We must put an end to “the taboo of repeating a grade”. It is the return of an old French educational debate, put back on the table by the Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal, who promised Wednesday November 22 to “make decisions” on this subject. A series of announcements is planned for December 5.
These announcements seem to anticipate the conclusions of the mission launched at the beginning of October to “raise the general level” of students, called “Knowledge Requirements”, which is to last eight weeks. At college, his proposal for “level groups” in maths and French caused debate. “A student who enters 6th grade without knowing how to read or count is almost abuse,” argued the minister during a workshop on school at the congress of the Association of Mayors of France. “How do you want to learn history and geography if you don’t know how to read? Physics and chemistry without knowing how to count?” insisted Gabriel Attal. “We have to make decisions. I will take responsibility for them,” he added.
Anti-repetition policies since 2010
Although it has never been banned, repeating a year was made exceptional in 2014 by a decree from Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. A decision based on an observation from the 2010s, which placed France as champion in terms of repetition rate within the OECD, despite a decreasing proportion. Then Jean-Michel Blanquer decided, upon his arrival at the Ministry of National Education in 2017, to modify the rules so that “repetition remains possible when it is in the interest of the student, and in cases which must remain rare.
Repeating a year is now only possible once in the elementary cycle and once in middle school, when the “pedagogical support measures put in place” have not proven their worth. According to the International Program for Monitoring Student Achievement, however, countries with a high repetition rate are less “efficient” than those with a low repetition rate but which provide support for students in difficulty. Following the implementation of these policies unfavorable to repeating a year, its rate fell drastically in France: for 6th grade, it was 4.8% in 2022, compared to 17% in 2005.
Unions against “a two-speed school”
Today, the current minister’s recommendations do not convince the unions. “Thinking that repeating a year can be beneficial for a child is a belief because no study shows it. We must therefore stop making counter declarations,” says Guislaine David, general secretary of FSU-SNUipp, the main primary school union. “Talking about level groups, about repeating a year is a conservative way of seeing school and it is not ours because all of this is based on a form of sorting of students”, also regrets Jérôme Fournier, national secretary of SE-Unsa .
Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the main secondary education union (middle and high schools) also believes that this can create a “two-speed school” with “the good ones on one side and the less good ones on the other” . But, she concedes, repeating a year “can be a solution in certain cases” in middle and high school.
The minister made other announcements on the same occasion. He recalled that he would announce “the possibility for his ministry to label school textbooks”, the content and method of which will have proven their “effectiveness”. He also set a date in January to unveil “a profound reform of training for the teaching profession”, in particular in order to be able to “pre-recruit at baccalaureate level” those who have “the vocation” of teacher and reestablish a “competition at baccalaureate level + 3” followed by a “gradual entry into the profession over two years”. “I think that this will solve part of the problem” of the attractiveness of the profession, he explained, while many positions remain vacant each year, for lack of candidates.