Policy and programming draft legislation for the reform oh the French school system

Visuel
Policy and programming draft legislation for the reform oh the French school system
Type of text :
Opinion
Type of referral :
Government referral
Working group :
Section for Education, Culture and Communication
Date d'adoption
Date adopted : 01/16/2013
Rapporteur(s) :
Photo
Xavier NAU
CFDT Group
    Overview
    Présentation

    Since the middle of the 1990s, the French school system has been treading water and has not succeeded in making further progress, indeed it has even regressed.


    This is primarily reflected by the fact that 130,000 young people leave the education system each year without qualifications, while at the same time integration into the employment market increasingly requires a minimum level of training. Difficulties start to appear for these young people in the first year of primary school and academic failure sets in and continues throughout the period of compulsory schooling.


    Between 1997 and 2007 the number of pupils with reading difficulties has doubled, from 10% to 21%. The recent survey entitled Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 confirms these poor results, with a disproportionately high representation of French students in the European quartile for the weakest students.


    These failures are clearly correlated with social inequalities and most early exits from the education system come from disadvantaged socio-professional categories. In terms of gender, success is strongly biased in favour of girls who perform better, but who suffer from stereotypes which affect career options and direction.


    Finally, the correlation is also strong with regional inequalities, with the most deprived areas particularly adversely affected. The educational institution is therefore at the heart of the fight against inequality, but it suffers from the lack of initial teacher training and very poor levels of ongoing training. The educational initiatives taken by certain teams are not recognised or evaluated and they lack support. In addition, these new tasks are not taken into account in the working hours of teachers.


    The role of parents remains limited and some prefer to avoid schools; associations could play a role in this area, but the partnership aspects of their activities are still not well coordinated.


    Finally, local authorities suffer from inequality of resources according to their town and region, which prevents the development of a real education strategy. The final element of school problems is the school year. In this area, France divides up the school year on the basis of fewer days (144 days compared to 186 days average for the OECD), but has the highest concentration of classroom hours over a few days of the week, which equates to 6 hours of classes per day in primary schools, and is therefore the busiest school day in Europe.