Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday his desire to “reopen the debate” of “school time in the year” and the duration of the summer holidays. Here is the situation in France compared with the rest of Europe.
Will the school holidays get shorter? The Head of State asked his government, Wednesday June 28, to work on a modification of summer holidays and school time over the year. A point discussed in the Council of Ministers indicated the government spokesperson, Olivier Véran, adding that the President “recalled himself that it does not happen overnight, but that it was important to open this page of our educational history”.
>> True from false. Do the summer holidays for students in France last longer than before, as Emmanuel Macron assures?
During his three-day visit to Marseille, Emmanuel Macron announced his desire to reopen this debate: “We have children who sometimes have two and a half months of vacation, some almost three months. What is the consequence of that? It is that we stuff the weeks of our children, who arrive exhausted every evening. ” The president compares France with the rest of Europe and in particular the German model. But compared to other European countries, are French students those who have the most school holidays?
Few school holidays in summer
If we compare France with its European neighbors, it is not during the summer holidays that the country breaks records. According to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2021, but also those from the European Commission and its European network on education systems called Eurydice, France is one of the countries where there are the least school holidays in the summer.
With eight weeks of vacation in summer, French schoolchildren are far from the Spaniards, who have 11 weeks of summer vacation, or the Irish and Portuguese, who have almost 13 weeks. But young French people are not the worst off. In Germany, the summer holidays are around six weeks like in England, Scotland and the Netherlands.
One of the European countries with the most school holidays
On the other hand, France is indeed one of the countries with the most school holidays in the year, with just over 16 weeks, as in Portugal and Sweden. The record belongs to Irish schoolchildren who accumulate almost 19 weeks during the year. Well above, school holidays in Germany, England or the Netherlands where student holidays do not exceed 13 weeks.
A distribution to review?
Do French schoolchildren therefore have too many school holidays? Claire Leconte, specialist in the biological rhythms of children and adolescents thinks so: “We are the only country in the world to take four times two weeks of vacation. Nowhere else does it exist. We make permanent breaks”, she explains on franceinfo. These “permanent breaks” lead to a poor distribution of education over the year, the government believes. “France is also a country in which the daily weekly working time during the school year is very high for children, which can also lead to fatigue”insisted Olivier Véran, emphasizing the “will” of “reducing inequalities“.
But for the specialist in biological rhythms Claire Leconte, it is not on the summer holidays that we must focus but in particular on the All Saints holidays: “There are many countries that only do All Saints weekend. We would do a week, that would be enough” Guislaine David, co-secretary general and spokesperson for the Snuipp-FSU teachers’ union, indicates, on franceinfo, for her part, to have asked “several times to shift the February holidays” who arrives too early because after the Christmas holidays “for some areas it’s only five weeks of work”. But the union came up against “barriers that are linked to the tourism economy. There are brakes that are linked to something other than school, students and teachers”.