Ask to see the section classroom, not only the forest. A Danish child and a French child are not in the same room for L1.
The Parents Association site is apeee-bxl1-services.be. Lunch, bus and extras often live there, not on the EURSC fee table.
European Schools run nursery (N1+N2 as one year group for places), primary P1–P5, secondary S1–S7. Nursery starts in September of the calendar year the child turns 4. Primary 1 starts in the year they turn 6. In principle no child is admitted if they are more than two years older than that ( three years for S4–S6).
Language 1 is the section language — the child’s dominant language. The Director decides what that is, from the file, under Article 47(e) of the General Rules. Parents do not pick a section for convenience.
Language 2 is a second language from a prescribed set (commonly English, French or German, depending on the section). Further languages follow the European Schools language policy. SWALS children — no section for their mother tongue in that year — are attached to DE, EN or FR and take L1 in their own language. For 2026–27 the policy names Croatian SWALS, Estonian from S6, Latvian from S5, Slovak from S5, Slovenian from P3.
This is not an English-medium international school that happens to offer French. A child in the Hungarian section lives in Hungarian for L1. That is the point of the system.
Uccle (EEB1–UCC), 2026–27 policy: DA, DE, EN, ES, FR, HU, IT (from P3), LV (S1–S4), PL, SK (S1–S4), SL (nursery, P1, P2).
Berkendael (EEB1–BRK), 2026–27 policy: DE (from P2), EL satellite classes, EN, ES, FR, IT, LV, SK. Nursery and primary only.
Single-section rules that matter at EEB1:
Multiple-section rules that surprise families:
The 2026/27 Uccle book-list page names DA, DE, EN, ES, FR, HU, IT, PL, SL. The Berkendael book-list page names EN, ES, FR, DE, EL, IT, LV, SK. Use those lists as a second check on which sections actually have classrooms this year.
EEB5 is programmed for 2030–31 at Neder-over-Heembeek. EL satellite pupils at Berkendael are due to move there when it opens. Do not plan a twelve-year Uccle English-primary story that the policy has already rewritten.
Enrolment for the Brussels schools is centralised: enrolment.eursc.eu. You do not start with a charming email to a single admissions officer asking for a tour and a place.
Read the 2026–27 Brussels policy (2025-12-D-20-en-2) first. Then the EEB1 enrolments page. Then the table of equivalences in Annex 2 of the General Rules on eursc.eu, so you do not file for the wrong year.
Children already enrolled are re-enrolled automatically. New files go to the CEA. You name preferences; the CEA awards a place at a school/site that has the section and the year, using thresholds, a random ranking, and the priority rules. Special priority criteria exist in Article 8 — they are not a loophole we will paraphrase into a tactic.
Uccle enrolment office: ucc-enrolments@eursc.eu, +32 2 373 86 05. Berkendael: brk-enrolments@eursc.eu, +32 2 373 86 92 / 2 340 14 81.
A tour of the forest does not move a Category III file.
The Office marks these for guidance. The European Schools “cannot be held liable” for the table. Confirm with the school.
Category I: exempt.
Category II, Brussels, new contract, 2026/2027: €13,856.46 per pupil. Current-contract amounts were marked tba on the page we fetched.
Category III, 2026/2027
| Cycle | Enrolled as Cat. III before 2013/14 | Newly enrolled as Cat. III from 2013/14 |
|---|---|---|
| Nursery | €3,637.56 | €4,457.80 |
| Primary | €5,001.71 | €6,129.55 |
| Secondary | €6,820.51 | €8,358.46 |
These are not ISB numbers. They are also not “free unless you are Category I.” Category III siblings who get in still pay. Category II pays the agreement rate.
Lunch, bus, books and APEEE services are extra. The 2026/27 book-list pages tell you what to buy; they do not price a year of canteen. Ask the parents’ association for the current service tariffs. We are not inventing a bus figure.
Across Brussels, the policy notes 14,648 pupils on roll on 15 October 2025 (33 fewer than a year earlier), and that theoretical capacity has been exceeded on every site except EEB2–Evere. Classes can run at or near 30, with science groups splitting above 25. That overcrowding sentence is why Category III is shut and why even Category I families are told they may not get Uccle.
One diploma: the European Baccalaureate, at the end of S7. It is the European Schools’ own leaving certificate, recognised for university entrance under the rules each country sets for that diploma. It is not the IB, not the Belgian CESS on its own, not a national baccalaureate of the section country.
If you might later need a document that looks like a French bac, a German Abitur, or an IB Diploma, ask the university you care about what they do with a European Baccalaureate, with these L1/L2/L3 combinations. Do not assume portability from a dinner-party sentence.
Nearly all pupils, older official brochures have said, go on to university. That is the system talking about itself. We are not printing a 2026 pass rate we did not extract from a results PDF.
Pupils with special educational needs are handled under the Board of Governors’ Educational Support policy, not under an international-school ILS price list. Ask the support coordinator what intensive support looks like in this language section, because the classroom language is L1.
A child whose dominant language is not one of the twelve sections is a SWALS conversation, not a “put them in English, it is easier” conversation. The Director decides.
Ask Category I, II or III with the EURSC list in your hand, not with your job title in your head. Ask which site this child’s year and section are actually referred to in 2026–27 — especially if you assumed Uccle English primary. Ask who will decide L1, and what documents they want. Ask what happens at P5 if the child is at Berkendael (they move to a secondary site; it may not be Uccle). Ask APEEE for canteen and bus prices. Ask what EEB5 in 2030–31 does to this particular section. Ask to see an L1 lesson and an L2 lesson, not only the trees.
If you might leave the institutions, ask whether a Category I child who becomes Category III mid-stream still has a seat — that is a rules question for the CEA, not a hope.
We are not saying EEB1 is the best European School in Brussels. We are not guessing a CEA lottery number. We are not calling this an IB school. We are not attaching a Uccle-only headcount to a two-site figure of 4,000 or 4,250. Confirm later amendments to 2025-12-D-20.
Read the 2026–27 Brussels policy and the EEB1 enrolments page before you resign a flat in Luxembourg or Strasbourg. This is a map. The CEA still has to give you a door.
Oficiální stránky a dokumenty, které jsme četli. Pokud číslo rozhoduje o rozpočtu nebo přihlášce, otevřete odkaz a ověřte, že platí.
Přátelská orientace, ne přihláška. Termíny, školné i program se hýbou. Vše ověřte u školy.
Brussels is not one international campus. It is a European School system with categories, and two fee-paying woods that share an eastern forest and almost no Monday. Name who pays before you time the ring.
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