This summer, the French government launched a nationwide series of consultative talks aimed at defining what should be the model for “the school of tomorrow”, ahead of a major reform of the country’s lower education system due to be put before parliament in January.
Held over three months and ending in September, the 120 meetings brought together some 800 representatives of all parties concerned in the education debate, including teaching staff and management, pupils and parents.
The conclusions of what amounted to about 300 hours of discussion were published earlier this month in a 52-page final report drawn up by the steering committee that oversaw the debates. The result is an ambitious document that is intended to serve as the basis for the reform bill due early next year and which was one of President François Hollande’s key election pledges, along with the creation of 60,000 jobs in the education sector.
Reforming the education system is a political minefield, as previous governments of both Left and Right have discovered to their cost, where divided opinions among the powerful teachers’ unions, as also among vocal and militant parents’ associations, make establishing a true consensus all but impossible.
Education minister Vincent Peillon is expected to produce a first draft of the bill’s proposals by early November, while a final text will be presented before a meeting of the French cabinet on December 19th.
It remains to be seen just how many of the propositions contained in the report of the consultation process will be adopted. However, presenting the broad pillars of the reforms at a meeting held at the Sorbonne university on October 9th, President François Hollande appeared to give his approval to the report’s key recommendations (see further below).
“A project for education is by definition a project for society,” Hollande said. “It will need time and means.”
The authors of the report on the consultations begin by underlining the urgency of the reforms, noting a continuing fall in academic results over recent years and a widening gap in the performance of schools according to their regional location and the social backgrounds of their pupils. It denounces a current situation where a child’s “educational destiny is shaped very early on”, also decrying a too-competitive atmosphere that creates “stress among pupils”.
While critical of the previous conservative government’s five-year record, which includes the shedding of 80,000 jobs across the education sector, the report says the blame for what it describes as “a school [system] that has difficulty in entering into the 21st century” lies above all in a long-term structural and cultural crisis.
“During the consultations there was a very strong collective realization, people recognised that there were important issues at stake,” commented Nathalie Mons, a professor of sociology and a former consultant on educational affairs to the OECD, who was one of the steering committee’s four members (1). “Some taboos were lifted.”
The report presented the following key recommendations:
Concerning infant and primary schools
The report recommended that the infant and primary schools be made a priority for the designation of the 60,000 new jobs President Hollande has promised to create in the education sector during the five years of his mandate, and he has indicated his agreement with this. It aims to avoid returning to the same overall state of the system as it was five years ago, before some 80,000 jobs were slashed across all levels of education, and is aimed at creating a more complete and effective beginning to a child’s schooling.
Hollande concurs with what the report identifies as the need for “more teachers than there are classes”. This, according to the report, is especially relevant in schools in deprived social areas where learning problems are greatest and also for first-year classes in infant and primary school, while allowing for the development of new curriculums.
The report also recommends the introduction of foreign language lessons as of the first year in primary school (a year called cours préparatoire, or CP, in French), when children are aged six. These lessons should be led by qualified language teachers who, it suggests, could be brought in from neighbouring secondary schools.
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1: The other members oif the steering committee were Christian Forestier, a senior higher education manager, François Bonneau, the elected president of a regional council, and journalist Marie-Françoise Colombani.
School hours
France has the shortest school year of any member-state of the OECD, lasting an official 36 weeks but which is in practice, once the number of bank holidays contained within it have been deduced, just 35 weeks. Despite this, French pupils work more annual school hours than the OECD average (for example, French 7-8 year-olds have 847 hours of classes per year, against an OECD average of 774) This dense timetable has not produced correspondingly superior educational results. This issue was one of the major questions debated during the national consultations.
The report advises that the school week be increased from four to four-and-a-half days, meeting approval from Hollande and education minister Vincent Peillon, and that pupils up until 5th grade in secondary school (the second year of a pupil’s secondary education) are limited to no more than five hours of classes per day. They should also have a one-and-a-half hour break at lunchtime. Schools must offer parents ‘child-minding’ hours, for those pupils who have finished their daily classes, up until the end of the afternoon, and which should include sports and cultural activities. To help local authorities to finance this, a “compensation fund” would be created.
The report avoided tackling directly the comparatively long summer holidays for schools in France, which last almost two-and-a-half months. The subject is a controversial one that divides public opinion. However, it recommended that the school year be increased by between one and two weeks.
Since the report was published, Peillon has said that there will be no immediate change in the length of the summer holidays, but that “during the work we have to do in the coming years, this subject should not be a taboo”.
The re-organisation of school hours, says the report, allows for the scrapping of homework in favour of “personal studies” by pupils on school premises, a proposition to which Hollande has given his backing.
Professional orientation
Secondary schooling in France begins with the collège, taking children up to the minimum required school-leaving age of 16. This is followed by the lycée, which covers the last two years that lead up to the sitting of the baccalauréat, which is the ultimate secondary school education diploma.
Pupils nearing the end of their four-year collège education and who are perceived as unable, or who are unwilling, to continue with studies at lycée level are often placed with professional or technical training schools in a choice directed by teaching staff. The aim is to give them a greater chance on the employment market than they would have with a basic school leaving certificate.
However, many pupils in this category and their parents, notably in socially deprived areas, complain that this is often an arbitrary process decided solely by teaching staff and which sees children shunted into low-level professional categories that they are later trapped within (see the results of a recent study on the issue here). Furthermore, as highlighted in a recent OECD study, the number 15-19 year-olds enrolled in full-time education in France has fallen over recent years, from 89% in 1995 to 84% in 2010.
The report suggests that an experimental period should be introduced during which parents and pupils in this category should be given the ultimate decision, as opposed to teaching staff, in which professional or technical studies the pupils move on to. Furthermore, the report recommends that, during the last year of college, pupils are given lessons introducing them to several professions, in order for them to “make a knowledgeable and engaging choice” in their future studies.
It also recommends that the evolution and results of pupils’ choices in professional and technical training be monitored on a region-by-region basis.
While Hollande has indicated his at least partial agreement with the suggestions, he chose not to detail his position on an issue that divides teachers unions and which is likely to be a hotly-debated subject during forthcoming negotiations.
Educational ‘priority zones’
The report recommends an overhaul of the current approach to schools where a majority of pupils find themselves in difficulty with learning, which also largely met with Hollande’s approval. These are essentially found in socially-deprived areas, and often where there is a higher than average proportion of children from families of immigrant origin.
Many of these schools, broadly described in official terms as those situated in geographical zones with a social, economic and cultural disadvantage, have been grouped into categories that in principle allow for a special educational approach of ‘positive discrimination’ - (including smaller classes, and special bonuses for teachers) - such as Zone d'éducation prioritaire (ZEP) and Réseau Ambition Réussite (RAR).
But the report underlines the failure of the system which has produced no notable improvement in educational results, referring even to a “negative discrimination”, and where in fact only slightly more funding is given to schools in these categories (estimated at +7% in 2008) in which there is a high turnover of staff composed often of inexperienced, young teachers.
Calling for a return to the principle of “giving more to those who have less”, it recommends that a greater social mix is created in such schools, notably by changing the admissions system that currently allows pupils from more privileged backgrounds to seek schooling elsewhere, and the provision of a significant increase in funding to meet the “charter of aims” of schools. The report says current “stigmatizing” labels applied to schools in difficult areas, such as ZEP or RAR, should be scrapped, and that the geographical locations of some schools should be moved.
It also wants “experienced teachers” to be posted to schools in difficulty “if possible on a voluntary basis”. To encourage this, and to reduce staff turnover, it calls for them to benefit from fewer working hours, supplementary teaching aids and that they receive specific training and follow-up.
On this last point, Hollande indicated that he was in favour of a voluntary programme of teacher posting, to be encouraged by preferential working conditions but which he did not detail.
repeating academic years
Hollande has also agreed with the report’s call for a phasing out of the widespread practice whereby pupils in difficulty, who fail to attain the expected educational standards at the end of their school year, repeat the same classes the following year. The report said the system, applied in both primary and secondary schools, had proved to be “as costly as it is ineffective”.
Teacher training
The previous conservative government scrapped the year-long teacher training course that all recruited teachers followed before entering the profession full-time, reducing their professional training to just more than 100 hours. The report recommends that recruits “simultaneously follow an academic and professional training”, and that the recruitment admissions exams they sit ensure not only that they have the necessary academic skills but also the “motivation [and] the necessary qualities for the job”. Hollande has given his support to this, pledging to re-introduce a longer teacher-training programme as of 2013.
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- Education minister Vincent Peillon was the guest of Mediapart's latest 'Friday Night Live' streamed debates on October 19th, in which he discusses the government's education reforms. See video extracts here (in French only).
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English version: Graham Tearse