A quarter of colleges were unable to set up needs groups, according to the SNPDEN back-to-school survey

How is the start of the school year going in middle and high schools? In its survey published on Wednesday, September 11, the SNPDEN, the leading union of school principals, draws up an initial assessment based on 3,000 respondents. This survey sheds light on vacant positions: in six out of ten schools, there was at least one teacher missing the week of the start of the school year. The survey also looks at the “needs” groups that middle schools had to set up this year in 6th and 5th grade. A quarter of middle schools were unable to set up these groups for all hours of mathematics and French, often due to lack of resources.

This lack of resources is also being singled out. Nearly half of the main respondents say they did not have enough positions to organize these groups. As a result, they have eliminated existing systems, analyzes Bruno Bobkiewicz, Secretary General of the SNPDEN: “A majority of them had to cut back on existing systems: splitting, options, co-animation or other systems of this nature. This is the fear we had from the beginning, from the moment when there are no means, if we really want to put this group logic in place, we had to destroy existing systems.”

Regarding the concrete implementation of needs groups, only 21% of those surveyed have only built homogeneous groups, of good, average and weak, as Gabriel Attal initially wanted. For the rest, eight out of ten colleges, they have set up heterogeneous groups of students at least part of the time, thanks to the flexibility proposed by Nicole Belloubet, the current resigning Minister of Education. Finally, the survey shows that the organization of these groups has been complex, particularly in terms of timetables. The planned generalization of these groups in 4th and 3rd grade next year is therefore technically impossible, the union insists.