Do school holidays last too long? Emmanuel Macron, visiting this June 27 in a school under renovation in the northern districts of Marseille, called for opening the debate on school time. He called it “great French hypocrisy”. “Your college students, when did they start their vacation? We have children who have two and a half months of vacation, almost three for some,” said the head of state, visiting the second city. de France until Wednesday for the second phase of its “Marseille en grand” plan launched in September 2021.
“We have to rethink this time in the year. When we have a three-month vacation, inequality returns,” said Emmanuel Macron. At the start of the school year, the students “come back with the skills they had a month to a month and a half before the end of classes: we destroy collective learning in a way”. In addition to educational problems, the current school rhythms cause health problems, according to Emmanuel Macron: “We stuff the weeks of our children, who arrive exhausted every evening”, he said.
The Head of State had already spoken about school time this Monday in Marseille. He had announced that the colleges would be gradually opened from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and that nursery school would be accessible from the age of two in priority education districts, starting with Marseille. According to him, these measures will make it possible to fight against “school inequality”. “School inequality is created in these times when the child has been sent home”, underlined the president then. “In college, the battle is not to let young people drop out of sixth grade.”
More autonomy for teachers
The renovation of schools in Marseille, which benefits from a joint budget from the State and the town hall of 1.5 billion euros, is considered one of the priorities of the “Marseille en grand” plan, while some of the 470 primary schools in Marseille are in a deplorable state. But beyond the question of infrastructure, the president also defended on Tuesday his vision of an innovative school where there is “even more freedom and autonomy” for teachers and school directors.
In September 2021, Emmanuel Macron announced the establishment in Marseille of an educational experiment called “the school of the future” and endowed with 2.5 million euros. It should allow establishments to finance an innovative project around culture, languages, the environment or science by giving directors the opportunity to participate in the recruitment of their teaching staff. This last point is particularly criticized by the teachers’ unions. According to them, this experience undermines the equality of opportunity in the Republican school. Emmanuel Macron announced on June 2 that “the school of the future” would be generalized throughout the territory.