Since Monday, September 9, national assessments have been generalized to all levels of elementary school. In addition to CP, CE1 and CM1, CE2 and CM2 students will also be affected by these tests, which are intended to help teachers adjust their teaching interventions to ensure that students master basic knowledge. The method is highly contested by three teachers’ unions (including Snuipp-FSU, the main primary school union) who are calling for a strike in schools this Tuesday, September 10. The idea is to block these generalized assessments.
3 min
Decoding exercise in reading or calculation in mathematics, primary school pupils will be subjected to tests and assessed from this week. A useful tool for Anne, a CM2 teacher.
“ My goal in my class is to have a snapshot of my class at a given moment, in this case at the beginning of the year, which allows me to have a small picture of where the students are and what the teaching priorities are for the year. ” says the teacher.
Conversely, for Guislaine David of Snuipp-FSU, the main primary school union, these assessments are useless, because they do not take into account the different learning rates of children… She gives the example of the reading test.
” This is an exercise that will time a child’s reading speed, while we know that we have students who will read less quickly, but who will understand what they are going to read, while we have students who read very quickly and who do not understand what they are going to read. “, explains Guislaine David. ” Under these conditions, we will standardize reading practices. We will have more and more teachers who will use methods that will be decoding methods and who will prepare kindergarten students so that they can succeed in decoding and then in rapid reading. ” she adds.
Also readFrance: a return to school marked by suspended or contested reforms
” The tests are not suitable for children » for Snuipp-FSU
The unionist believes that these national assessments aim to control the educational practices of teachers and this reduces their pedagogical freedom. Also, these assessments would not take into account the different learning rhythms of children, nor their handicap, according to Guislaine David.
” We have children who are very different in the classes. We will have a child who will be dyslexic, a child who will be dyspraxic… The disorders “dys” are now very well detected. We will have one who will be autistic, so who will not be able to do the same thing as all the students. But the tests that are given are not adapted to children ” she explains.
” So, we’re going to have a child who is out of it during the whole assessment process because he’s not going to do it, or he’s going to do it, but he’s going to completely fail them and it’s normal that he’s going to fail them, because the framework is not adapted. “, insists Guislaine David who continues: ” Exercises, for example for dyslexics or dyspraxics, the important thing is that the font size is large enough, that the pagination is done in a certain way… We know that when we make our materials for our students, it has to be done in a certain way so that they can find their way around the space on the sheet. And there, there is nothing adapted. So in fact, we act as if they all had the same level of adaptability to a test. »