In an interview with Le Monde, the Minister of National Education announced that school heads will themselves be responsible for setting up “need group” times, but also whole class times.
Three months after the announcement with great fanfare by Gabriel Attal, then still Minister of National Education, to set up “level groups” in middle school in French and mathematics, the time has come to backpedal! In the columns of Le Monde, this Thursday, March 7, the new minister, Nicole Belloubet, is now talking about “introducing a certain flexibility” into this system which had aroused the ire of the teaching unions last December.
The latter, including Unsa – Education, denounced in particular the risk of “social sorting of students” as well as “the deleterious impact of the measures announced, in terms of staff working conditions, overload of staff…” If the remarks by Nicole Belloubet were very well received by the unions this Thursday, what can we expect in concrete terms when the measure must be implemented next September?
From now on, it is no longer a question of “level groups”, but of “need or skills groups”, according to the terms used by Nicole Belloubet in her interview with Le Monde. “We are going to introduce a certain flexibility for middle school principals”, announced the minister in particular, specifying that “it will be up to the head of the establishment to see at what times during the year it is necessary to bring the students together as a whole class, in order to to re-examine the composition of the groups in these two fundamental subjects”. In summary, no more strict framework aimed at enforcing this system, each establishment will be able to do it in its own way and, above all, whole class moments will be planned, which was not foreseen in Gabriel Attal’s initial project and which particularly satisfies the unions.
