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TRUE OR FALSE. Can level groups contribute to academic success?
Can level groups contribute to academic success? – (franceinfo)
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal wants to set up level groups in classes for certain subjects at the start of the next school year. Can the measure prove effective?
“To learn, everyone must be able to go at their own pace. This is the meaning of the level groups, which will be set up in college from the next school year, in French and mathematics”, announced Gabriel Attal on January 31, during his general policy speech. There are three groups of levels per class. The objective is to raise the level of students, after France’s low results in the PISA assessment. It has already been tested by Alain Savary, Minister of Education in 1983.
“Ineffective” according to the Paris School of Economics
Can these groups really contribute to academic success? Many studies have looked into this question, and do not go in this direction. One of them, carried out in 2023 by a research laboratory based at the Paris School of Economics, concludes that “level classes are ineffective”and “neither the highest performing students nor the lowest performing students” do not benefit from their implementation.
Homogeneity in class would also reinforce the stigmatization of the weakest students, according to Marc Gurgand, one of the authors of the study. The PISA report for 2022 foresees an impact of these level groups, in particular for mathematics and under certain conditions: they must be limited to a few subjects and be punctual, which is not provided for by the measure announced by Gabriel Attal.
