In Flanders (Belgium), or at least if it hasn't changed since I went, it really depends on the school.
First of all there are 3( or 4?) levels of education (ASO, TSO, KSO, and one more I think). ASO is General Education and is what you would need if you'd want to go to university. TSO is Technical Education and is basically vocational studies except for a few courses, which last an extra year and you can then go to uni to continue that. KSO is Arts Education, which includes history, arts, painting and other stuff I'm not too sure about. Similarly to TSO, you won't be allowed into university except for continuing in that direction.
ASO is considered the hardest and the 'better' one by a lot of people even though it only is better if you actually want to go to uni and to study whatever you want or if you want to spend time learning about geography as well as history and maths and physics and 3 languages and so on (I had 15 [official] subjects I think).
In ASO you get to choose what 'direction' you want to go in. I went for Maths-Sciences, so I got 7 hours of Maths and 3 hours of each of the sciences a week + all the other 'regular' subjects (Geography, History, Sports, Dutch, French,...) - some of the ones from other 'directions'. Other directions in my school included Economics + Languages and Culture Sciences (Psychology, Culture Studies).
Other schools have different directions. Some just have one, very big schools sometimes can offer up to 10.
However, before I got to choose my direction I had one year of basic economics, which basically covered balance sheets. Long explanation