Tuesday, June 14, the Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye announced that the great consultation on the school will begin in September, and will take the form of a debate. What topics will be covered and what changes does it announce? We take stock.
What is the great consultation?
[Mise à jour du 15 juin 2022 à 12h32] From September 2022, the major consultation will begin, as part of the major school reform desired by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron and quickly pursued by his new Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye. The latter thus explained how he would proceed, by first of all initiating debates open to all the actors who evolve within or around the school. “It will really be a debate, decentralized exchanges, in all schools” where the “teachers, parents of students, administrative and management staff and other actors in local life” will be invited to speak.
What concrete changes for the start of the school year?
A more inclusive school
Concretely next September, Pap Ndiaye announced the creation of “4,000 additional full-time equivalents of carers for children with disabilities”
Fewer children in class and duplication
Priority given to the elementary course with “an improvement in the student supervision rate“. In practice, this means a lower average number of pupils per class, while it has already fallen from 23 to 21.8 children between 2017 and 2021. Among the youngest, in kindergarten, the duplication of large section classes will be continued in the priority and reinforced priority education networks, known as REP and REP+.
30 minutes of sport per day at school
It was the president himself who announced that elementary school students will now have thirty minutes of sport a day,
in addition to PE hours. “It’s a real revolution, to both learn better (…) and have a real health prevention policy to fight against obesity and the sedentary lifestyle of many of our children and teenagers.“said Emmanuel Macron.
Return of maths in the common core at the start of the school year
In secondary education, confirmation was also made at the beginning of the month of the return of “optional” mathematics in the common core in Première from September 2022. This new scientific and mathematical teaching will be increased to 3 hours 30 per week (compared to 2 hours currently). It will be assessed as part of continuous assessment, without modifying the coefficient currently attributed to scientific education (coefficient 3 for the year of 1ère).
Boosting the attractiveness of the teaching profession
A key point in the reform and the main player in schools, the teaching staff is at the heart of the concerns of the Minister of Education. Accusing a significant drop in its workforce, Pap Ndiaye has the challenge of reviving the attractiveness of teaching professions while an unprecedented shortage of teachers is undermining the next school year.. The Job dating launched with Pôle Emploi had also caused a scandal, and to accommodate the 12.2 million students in September, the minister called on “contract teachers, whose share remains very modest with 1% in the first degree and 8% in the second degree,” he said. In the longer term and in a structural logic, the Minister agrees to review better remuneration and working conditions for professors and teachers.
What is the school of the future?
These schools of the future, experimented in Marseille, bring greater autonomy to primary schools, in particular by allowing headteachers to recruit their own teachers. Traveling to Marseille on Thursday June 2, 2022, Emmanuel Macron reassures: “we are never going to get the heads of establishment to make their own transfer window”. What to answer, on the other hand, teacher shortage which worries the academies. But concretely, according to Virginie Akliouat, spokesperson for Snuipp-FSU, a union of school teachers, “the test has not really started in the 59 schools“. she specifies to the Parisian.