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| School's out! |
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| Friday, 09 May 2008 | |
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While pupils and teachers strike over the current education reforms, the Schools Minister Xavier Darcos announces a new holiday regime. Nick Rowswell mulls over the consequences Education Minister Xavier Darcos has just decreed that the date for the new school year 2008/09 will officially be September 2 for everybody. As for when the kids break up this will also change. Primary school children on the four-day week always broke up a week later than their older brothers and sisters in lycées or collèges. Now everyone will have finished by the start of July. There will also be an end to Saturday school for primary schools which will all operate the four-day week and their school week will be reduced from 26 to 24 hours. Great. However, I don’t know when the kids are going to find time to learn everything. As of this September, Civic Instruction and History of Art will become compulsory subjects on the primary school national curriculum. In the good old days, when flares were fashion and a tank of petrol wouldn’t cost you a week’s wages, life was simple. Everyone in France would do the same thing at the same time, especially in the public sector. The French education system was a shining example of uniformity. Fully comprehensive and free and, actually, not bad. It was within the nation’s schools that the nation’s young citizens learned ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’, though there was perhaps just a little less liberty than the students would have liked. Throughout the land, kids would learn more or less the same thing at the same time, and when they had finished learning, they would take their holidays at the same time. In the 1960s, French children had exceedingly long summer holidays (thanks to the Liberté clause in the Republican tryptic). They would finish school in early July and would not start the new term until mid-September. I guess the kids needed their long holidays. School used to be five long days per week. In class from eight until five and from eight until four on Saturdays. There was never any school on Thursdays, thus leaving time for the kids to do all the stuff that wasn’t on the curriculum, such as sport, art, music and religious education. After 1968, education changed. All-day school on Saturday became Saturday morning school. Thursday became a school day like any other. The Saturday afternoon moved to Wednesday morning, and Wednesday afternoon became the weekly breathing space. The school day though was still interminably long (it still is). Summer holidays got shorter. The mid-September start became an early September start, and kids had two weeks less holiday in the summer. The missing fortnight was added on to other holidays with an extra week at autumn and winter half terms. And so it was until… the four-day week. To give the small kids a breathing space, it was decided that primary schools 'experiment' with a new system, whereby there would be school on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The missing Wednesday and Saturday mornings would be 'caught up' by having a slightly longer school day (half an hour extra, to finish at 4.30pm), and shorter holidays. This meant that primary schools in many parts of France would start back at school during the last week in August. It also meant that certain bank holidays had to be caught up on certain Wednesdays. Some kids liked the system, others hated it. My offspring goes to a school that runs the four-day week scheme. It means that she can relax on a Tuesday night, but certain teachers, knowing that the pupils then have a free day, pile on the homework for Wednesday. Thanks to the four-day week, and regional variations on the theme, there is no longer one day in September when all the children return to school. There are in fact 25 different rentrée dates. This makes the end of the summer holiday a headache for parents who have kids at primary and secondary schools. They must go home early from their holiday to get the younger ones back to school, a full week or 10 days before the older children need to return. Since May 7, however, this problem has become a thing of the past, now that September 2 will be the rentrée for everybody. Is less school for the kids a good or bad thing? Certainly bad for all the parents who go back to work before the children and will have to pay a childminder during the last days of the summer break. But good for families who want to take advantage of cheaper holiday rates in late August. Good news for the tourist industry – an extra week on the beach for the tourists. I dare say that hotel owners and tour operators will now shove up their prices for the last week in August. However, June is the month that hundreds of thousands of final-year lycée pupils sit their baccalauréat. There are no public exam centres so the authorities use the nation’s secondary schools. This means that the school is emptied of pupils from mid-June onwards. If your children are in their first year of lycée (classe de seconde) they will not return to the classroom after mid-June. Though they are not officially on holiday, they are barred from school for exam purposes. This holiday limbo leaves hundred of thousands of teenagers at a loose end before the official school holidays begin. Numerous local authorities run activities for such kids, but there are still many who have nothing to do. The third term in the French school year is always awkward, and always short. Most kids will actually give up working in mid-May. By this time the marks are in and the end of term report has been written. For his next trick, Xavier Darcos will try to set a national date for the official end of the French school year. Difficult. Whether it be pupils or teachers, by July 14, everything is over. The baccalauréat has been marked, successful candidates have enrolled at university for September and those who have failed have already taken their resits. The dye has been cast, all we can do now is head for the beach. |
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