French students go back to school amid uncertainty over reforms
Be it changes to curriculum, a staffing crisis or a potential strike, teachers are facing unprecedented uncertainty as they prepare to welcome twelve million pupils back at school this week.
Outgoing Education Minister Nicole Belloubet – who visited two schools on Monday – told reporters she was happy with the way things were turning out.
"I don't deny that here and there, a few teachers are absent, but in the vast majority of situations, the teachers are there and that is fortunate," she told France Inter radio.
One of the hot topics of the month is the recruitment issue – with 3,000 teaching posts in both public and private sectors not filled.
Despite this confidence, Catherine Nave-Bekhti, of the CFDT Education union says teachers were feeling especially nervous due to the unprecented political crisis and the fact that a new Education Minister has not been named.
Level groups
More than 850,000 teachers returned to their primary, secondary and high schools on Friday, a few days before their students tasked with fine-tuning back-to-school plans.
One of the other challenges they face is organising "level groups" for French and mathematics in middle school classes, a reform launched by outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal when he was Education Minister.
This came after a 2022 Pisa study revealed a "historic" decline in French students' proficiency in mathematics and a significant drop in reading comprehension.
Another issue is the modification to the national exam for the end of middle school known as le brevet.
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