Yves Reuter, academic specialist in didactics and pedagogies, believes that National Education has many assets of which it is depriving itself, starting with the teachers to whom it does not listen enough…
But where is the French school going? It is an understatement to say that in recent months, teachers and National Education teams have been in particular demand. And are just as expectant. Gabriel Attal, at the head of the ministry for 6 months before moving to Matignon, launched important commitments for the school, in terms of training, structuring of teaching and requirements, with this political message: more firmness, authority, discipline, more monitoring and commitment to students in difficulty.
Can we expect beneficial changes for students and teachers quickly? What do we really know about the level of middle and high school students? Does National Education have the means and resources to initiate future reforms effectively? Yves Reuter, professor emeritus in educational sciences at the University of Lille 3*, who has just published Understanding and Combating Academic Failure (Berger-Levrault), provides us with some clarifications.
Yves Reuter – We cannot formulate it so simply. In view of the PISA results, student results have certainly declined, particularly in French – more precisely in reading comprehension, which is very patchy – and in mathematics. But it does not investigate other areas, such as history, physical education and sports, or speaking. And this decline is no more significant in France than in many other countries. It is partly attributable to Covid and the measures put in place to deal with Covid.
You have to be careful: compared to the number of subjects that are taught at school, middle school and high school, PISA is still a fairly small prism. We have to be wary because we tend to overwhelm children, forgetting, for example, that they write more than their parents and grandparents at the same age. High school students also have knowledge of digital technology. Oddly enough, we don’t mention that. PISA remains a survey that provides interesting information because it allows dozens of countries to be evaluated, but due to its scale, it loses details on a whole series of things.
We must be wary of catastrophist discourse. We are, in fact, average. And we can put forward some elements that we do not put forward enough. First, there are changes of ministers and changes in educational policies which are incessant. Furthermore, there is a glaring shortage of teachers: 67% of establishments lack teachers; if we add replacements who arrive with little training, that creates a lot of constraints for a truly well-conducted transfer of knowledge. Teacher training is also partly neglected. The countries that have the best PISA results, overall, are those that take the time to reform and they still have very important and well-consistent teacher training.
We should ensure that the minister and the Prime Minister are already clear with the Singapore method. This method is based on a long time, we take the time to train teachers regularly and to constantly explain and re-explain to students until they understand. It is not just a practical method, but also the correct understanding of the time required for learning. Obviously, our minister, as dynamic as he is – I’m talking about the previous one – does not particularly have this in mind, at least through what he says.
Above all, we must understand one thing about the French school, which is that it is particularly inequitable, that is to say that it does not succeed in reducing the impact of the socio-cultural environment on student performance. The French school is also characterized by severe child selection procedures. There is a process of ghettoization and exclusion which is still very problematic. Obviously, fighting against these phenomena is not among the political priorities at the moment.
What characterizes the last decade is the reduction in the number of experts heard and consulted by the government. There are around the ministry a certain number of experts specializing in a few disciplines, especially around certain currents of neuroscience. Why not, but it broke with previous forms of discussions, where we consulted experts who were researchers in very varied disciplines.
The Ministry of National Education needs to understand the real teaching and learning conditions. In fact, our leaders know very little about them; the work of neuroscience experts takes very little into account of sociocultural differences.
There are lots of trends that are very interesting, you have people who are very keen on educational systems. In didactics, you have people who work on the articulation between disciplinary content, you have sociologists who work precisely on the mechanisms of social differentiation, historians of education who are valuable. France is a country that is depriving itself of its research expertise, it’s a shame.
France is nevertheless characterized by an incredible number of sometimes very interesting reports, notably from researchers from the General Inspectorate, etc. which are put in the drawers. It’s a waste of time and finances. It’s still quite improbable to put researchers to work, to give them the resources and then to bury the work later.
I have written reports for some academies, handed them in and found out that they were not read. Sometimes there are ideological reasons because there are, for example, a certain number of educational establishments which operate in a different way from traditional pedagogies and which obtain quite convincing results in terms of learning. This is not necessarily appreciated in high places. Which is quite surprising, because often, in establishments which try to practice slightly different pedagogies, which claim to be new education, there are fewer problems of discipline, for example. This deserves to be questioned.
Level tests for CP, CE1, CM1 and 4th grade are now carried out regularly. What will their effect be in the long term? Will they really be useful to inform education policies?
In principle, it’s not uninteresting. Now testing is still limited. The larger we want to investigate a population, the less precise we will be in diagnosing problems. The French school, all the same, is characterized by very long evaluation times. When you go to certain classes, you notice that children spend a lot of time on assessments, this is time that is taken away from learning time.
When these evaluations were launched, the idea was to give concrete information to teachers about student levels, to put in place responses and consider specific training in school areas where there were difficulties that could be reduced. nearly similar, with the aim of improving student performance. However, this idea was abandoned. It’s a shame. We can think that the results at the Stanislas school (private Catholic establishment where the children of the Minister of National Education are educated, Editor’s note) will be different from the results in a disadvantaged suburb of Pas-de-Calais. This would shed light on certain dimensions of social inequalities.
We can partly have these results by educational establishment, that is possible. What would be interesting, indeed, is to have them more precisely, by establishment in a constituency, in an academy, etc. This would make it possible to connect things and see how establishments stand. And especially in relation to what we progress, in relation to what we regress, etc. Above all, it must be transparent, meaning that researchers have access to all of the questions and the way in which they are analyzed. You have sociologists who work in a very interesting way on evaluation phenomena, grading, and the biases that are created, sometimes to the disadvantage of students.
In general, National Education should be more transparent. I am going to give you an example. For each establishment there is what is called a “social position index”, an “IPS”, that is to say that the socio-cultural positioning of the students is calculated for each establishment. It’s still something very interesting. It was necessary to fight for years and go to court for this IPS to be publicly communicated. This made it possible to realize that there were establishments which were classified as very disadvantaged, with fairly significant resources. But their social composition had evolved and, as a result, they were more favored than other establishments which had fewer resources. Of course, this creates discontent, which explains the lack of transparency sometimes.
Another element: in France, we lack structures that truly serve as interfaces between research results and training structures, and teachers and parents. We don’t connect enough and we don’t use all the skills enough.
The uniform only existed in certain establishments and in a very occasional manner, it does not refer to the history of France. It exists in different countries, it is linked to their culture, but we cannot say that it weighs in one way or another in the performance results of students. Nor can we say that this erases social differences. That’s really a myth. And sometimes, as in certain Anglo-Saxon countries, it exacerbates the differences between competing establishments. In any case, it does not solve the problems of reading, writing, mathematics, etc.
On grade repetition, we see by looking at the PISA survey that the countries that do well are not necessarily, far from it, the countries where there are the most repetitions. So that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t repeat a year at all, but it does mean that we need to think about the best solutions for students. We can have need groups, we can have support during school holidays. When you make the student do the same thing two years in a row, it doesn’t really work. If this has failed, another way must be found.
There is a need for a certain order at school and certain rules. The problem is that it’s not necessary. Overall, what several surveys show is that it is essential to have a good school climate that is caring and conducive to learning. We must not have a traditional conception of a discipline which would necessarily be repressive: we must know what is the best way to construct the operating rules. So, we can have them built by the students, for example from kindergarten, as happens in certain structures. It works quite well.
The problem of discipline must not make us forget that of inequalities. We need to put in place more aid and resources within the school, if only in the canteen, in terms of lunches. We need to have educational approaches that are more inclusive. We also need to rethink the school map to achieve more diversity.
Here again, the surveys and the various works do not show that. The problem with level groups is that as soon as they become permanent, we will perpetuate the groups of strong people who will advance quickly and the groups of weak people who will advance less quickly. In addition, it risks being a headache in certain establishments, when the strong and the weak are not the same in the different school subjects.
We realize that there are ways of making the class work, with practices of cooperation, projects, etc., which allow students who have different rhythms, who have different means, to work together. This does not prevent us from having at certain times, during the day or during the week, groups of needs where we can intervene in relation to this or that blockage. And let’s not forget that France is one of the countries with the busiest classes. And this is also a difference with other countries which work better.
