SCHOOL VACATION. Emmanuel Macron’s government would like to advance the start of the school year to August 20 instead of September 4. For what reasons ?

[Updated August 28, 2023 at 12:49 p.m.] The “long holidays”, deserve their nickname since they are spread over 8 weeks! A real break for schoolchildren and the prospect of real family moments. But now the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron proposed last Wednesday to advance the start of the school year to August 20, at least for students in difficulty to catch up. According to the OECD, the summer holidays would widen the inequalities in mathematics and French. The President of the Republic had declared on June 27 during his visit to the Marseille city that the long holidays destroy “in a way collective learning”.

The Head of State’s proposal is far from unanimous among students and teachers: “I find that these two months of vacation are too important. It allows you to settle down, cut well with the lessons “, confides a student to France Info. In the opinion of a professor at the Lycée Drancy in Seine-Saint-Denis “school inequalities appear from the first months (…) of schooling. The problem must be solved at that time but in a structural way, from the beginning at the end of the school year”.

Parents’ reaction is more mixed: A father believes that “the holidays are much too long” while a mother believes that “it’s not necessarily a good solution, it makes the economy work a lot”. With eight weeks of summer holidays, France is in the European average. It remains behind Austria, Sweden or Italy which offer 9 to 12 weeks of summer holidays, but ahead of Switzerland or England which offer only 5 to 6 weeks of long holidays.

In the meantime, the start of the 2023 school year is fast approaching, on Monday, September 4, 2023. If you are already nostalgic for these summer holidays, you may be planning your next family vacation. Zone A, B or C, you can find our PDF calendar to download just below. This calendar will allow you to know the dates of the next school holidays, so that you can organize your trips accordingly.

Download the official school calendar 2023-2024 (PDF)

The Paris Academy is located in zone C. The departure on vacation takes place after class, the resumption of classes in the morning of the days indicated. Students who do not have lessons on Saturday are on Friday evening off after lessons. Here is the calendar of school holidays in Paris in 2023:

Zone A includes the academies of Besançon, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges, Lyon, Bordeaux, Dijon, Poitiers and Grenoble. Zone B includes the academies of Aix-Marseille, Amiens, Caen, Lille, Nancy-Metz, Nantes, Orléans-Tours, Reims, Rennes and Strasbourg. Finally, zone C includes the academies of Créteil, Paris, Versailles, Montpellier and Toulouse. It should be noted that the academies of Corsica and overseas territories have different school calendars. You can consult them by entering the number of your department at this address.

What is the map of the school holiday zones?

Do you want to consult the 2023 school holiday calendar in Paris and everywhere in France? The dates of school holidays depend on the area where the school is located. Metropolitan France is divided into 3 academic zones to which must be added the Academy of Corsica. Find below a map of zones A, B and C which lists all the academies. As a reminder, the dates of the winter and spring holidays differ depending on the zone where the school is located.

You are part of zone A if the establishment in which your child is educated is located in the academy of Besançon, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges, Lyon, Bordeaux, Dijon, Poitiers and Grenoble. Find all the dates of the 2023 school holidays for zone A:

Zone B includes the academies of Aix-Marseille, Amiens, Caen, Lille, Nancy-Metz, Nantes, Orléans-Tours, Reims, Rennes and Strasbourg. Here are all the dates for the 2023 school holidays for Zone B:

Zone C includes the academies of Créteil, Paris, Versailles, Montpellier and Toulouse. Here is the calendar which contains all the dates of the 2023 school holidays for zone C:

Good news on the calendar of public holidays for the year 2023: the mobile public holidays that fell on a Sunday in 2022 fall on a Monday in 2023!