Cities / Brussels / Stepping Stones Bilingual School
Stepping Stones Bilingual School
A small bilingual French-English preschool and primary in a townhouse in Ixelles, founded in 2015 by Helene Nabokoff and reputed for being properly bilingual rather than English with a French label.
In brief
A small bilingual French-English preschool and primary in a townhouse in Ixelles, founded in 2015 by Helene Nabokoff and reputed for being properly bilingual rather than English with a French label.
Mixed-age vertical teaching for three-to-six-year-olds, structured curriculum balanced with free play and Montessori-style spaces, and a terraced garden behind the building. Children with English as a first language come home using French within a year, which is the test for whether bilingual schools in Brussels actually deliver on the claim.
Teachers are praised consistently for warmth and attention to individual children. The honest caveats from families are practical: small staff means the school can feel under-resourced, parent communication is sometimes limited, and the school is inflexible on certain practices. Primary continues through to age 11 or so, after which families move on to a secondary school. Suits Ixelles and southern-commune families who want bilingual depth in a small, home-feeling setting.
Fees
Annual fees
| Year level | Age | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Preschool Tuition | 3 | €9,300 |
| Primary School Tuition | 6 | €12,500 |
| Activity Fund (Primary) | €500 | |
| Meal Programme | €1,090 |
One-time fees
| Item | Age | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Enrolment Fee (new students) | €600 |
Reviews
A small bilingual French/English primary on Avenue Legrand in Ixelles, with a Montessori flavour layered onto a more conventional preschool and primary curriculum. The English strand is benchmarked against Cambridge English; the French strand follows the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles programme. Two town-house campuses sit a short walk apart, with well under 150 pupils between them. Parent reaction is consistently warm on teaching and atmosphere, with a quieter undercurrent of complaint about communication and how the office handles requests.
Positives
- Bilingual delivery. The French/English immersion is genuinely two-track, not a marketing claim with a single English period bolted on. Non-French families report children settling into French within a year, English-only households see the reverse.
- Teaching team. Teachers come up repeatedly as warm, attentive and present with each child. Class sizes around 15, capped at 20, keep that visible at the day-to-day level.
- Montessori and structure mix. The blend of Montessori materials and rooms with a more directed primary curriculum lands well with parents who want the calm and self-direction without giving up structured maths, French and English.
- Value against the international set. Fees in the EUR 9,300 to 12,500 band sit well below the British, American and European international schools in Brussels, which is part of why families choose it.
Considerations
- Setting and facilities. Two converted town houses near Avenue Louise, with a garden and outdoor play. Warm interiors, but the footprint is small, no campus, no sports fields. Older primary years feel that constraint more than the preschool years.
- Parent communication. Communication from the office is the recurring grumble. Parents describe it as thin on day-to-day updates and slow to flex on individual requests. Most accept the trade for the teaching, but the friction is real.
- Scale and continuity. Under 150 pupils across preschool and primary. The intimacy is the appeal, but secondary continuation has to be planned for elsewhere, and the small cohort means a child's year group is whatever it is in any given intake.