For once, France does not have to be completely ashamed of the results of a global study aimed at assessing the level of students, unveiled on May 16. The results of the International Research Program in School Reading (Pirls), carried out in 57 countries and with 400,000 schoolchildren, indicate a stabilization of the reading skills of French pupils in CM1, despite the health crisis linked to Covid 19. France, which has a score of 514 points in 2021, is slightly above the international average (500 points). And, for the first time in twenty years, our country has halved its lag behind the other Member States of the European Union, which themselves have lost eleven points on average. However, this good news should be put into perspective because France remains below the European average (527 points) and is far behind Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, England and even Finland, which are in the lead.
“Our efforts are paying off: let’s continue our action for fundamental knowledge”, welcomed Pap Ndiaye, the Minister of National Education, who prefers to see the glass half full. As soon as the results were announced, his predecessor Jean-Michel Blanquer also immediately rejoiced on Twitter: “Unprecedented! France, the only country in the European Union to have seen its results in primary school improve in five years” . Christophe Kerrero, his former chief of staff, now rector of the Ile-de-France and Paris academic region, gives some explanations.
L’Express: According to the Pirls study, France has succeeded in stopping the fall in the reading performance of its pupils, after fifteen years of decline. What do you think this stabilization is due to?
Christopher Kerrero: I see two factors there. The first is the fact of having kept schools open as much as possible during the Covid crisis. It is important to remember that French establishments closed their doors for only seven weeks during this period, which is well below the average for other countries. This inevitably had a mechanical impact on the results. Our other asset was our educational policy, and in particular the introduction of benchmark assessments at the start of CP and CE1 classes. These have accentuated the desire of all actors – whether teachers, educational advisers, inspectors, academic directors of the National Education services (Dasen), rectors – to improve student results. .
Has the focus on primary school also paid off?
Of course. Our action is not reduced to a simple speech since we have devoted considerable resources to it, aiming among other things to reduce the number of pupils in the classes. That represents two fewer students per class in the space of five years. On the other hand, it is a little too early to know the real impact of the duplication of CP and CE1 classes in priority education since, at the time when the last Pirls survey was carried out, only a few establishments classified REP + were concerned. But I think that if we continue in this way, the results will be further increased and this will also be seen in the other international assessments. The main thing to remember is that we have indeed taken a new step by halving our delay compared to the European average in the field of reading. A motivator for teachers.
As far as reading comprehension is concerned, although the gap is narrowing with the rest of the European Union, France still has fewer pupils reaching the highest scores and more pupils with difficulties. How can the persistence of these inequalities be explained?
There is still a long way to go and it will necessarily take time. What emerges from this Pirls survey, and which is moreover very well explained in a recent study by the Department of Evaluation, Foresight and Performance (Depp), is that French teachers are less into differentiation pedagogical than their foreign colleagues. Only 16% of them say they use individualized reading instruction, compared to 36% of their European counterparts. This is not without effect on the results of the students since it is this differentiation that allows them to progress. On the other hand, the fact that much more staff (61% compared to 45% in the other countries) to formulate their training needs in this area seems encouraging to me.
This is therefore one of the avenues to be explored and accentuated in the years to come…
Yes, we have also launched a whole process of work on the choice of texts, the idea being of course to favor those which will enable the pupils to progress further. Once again, this can only be done over a long period of time because no education system can evolve in less than ten years. After almost five years of work, we are a little in the middle of the ford. These Pirls results show that we are moving in the right direction, when we had fallen far behind other countries. As the Minister recently said, we now need to strengthen all of our policies, whether they relate to evaluation, training or resources. Its action plan for kindergarten, but also the establishment of assessments at the start of CM1 and 4th, are part of the logic of what was initiated in the first five-year term.
In the academy of Paris, you say to insist a lot on the tests of “fluence” which make it possible to measure the ease and the speed of reading of the pupils. Why is it important ?
We have extraordinarily encouraging results since, in the four REP + colleges of our academy, the percentage of students able to read 120 words and more per minute on entering 6th grade has increased from 49.8% to 62.5% between 2021 and 2022. Reaching this reading speed means that you understand what you read and become a good reader. The “fluency” tests are appreciated by the students because they have a playful side. As in video games, they find this logic of level passages which can make them want to surpass themselves. Being able to bring them together in small groups of course makes the work much more efficient.
The playful side that you mention seems all the more important to cultivate since, according to the Pirls study, French schoolchildren have less of a taste for reading than pupils from other countries. How to make them want to read?
The fact of installing libraries in the classrooms, so that the pupils can borrow books for a weekend or vacation, is very important. We must also emphasize everything that is being done in terms of artistic and cultural education, by bringing writers into schools, for example. For several years now, CM2 students have been offered an illustrated book intended to accompany them throughout the summer. The title retained in 2023 is Homer’s Odyssey. Teachers who tell stories also contribute to the transmission of a taste for reading. Finally, in Paris, we have systematized the “quarter of an hour reading”, a time during which students are encouraged to immerse themselves in the work of their choice. A proven method. I stress that all of this will take time, but we are on the right track, as the Pirls study demonstrates.