The secretary general of the SNES-FSU, Sophie Venetitay, is not convinced by the proposal of the Minister of National Education to launch a “project” from primary school to the baccalaureate to improve the spelling of students.
“We have the impression that he discovers how the corrections are going”, reacts this Sunday, on franceinfo, the secretary general of the SNES-FSU, Sophie Venetitay, severe after the announcement of the Minister of National Education Pap Ndiaye, in favor of a more severe marking of spelling at the baccalaureate.
“A very bad student in spelling is in fact penalized in the understanding of his reasoning”, says the professor of economics and social sciences. If she recognizes the difficulties of French pupils, she asks “time and means to work on spelling”. “To believe that we will solve the problem by removing two points is completely illusory.”
Franceinfo: Spelling no longer counts in the Bac?
Sophie Venetitay: It’s a little more complicated than that. When we listen to the Minister of National Education, we have the impression that he is discovering how the corrections for the baccalaureate are going. Every year, we ask ourselves this question of whether or not spelling is taken into account, we talk about it among proofreaders and we ask our inspectors what to do.
The answer is always the same: the reasoning of a student who is very bad at spelling is more complicated to understand anyway. In fact, he is already penalized. This is a real question that must be dealt with in depth and not through a publicity stunt. Believing that we will solve the problem by removing two points is completely illusory.
Do the students make a lot of mistakes?
They make a certain number of them, it is a reality. We felt the effect of confinement, distance school and the college reform in 2016, since our students lost hours of French. In high school, we are always running after time and we don’t have the opportunity to sit down with our most struggling students.
Today, what we lack is the means and the time to work on spelling with our students to also open their literary appetite. Pap Ndiaye does not answer these questions.
In the age of autocorrect, is spelling still important?
It is very important to work on spelling and more generally written and oral expressions. In their higher education or in their professional life, students will be required to write a certain number of things. When we defend a particular quality of education, it is also to ensure that our students are the citizens of tomorrow and that they absolutely master all the necessary skills. Knowing how to read, knowing how to write, knowing how to decipher the world in which they live, it takes time and resources to work with our students.
Today, the outlook is not very good. This year, the recruitment competition for French teachers was not full. How are we going to work on this discipline properly at the start of the school year? This refers to the more general question of the state of National Education today.