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French educational system in crisis |
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Sunday, 03 July 2005 |
French educational system in crisis
Although the French government spends huge amounts of money on education, the level of knowledge among French teenagers is quite low.
 The former minister of education, Mr. François Fillon tried to reform the school-leaving examination system, changing the number of obligatory exams from twelve to six. Presently the certificate ending secondary school is based on exams in twelve subjects, the same in every school. According to the reform, there would be only six exams, and the remaining marks would be taken from the grades obtained by pupils during the last year of their education. It is obvious that the level of requirements is different in every school and it means that the pupils in France would loose their chance of nationally equal grades.
Minister Fillon did not have to wait long for the young French people's answer. They rejected the changes and organized mass protests in Paris. They achieved their goal - the reform has been suspended. But the problem of the low level of education has not disappeared at all.
Nowadays a French pupil has a quite traditional method of schooling: 6 years of primary school, 3 years of grammar-school, then a 3-year-long term in secondary school with an academy as the last step on his educational path. The government plans to reform it by introducing an obligatory grammar-leaving examination and a new programme of teaching. According to these plans, every school child aged from 5 to 16 will have to deal with the same requirements (of course on a different level depending on his age). The new teaching programme focuses on the main subjects such as: French language, mathematics, foreign language, physics, chemistry, biology and social science. Teachers in France are quite sceptical in their opinions of the minister's plans. They cannot imagine that there will be no obligation to pass an exam in history, such a crucial subject for complete education. This is one of the reasons why the French teachers' trade unions released an official protest. In their opinion the new schooling programme is absolutely insufficient to educate young people well. The pupils disapprove of it as well, saying that teachers will focus on the subjects from the examination list, neglecting the rest, especially the artistic ones.
Some time ago, the French press ran a story about three boys from a grammar school who tried to kill their friend when he failed to agree to do their homework. It shows that there is one more element of the crisis in the French educational system. This is the increasing violence among young people. Everybody knows about the gang warfare in schools. What is worse, everybody knows the teachers are very often helpless as well.
All this means that the new government, appointed by Jacques Chirac after the defeat of the European referendum, with a new minister of education Gilles deRobien has a lot to do in this area, even though there are no allies in sight.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 04 September 2006 )
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