Most parents have already heard about the national assessments organized at the beginning of the year in primary, secondary and high schools. New for the 2024 school year: all levels of primary school are now affected, i.e. classes from CP to CM2. Enough to make some teachers’ union organizations jump, up in arms against this tool brought up to date by former minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in 2017, upon his arrival at rue de Grenelle.
“We do not need standardized national assessments to conduct an educational policy and to help students progress,” explained Guislaine David, co-secretary general of SNUipp-FSU during a press conference on August 26. The union, which is the majority union in primary education, has joined CGT Educ’action and SUD Education in announcing a strike notice on September 10 as a form of protest. The same arguments come up every year: these tests are “a source of stress for children”, “time-consuming for teachers” and would “undermine their educational freedom”. These are all preconceived ideas, according to Franck Ramus, research director at the CNRS and member of the Scientific Council of National Education, for whom these assessments represent, on the contrary, an opportunity for students and teachers alike.
L’Express: Does this revolt by certain teachers’ unions against national assessments surprise you?
Franck Ramus: No, unfortunately it is a constant. For years, teachers’ unions have been protesting against this extremely useful and even essential tool. Just as they are generally opposed to the production of data that allows us to evaluate the quality of the school system, its flaws and its progress. As if they preferred that we remain in the dark, that we avoid looking at what works or not in terms of pedagogy and methods. I admit that I have difficulty understanding.
One of my hypotheses is that this gives teachers an additional workload since they are asked to enter students’ results on a dedicated online platform. This task is of course time-consuming and should, in my opinion, be rewarded with a bonus as was mentioned at one point. I see another reason for this opposition, more ideological this time: some teachers fear that they themselves will be judged and evaluated according to the results obtained by their students. However, this is not at all the aim of the approach, and experience has shown that this is absolutely not the case.
What is the purpose of these assessments which will take place at the start of the year in all primary school classes and partly in secondary school?
First, let’s clarify that this tool is not really new. After having been more or less abandoned for a while, it was rehabilitated by Jean-Michel Blanquer, when he arrived at the head of the ministry in May 2017. Barely installed on rue de Grenelle, the latter announced the implementation of national assessments at the beginning of CP from the following school year. The deadline was unfortunately very short and everything was done in a rush. The first task of the Scientific Council of National Education, appointed immediately by Jean-Michel Blanquer, was therefore to rethink these tests for the following year so that they would better match their primary purpose: to detect, as early as possible, the difficulties encountered by certain students so that their teachers could help them as best as possible.
We quickly understood the importance of introducing other assessment phases, in the middle of the CP year and then at the beginning of CE1 to measure, in particular, progress in reading. Many international studies demonstrate the importance of acting very quickly in this area. We now know that students who are slow to master the basics of decoding will have a lot of trouble catching up later on.
Did these tests actually help improve the reading level of CP pupils?
Unfortunately, their impact is impossible to prove since these assessments were implemented everywhere and at the same time. To measure their effectiveness, it would have been necessary to make a comparison between schools that use them and other comparable ones where this is not the case. We are here coming up against a recurring flaw in French educational policy, which consists of applying a measure immediately and throughout the territory without going through a controlled experimentation phase. This is a real problem!
The latest example is the wearing of uniforms, adopted in some schools this year. Even if improvements are noted later in terms of results or school climate, we will never know if these are directly linked to the uniform. Here again, it would have been necessary to carry out a comparison between a control group and another which applies this policy, by drawing the volunteer schools at random between the two groups.
Many teachers worry that assessing children and adolescents at the beginning of the year will cause them a lot of stress and anxiety. Isn’t that the case?
It all depends on how the tests are presented to them. Obviously, a teacher who says: “be careful, today we are going to do the national assessments, you are going to have to perform very well because it is very important”, will generate stress. Teachers are instructed to play it down and not make a big deal out of it. Moreover, the results obtained do not appear on school reports and students do not even have to know them. Neither do parents, unless they specifically request it. We also hear a lot about the risk of stigmatizing certain children. But, here again, it is all about communication: we must obviously not tell students who are given differentiated exercises based on their difficulties that it is because of their poor performance or that it is a punishment.
Another recurring criticism: this system would encroach on the pedagogical freedom of teachers. Moreover, many say that they are perfectly capable of evaluating their students themselves…
They are partly wrong. While they are of course able to assess their students based on exercises, none of these tests will tell them how they are doing in relation to national expectations and the age group concerned. The tests set up by the Depp (Editor’s note: National Education Statistics Service) are much more reliable and provide teachers with national benchmarks, which seems very important to me.
Some may be satisfied with the level of their students even though it is well below national expectations. And conversely, others may be excessively demanding without necessarily realizing that they are well above the national average. Once again, why deprive yourself of these points of comparison which are an opportunity for both students and teachers? Educational freedom does not reside so much in the choice of tests as in the educational response that teachers will give to the test results.
Is this device improvable?
Yes, there is a question that we still need to work on at the National Education Scientific Council: how can we help teachers to use the results obtained and to intervene effectively for the benefit of students in difficulty? I think that the lack of support and the incomprehension expressed by part of the profession probably comes from there. Some teachers, once the results are obtained, spontaneously put solutions in place, while others feel more helpless. Hence the importance of emphasizing continuing education, another crucial issue.
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