Emmanuel Macron had announced an early return to school on August 20, 2024 for certain students. Who will have less vacation than others?
Last year, a few days before the start of the 2023 school year, Emmanuel Macron announced his desire to bring forward the start of the school year to August 20, 2024, believing that students had “too much vacation”. A few months before the start of the September school year, does this announcement still stand, and which students are affected? On April 18, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal confirmed on BFMTV that the summer vacation would indeed be shortened for some students.
“There are many students whose level drops during the holidays. And so, what we need to do is start with the students who are most in difficulty, get them in before the others.” he declared, thus confirming the start of the school year on August 20. These are therefore success courses organized, like every summer, by teachers who welcome children earlier into schools. “It lasts a week, sometimes two weeks. We want more students to be welcomed,” added the Prime Minister, assuring that teachers would be better paid for this summer mission.
But not all students are affected by this measure. It will therefore be the students with the most difficulties who will be invited to participate in these success courses before the start of the school year in September. The teaching team will then have to identify those who need it the most: “The teaching team will tell the family: if we want him to succeed, either he returns to school before the others, to have a successful internship, to prepare it and therefore, it will be very prescribed, but for the success of the students we will therefore start with these students who are most in difficulty and then, we will see if there will be any developments” indicated Gabriel Attal. The Ministry of National Education also specifies that these successful internships are carried out on a voluntary basis, for three hours per day, for five days, or approximately 15 hours of lessons.
For the FSU-Snuipp representative, this proposal would not be effective, in addition to being stigmatizing for these students. “Since 2008, refresher courses for students have existed during school holidays, and during the last week of August. And for all these years, they have not shown their effectiveness on students who are in great difficulty, we know that it doesn’t work,” Guislaine David, general secretary of FSU-Snuipp, the leading primary school union, told us last August. Furthermore, “these 20% of students, mentioned by Emmanuel Macron, who do not master basic skills in French and mathematics, if they do not master them by August 20, there is a strong chance that they will not still not mastered them on September 1. Miracles cannot be achieved in two weeks,” she added.