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Belgian royals post good luck message for new school year – a look at education paths for the young royals

September is the month that puts an end to the summer holidays and marks the beginning of a new school year in most of Europe.

Belgium is not different, and on the 1st of September, the Belgian Royal Family took it to social media and posted a picture of King Philippe and Queen Mathilde’s four children together with a message of good luck to all students going back to school. 

The Belgian royal couple is seeing their nest slowly emptier and emptier, as this year, their two oldest children will attend schools outside of Belgium. 

Prince Gabriel will spend the 2021-2022 school year at The National Mathematics and Science College in Warwickshire, United Kingdom, in a one-year programme of STEM subjects, for which he has chosen Mathematics, Further Mathematics and Physics as his A-level subjects. His Royal Highness completed his International Baccalaureate at the International School of Brussels in June 2021, a two-year program that he undertook in an English-speaking school in the Belgian capital.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, it was announced only a few days ago that the Duchess of Brabant had been admitted to Oxford University, where she will attend a History and Politics course offered by Lincoln College. The move comes as a slight surprise, as many people were betting on the Princess attending Yale after she took part in the Yale Young Global Scholars Program offered by the famous US institution. This won’t be Elisabeth’s first time studying in the UK, as she completed the two-year programme to obtain her International Baccalaureate at UWC Atlantic College, in Wales – the same programme currently being attended by the Princess of Asturias and Princess Alexia of the Netherlands. 

With their two older children out of the house, the public’s interest will no doubt be focussing on the two younger children, Prince Emmanuel and Princess Eléonore. 

Prince Emmanuel left St John Berchman College in September 2012 to attend Eureka Special School, which caters to students of normal intelligence and gifted students with dyslexia, which the Prince has been diagnosed with. It was reported that he left Eureka school to attend the International School of Brussels in the two years between 2020 and 2022 – it is the same school that his older brother Gabriel attended. 

Princess Eléonore, on the other hand, is still slightly too young to speculate on what her future education will entail. She had attended St John Berchman College until September 2020, when she transferred to Heilig Hart Secondary School.

Princess Elisabeth’s Oxford experience will be a continuation of King Philippe’s Trinity College, Oxford education segment; she will be Belgium’s second generation of monarchs with a university degree. King Philippe graduated from Stanford University with a Master’s Degree in Political Sciences, and Queen Mathilde earned has two degrees, one in speech therapy from Institute Libre Marie Haps and one in psychology from the Catholic University of Louvain.