Parliamentary report recommends priority education reform

A parliamentary report published on Wednesday, which franceinfo was able to consult, recommends a reform of the scope of priority education, to include private education. Today, 1.7 million schoolchildren and college students are concerned by priority education, which represents a fifth of the workforce. This information report from the mission responsible for drawing up an overview and assessment of priority education contains a total of 52 recommendations.

The deputies affirm that the duplication of classes in priority education produces “benefits” on student success. “Thanks to reinforced supervision and optimal learning conditions for students, the splitting of classes facilitates the work of the teacher who can more easily and more quickly identify any difficulties encountered by students and the means to overcome them. remedy by adapting its pedagogy to the needs of children, whether they have difficulties or not”analyzes the report.

Divide the classes into small and medium sections

This measure, initiated in 2017, is now applied in the large kindergarten section, in CP and in CE1. Elected officials therefore recommend extending this duplication of classes to small and medium sections. The document recommends reducing the time in small groups only to the teaching of fundamental knowledge and keeping physical education and sports, music or visual arts lessons in the whole class. This would make it possible to free up the means to duplicate the other classes. However, elected officials regret that “the implementation of class splitting” has been done so far “unequally on the territory” and consider that it is necessary that “school buildings have enough space to accommodate them”.

To reduce learning inequalities, Agnès Carel, rapporteur for this mission and Horizons deputy for Seine-Maritime, pleads for the education of children from the age of 2 in priority education networks as well as for non-speaking children, for whom French is not the mother tongue.

Review the school map?

The parliamentarians also want to refocus resources on the current reinforced priority education networks (REP+) and establish a progressive allocation of resources for all the others. The report highlights the need for these budgets to be distributed according to the social characteristics of the establishments, but also to the geographical location, in order to recognize in particular the specific needs of rural schools and colleges. Elected officials also recommend “revise the school map in the light of social indicators, with the aim of strengthening school and social diversity”.