Strategy

Since 2001, the Directorate of Training (DSE) has been in charge of developing, coordinating, assessing and harmonising training courses at national level in order to enable the staff members of the integrated police to perform their duties in an efficient way.

One of DSE’s tasks is to meet – in consultation with the various authorities – the staff needs in terms of skills. It approves training courses based on the accreditation files made up by police schools. Is also investigates the quality and the adequacy of training courses. Furthermore DSE cooperates closely with its various partners in order to develop annual training plans for the integrated police in line with the national and local security plans. It is also in charge of achieving the priorities set out in the national security plan (PNS/NVP).

The directorate places great emphasis on considering and discussing training issues with its many partners.

The Direction of Training has taken steps towards quality improvement of its services. Training plays an important part in this process through knowledge sharing as well as skills acquisition, upgrading and development of the staff members of the integrated police. DSE aims to modernise police training and to integrate it into the Bologna process. The implementation of the Bologna agreements will indeed make it possible to improve the quality of training, to facilitate correspondence and exchanges with traditional schools and to increase the value of the delivered degrees. This vision encompasses the use of the available expertise in the field, progressive collaboration, partnership and expertise exchange with external training institutions, such as universities and colleges, in synergy with the research sector.

It is therefore essential to homogenise and harmonise all the existing training courses. The development of the Expertise and Knowledge Centre of the Federal Police, the College of Police School Directors, the Pedagogical Committees (PCP) dealing with the different police issues, the Quality Monitoring Service, etc. play an important role in this process.

    

Composition

Since the police reform on 1 March 2007, the Directorate of Training has been made up of three police schools at federal level:

• the Federal School
• the National Investigation School
• the National Officers School

It also works in close cooperation with a network of ten registered police schools.

Other bodies or departments making up the Directorate of Training are:

• the Knowledge Centre
• the Training Plan and Pedagogical Committees Service
• the Training Accreditation Service
• the Quality Monitoring Service
• the Human Resources, Logistic, Infrastructure and Budget Cell

The Federal School

The Federal School (DSEF) is one of the three federal schools making up the Directorate of Training. It is housed in the Géruzet complex but courses are also taught on 4 decentralised campuses in Vottem, Jumet, Ghent and Antwerp.

DSEF is made up of two main departments: the Support Department and the Training Department. The training officers belonging to the Training Department have been split up in five groups which each deal with a particular issue (police function, traffic, violence control and sport, informatics and general training).

The Federal School organises and provides the preparatory basic training for Specialised Chief Inspector Candidates and Commissioner Candidates, but also various functional training courses as well as a great number of continuous or certified training courses for the civilian staff ("CALog"). It should also be underlined that considering its position in the federal training structure, the Federal School's training activities are essentially intended for the Federal Police staff; however, the Local Police staff may also take part in them under certain conditions.

DSEF also offers wide-ranging support through the lending of training officers to external partners and the sharing of expertise with them. These partners are essentially the registered police schools and the many police zones, but also various bodies such as the Foreigners' Bureau, the Centre for equal opportunities and opposition to racism, the Federal Public Service Defence, the TEC, the CEFIG and many others.

The National Officers School

The National Officers School (DSEO) organises and delivers the basic training for future Police Commissioners as well as the promotion training for Chief Police Commissioners.

The school also delivers continuous and functional training courses and puts its expertise at the disposal of all police services at local and federal level.

Furthermore, DSEO is responsible for organising certified training courses for the A-level civilian staff ("CALog").

The National Officers School plays an active part in the CEPOL network (European Police College) by organising courses either as steering body or as a partner of other European countries. It is also a very active member of the Association of European Police Colleges, which it presides, and makes some of its courses accessible to the police colleges of the member States.

The school has adopted an outward-looking policy. Most of the trainers it employs are external teachers, whether police officers, magistrates, professors or experts. In the same way, the school also takes an active part in partnerships with universities.

The National Officers School carries out all those activities in close cooperation with all its partners, with a constant will to do better.

The National Investigation School

The National Investigation School (DSER) provides functional judicial training courses, including those related to the following fields: specialised judicial police (investigator's certificate), technical and scientific police, operational crime analysis, cybercrime, special investigation methods and behavioural analysis.

It also provides continuous training courses in the same fields to the local and federal investigation services.

The school contributes to the consistency of the training process and to the implementation of the skills chart indicating the basic, functional and continuous training courses that need to be followed by the different operational staff categories.

In addition, the expertise of its training officers is used to enable harmonisation of basic training courses.

Finally, the school helps create synergies between the judicial field and the police.

The Knowledge Centre

Thanks to its specialised skills and its professional tools, the Knowledge Centre (DSEK) aims to enable the members of the police services to be easily, permanently, pertinently and reliably informed and so to develop their skills and knowledge in their various professional fields.

This centre works together with a large network of partners and experts at national and international level.

In order to do so, the Knowledge Centre:

• gathers and stores police documentation and knowledge and makes these available to police services ; the tools it manages to this end are the following:
• PolDoc, the documentary website of the police services available on the intranet and the internet;
• a specialised library on the spot whose catalogue is available on the intranet;
• a help desk dealing with documentation requests (loans, copies and document retrievals) and welcoming library visitors.

• develops, runs and leads expert networks in order to contribute to an efficient documentation flow and to the development, the formalisation and the sharing of police knowledge; the centre does so concretely by:
• making the Field Intervention Manual (GIT/IGT) available; this manual offers a summary of standard procedures for police interventions;
• disseminating InfoLegis, a periodical publication providing the references of recent key legislative documents as well as practical summaries of these texts;
• compiling thematic referential files in PolDoc with reference documents and summary sheets related to specific subjects;

• develops and disseminates correspondence standards as well as computer tools allowing simple, efficient and fully automatic management of the written communication process; it does so in partnership with the Directorate of Telematics (DST) with a view to administrative simplification and to creating a unique computer platform for the integrated police;


• provides professional support for translation and interpretation in order to enable the federal units to support the field units.

The Training Plan and Concertation Platforms Service

The main tasks of the Training Plan Service consist in following up the training plan in a dynamic way, adapting it and drawing it up for the year to come.

This task is performed by the GAM (“goal account managers”), who bring the partners involved in the various teaching fields in touch with each other. One of the main tools they use to do this is the “concertation platforms”.

Concertation platform's are used, among other things, for working out the training strategy in relation to a specific subject.

It is also through the concertation platforms that various projects are launched and carried out. The working groups arising from the concertation platforms are genuine expertise centres that consolidate the pedagogical tools used in the various training courses, initiate various projects in their field, encourage the schools to start new training courses based on a needs analysis, etc.

The goal of the concertation platforms is to constantly improve and to contribute to the understanding of the police issues they deal with.

Concertation platforms contribute to making the training even more consistent – in terms of content but also of form – with the expectations of the police staff.

Indeed, concertation platforms:

• can be set up in a flexible way
• involve a great number of (internal and external) partners and experts
• are organised in line with the strategic axes of the police
• have opted for project- and network-based management

The Training Accreditation Service

The accreditation procedure for training courses is one of the major steps of the training process. When the training needs have been identified and a training institution has been chosen, those involved in the training complete a project specification for the future training (the “accreditation file”) and submit it to the minister for approval.
In practice, however, accreditation files are examined by the Training Accreditation Service, which then delivers the ad hoc accreditation.

The Quality Monitoring Service

The task of this body is to ensure and improve the quality of police training in all the registered and federal schools based on the EFP principles and on partnership.

The main missions of the Quality Monitoring Service are the following:

• visiting and informing all the training partners;
• assessing, notably by attending classes, the quality level of the training courses taught in the registered and the federal schools. The aim is to assess the different training activities and to control quality, pedagogical norms and guidance standards in police schools;
• organising tests to assess the quality of the training provided in police schools;
• assessing the pedagogical aspects and the updating of training courses;
• offering support for initiatives that help improve the quality of training;
• formulating recommendations to improve the quality of training for those in charge of the concerned police schools as well as for the authorities;
• drawing up an annual report related to its activities;
• participating in the drawing up of an annual global report related to training courses.

The Human Resources, Logistic, Infrastructure and Budget Cell

The task of DSE’s Human Resources, Logistic, Infrastructure and Budget Cell consists in the optimal and centralised management of the training structure, i.e. DSE, the Knowledge Centre, the Federal School, the National Officers School and the National Investigation School.

Its main goal is to establish transversal and optimal procedures within the existing structures so as to improve the consistency of management. Three main centralised departments have been created to fulfil theses tasks, i.e.: the Budget Cell, the Personnel Management Cell, the Logistic & Infrastructure Cell.

The registered schools

The registered schools are autonomous decentralised poles. They constitute a local foothold that is indispensable to the development and the upgrading of the skills of all the staff members of the integrated police, whether in police zones or in provinces.

In addition, the registered schools are in the best position to meet local training needs. They deliver basic training courses for Constables, Inspectors and Chief Inspectors and participate, together with the federal schools, in the organisation of numerous continuous, functional and certified training courses.

The relationship between DGS/DSE and its partners finds concrete expression in the College of Police School Directors and in many PCP’s (“concertation plaftforms”) linked to various police issues.

There are ten registered schools spread over the Belgian territory:

• The Académie de police Emilien Vaes, APPEV, in Jurbise
• The Ecole régionale et intercommunale de police, ERIP, in Brussels
• The Gewestelijke en Intercommunale Politieschool, GIP, in Brussels
• The Institut provincial de formation des agents des services publics, Centre provincial d’entraînement et d’instruction de la police, in Seraing
• The Institut provincial de formation, in Namur
• The Oost-Vlaamse Politieacademie, OPAC, in Ghent (Mendonk)
• The Campus Vesta – Politieopleiding, in Antwerp
• The Provinciaal Instituut voor Vorming en Opleiding, Trainings- en opleidingscentrum voor politie, PIVO, in Asse
• The Provincie Limburg Opleiding & Training, PLOT, in Genk
• The West-Vlaamse Politieschool, WPS, in Bruges