The announcements were not slow after the publication of the new OECD Pisa study. The Minister of Education Gabriel Attal proposed, Tuesday, December 5, a series of reforms to “restore standards” to schools, middle and high schools, and in particular to strengthen the teaching of mathematics and French, in a letter addressed to teachers.
Among the measures announced, a new baccalaureate test in mathematics and scientific culture will be created in first class from the 2025-2026 school year, while the patent diploma will be essential for direct entry to high school “from the session 2025”. New programs will be put in place in primary school, “level groups” in French and maths in middle school. Teachers, and not families, will now have the final say on repeating a grade.
“Requirement”
“School, middle school, high school: my wish is to restore standards at all levels. With science and common sense as a compass,” underlines the minister in this letter, communicated before a press conference to present these measurements planned for the beginning of the afternoon.
Believing that “our school needs an educational revitalization at the hands of teachers”, the minister announced in particular that teachers “will now have the last word regarding repetition”, in the first level (nursery and elementary) as in the second level (middle and high school). They will also be able to “recommend, or even prescribe” successful courses to students during school holidays “conditioning their passage to the next class”. He had recently affirmed that it was necessary to “revisit” the “question of the taboo of repeating a year”.
New programs
Gabriel Attal also indicates that “new programs will apply to primary school, starting next September with classes from kindergarten to CE2”, with the principles of “simplification” and “clarification”. Concerning middle school, level groups will be created “from the next school year” in 6th and 5th grade for French and mathematics teaching, and “from the start of the September 2025 school year” in 4th and 3rd grade.
Furthermore, the certificate will be reformed to strengthen its “requirement” and its obtaining “will condition direct access to high school”. Students who do not obtain it will have to join a “prep-high school” class.
For high school, the general and technological baccalaureate, which currently provides for an anticipated French test at the end of first year, will now include another, “dedicated to mathematics and scientific culture, for all of our students”, he announces.