Several new developments await students returning to school on Monday, but some unknowns remain due to announced reforms, the implementation of which will depend on a future government.
Nicole Belloubet does not want that “The classroom bells are set to those on Palais-Bourbon”. During her back-to-school press conference, the resigning Minister of National Education attempted to untangle the knots of a start to the school year marked by new developments and a lot of uncertainty, on Monday, September 2.
The cause is the wait for the appointment of a full government and the reforms announced, then put on hold, such as that of the middle school diploma. Others, such as the creation of needs groups in 6th and 5th grade, must come into force, but arouse the mistrust of the educational community. As for the crisis of attractiveness of the teaching profession, it continues, with several thousand places still unfilled in the teaching competitions. Franceinfo returns to the sensitive issues of this back-to-school period.
Needs groups already criticized
This is the most delicate issue of this new school year. In 6th and 5th grade, students in each class will be divided into three separate groups in French and mathematics. This measure, resulting from the “knowledge clash” reform announced in December by Gabriel Attal when he was Minister of National Education, is strongly criticized by teachers’ unions and feared by some parents.
The stated objective: to raise the level of all students in these fundamental subjects. The majority of unions and parents’ associations denounce a sorting of middle school students that does not go in the direction of social and academic diversity. They fear in particular that the students in the most difficulty will feel stigmatized and will not progress in a homogeneous group, which is confirmed by studies on the issue.
This organization also poses concrete implementation difficulties for heads of establishments. It adds a timetable constraint: the courses for the three groups must take place at the same time. A constraint which raises a question about the means, to arrive at one teacher per group. “The ministry has identified 2,300 additional positions, we think that two to three times more were needed”Bruno Bobkiewicz, general secretary of SNPDEN-Unsa, told franceinfo. The Snes-FSU, the main secondary school teachers’ union, was skeptical at its back-to-school press conference. “There will certainly not be a French and maths teacher” in front of each group, declared Secretary General Sophie Vénétitay on Thursday.
New assessments spark strike
National assessments are, from this school year, generalized to all levels of elementary school. In addition to CP, CE1 and CM1, CE2 and CM2 students will also be affected by these tests, which are intended to help “teachers to adjust their teaching interventions to ensure that students master basic knowledge”, justifies the Ministry of Education.
Three teachers’ unions have called for a strike in schools on September 10 to denounce this generalization. FSU-SNUipp, CGT-Educ’action and SUD-Education are also calling on school teachers not to administer these assessments, which start a week after the start of the school year. “to block”.
For the FSU-SNUipp, these assessments “are not useful for teachers.” “They are not going to predict what they are going to do next in their class and, above all, they are certainly going to result in injunctions that will reduce pedagogical freedom.”denounced co-general secretary Guislaine David on Monday. Her union also believes that these tests focus on certain skills, such as reading speed, but not on other abilities deemed essential, such as text comprehension.
National assessments “are not useful to students and do not address academic difficulties; on the contrary, they deny the heterogeneity of students’ learning rhythms and constitute a source of stress and discomfort for students”we can also read in a press release from SUD-Education.
Patent reform pending
The 3rd year students do not yet know what awaits them at the end of the year. While the government of Gabriel Attal wanted to make obtaining the national brevet diploma (DNB) compulsory to enter high school, the decree is “frozen”announced Nicole Belloubet on Tuesday. Uncertainty also hangs over the methods of evaluating the brevet: the suspended reform planned to increase the share of final exams in the final grade (60% instead of 50% currently) and to take into account all 3rd year subjects in the remaining 40%. On this point, the resigning minister is considering a simple postponement. “As soon as the current affairs period ends”, “we should be able to ensure their publication so that they can come into force for the 2025 patent”she announced on Tuesday.
In the meantime, teachers and school principals are deploring the lack of clear instructions for the end-of-year exam. “For SE-Unsa, changing the rules of the patent during the year is unacceptable and not conceivable”, writes its national secretary, Jérôme Fournier, on X. The reform is also criticized in its substance. The Snes-FSU explains that it has supported the 60/40 grading method proposed by the ministry since 2016, but “refuses that the DNB becomes a guillotine”.
Other projects of the Attal government have also fallen into limbo: the overhaul of the programs from the first year to the second year and the labeling of school textbooks. Their officialization depends, once again, on the choices of the future government. The same goes for the future of several experiments launched this fall. The preparatory-secondary classes, a sort of airlock between middle school and high school for those who failed the brevet, are being tested in around a hundred establishments and could be generalized next fall. The ban on telephones tested in some 200 establishments could also become the rule everywhere from January. The reform of initial teacher training, supposed to strengthen the attractiveness of the profession from the start of the 2025 school year, has also been put on hold.
The persistent fear of non-replacement
The teacher recruitment crisis continues, with more than 3,000 unfilled positions in primary and secondary school competitions, according to the ministry. As in the previous year, the challenge this year is to ensure the presence of a teacher in front of each class, on the first day of classes and over the long term. “When the academies reopened, we were very close to achieving our objectives of 100% coverage of teacher needs”assured Nicole Belloubet.
“We now know that there are around 1,000 advertisements on France Travail to find teachers on the eve of the start of the school year.”denounced Grégoire Ensel, vice-president of the FCPE, on France Bleu Bourgogne on Friday. “Between 2018 and 2023, at the start of the school year, there was a shortage of more and more teachers, and for longer and longer periods of time”also noted Sophie Vénétitay at a press conference. According to calculations by the Snes-FSU, the average length of time an unfilled position is vacant is now 28 days. In April, the State was also fined for the hours lost by students at the Versailles academy due to a lack of replacement teachers.
To overcome these shortcomings, the question of the means put on the table will be essential. But Nicole Belloubet admitted it on Tuesday: the budget project sent by Matignon to her ministry “does not meet the whole [des] needs”. And urged the future government to reverse the trend. It will have to “be very attentive to it [au budget] if he wishes to maintain a real ambition for this national priority”.