TESTIMONIALS. “It can motivate”, “humiliation”… The question of the “taboo” of repeating a year at school divides teachers

The Minister of Education has warned: he wants to lift “the taboo of repeating a year” and must make announcements on Tuesday. Although the number of grade repetitions has fallen considerably since the 1980s, this measure is far from gaining consensus among the teachers that franceinfo met.

In his Dordogne college, classified as priority education, this history and geography teacher did not see many repetitions last year: “Zero. Pure and simple. And it’s been years since I saw a repeat in the establishment where I am”. When he started working 26 years ago, it was much more common. Today, only 3% of students have repeated at least one class at the end of CM2, compared to 33% in 1987. The repetition rate has in fact fallen in France since the 1980s.

Repeating a year, of which France has long been the champion, has never been banned, but simply made exceptional in 2014 by a decree from the then minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. But at the end of 2023, the Minister of Education declared to Medef that he wanted to review the “question of the taboo of repeating a year”. Gabriel Attal must also make a series of announcements on Tuesday December 5 in order to“raise the level” school. However, the subject of grade repetition is still debated among the teaching profession today.

For this history-geography teacher in Dordogne, without it being the miracle solution for all students, repeating a year can be useful for young people in difficulty, but also to motivate a certain number of them.

“It’s the scarecrow effect, the “threat” that is brandished towards many students”

A history and geography teacher

at franceinfo

“We tell them: ‘Be careful, if you don’t work, you risk repeating a year’he explains. This can actually motivate students who show a certain laziness and who don’t really see the point in tiring themselves out if they are sure and certain of moving on to the next level, while not having done very well. -thing of the year”.

Other teachers, or school heads too, see an interest in it when it is linked to guidance, like at the end of 3rd year for example, when a young person absolutely wants to move on to general second year. However, for Marianne, an experienced SVT teacher, repeating a year is too often experienced as a humiliation. “I have examples of students who did really worse in the second year than the first”she indicates.

“They dropped everything, it discouraged them, demotivated them…”

Marianne, SVT teacher

at franceinfo

“If we have a student who arrives in 4th grade, we tell him to repeat a year, he finds himself with those he considered to be the little ones, so he puts himself at the back of the class, he does nothing. And then, he isolates himself, or even stops coming, he begins to drop out. Examples are frequent”she continues.

In primary school too, repeating a year is offered as a very last resort. Gaëlle teaches in Morbihan and according to her, it is very rarely effective: “I have rarely seen any positive effect. We have children who arrive from other schools and who are already a year behind and often, they are still in difficulty. It has not solved the problem of academic difficulty . I think that what would be more effective is if, within the school, we still had specialized teachers, like the ‘Rased’ [Réseau d’aide spécialisée aux élèves (maternelle et primaire) en difficulté] that we had before. They came to the schools, they took children in small groups according to their difficulties. And we don’t have that anymore.”.

Repetition or not, all these teachers agree in any case on the importance of the resources devoted to supporting students, in particular with smaller numbers per class to be able to help young people who need it.