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Marie Lanen
Head of parenting section (baby, pregnancy, family)
According to a study published last Tuesday on the website of the Ministry of Education, the spelling skills of CM2 students are still down compared to the same study of 2015. Grammatical difficulties remain linked to the social environment of students. Doctissimo takes stock.
To establish an inventory of the skills of CM2 pupils, the National Education launched a vast “Reading, writing, counting” survey in 1987 which evaluated the performance of a sample of CM2 pupils in reading, spelling and in mathematics. The latter was renewed in 2007, then in 2005 and in 2021. Pupils assessed, as part of a dictation, in the middle course second year (CM2) in 2021 have less good results in spelling than those assessed in 1987, 2007 and 2015. The decline observed for each observation period between 1987 and 2015 continues in 2021, but less markedly.
Spelling: the skills of French students are declining
According to the results of this survey, the average number of errors in dictation rose from 10.7 in 1987 to 19.4 in 2021. Moreover, the most marked difficulties are grammatical errors (rules of agreement between the subject and the verb, agreements in the nominal group, agreements of the past participle): the agreement of the adjective goes from 46.2% of success in 1987 to 25.3% in 2021 for “worried”. Regarding the agreement of the past participle, 36.3% of pupils correctly write the word “returned” in 2021 compared to 66.7% in 1987. On the other hand, lexical errors remain the least frequent.
Boys have more spelling difficulties than girls
Stable between 1987 and 2007, then increasing between 2007 and 2015, the difference in the number of spelling errors between girls and boys (3.5 errors in 2015) nevertheless tends to stabilize again in 2021 (3.4 errors). In 2021, girls will thus make, on average, 17.7 errors, while boys will make 21.1. Why such a discrepancy? Throughout their schooling, girls are often referred to as being more attentive and diligent about grammar and spelling rules. Similarly, reading is often put forward to fight against spelling difficulties. However, girls are often more likely to read than boys, even in adulthood.
Shortcomings still linked to the social origin of the pupils
Differences in dictation performance continue to be linked to students’ social environment according to the Ministry of Education study. It is in the most advantaged schools and those that are the least advantaged that the weight of social origin is greatest: the group made up of pupils from the least advantaged schools makes an average of 21.9 errors, against 15 .5 in the quarter made up of schools with the most advantaged pupils.