There’s growing apprehension in France that the lycée (higher secondary school) system works students too hard, and that they are graded too fiercely, making them victims of a system designed to fail them.
A handful of new books are stirring this debate. In one, Richard Descoings, head of Sciences Po, the well-known university in Paris, laments that French schools are “training generations of anxious youths, who worry about their future, feel treated like numbers (and) distrust one another and the system”. Last year, Descoings visited 80 schools and met 7,000 pupils as part of a government review of lycées. Pupils told him, he reports, that in school they veered “between boredom and dread”.
In another book, Peter Gumbel, a British journalist-turned-academic, argues that France’s harsh grading system is “a veritable wound that has damaging results on morale, self-confidence and student performance”. It is almost impossible to get full marks in the baccalauréat, the school-leaving exam invented by Napoleon in the 19th century. This year, just over 30 pupils, or 0.006 percent of those who sat the bac, were awarded 20/20, whereas 8 percent of British A-level students got the new A*. Only 22 percent of French pupils scored more than 14/20. A report by the University of Cambridge exam board warns British universities considering applicants with the bac that “an overall result of 16/20 is a rare and outstanding achievement” and “that 14/20 is attained only by the top flight candidates”.
Is such toughness necessarily a problem? It was the need to distinguish excellence that led the British to introduce the new A* grade. The French lycée system has plenty to recommend it, not least its meritocratic flavour, since the country’s best schools are state-run. The broad-based nature of the bac, which does not impose early specialisation and gives all students a grounding in subjects such as philosophy and languages, is an advantage. For the best of the crop, the system is an efficient generator of a highly qualified elite.
The trouble, say critics, is the combination of strict grading with an overloaded timetable and a focus on learning through failure. Lycée pupils have long days, often from 8 a.m to 6 p.m, designed to suit the needs of teachers rather than pupils, says Descoings. An official report says that, including homework, lycée pupils work an average of 45 hours a week (in the country that invented the 35-hour week for adults).
Luc Chatel, the education minister, has begun to make some changes. A reform this term, offers 15-16-year-olds new options in such subjects as art and technology, and gives all pupils time with a personal tutor to help with learning difficulties. Some 100 pilot schools are trying out a new timetable, with academic subjects in the morning and sport in the afternoon (only 20 percent of secondary school pupils now take part in school team sports). The government has also launched a nationwide consultation on school hours.
Whether any of the new ideas will come to anything is another matter. The French education establishment, and its 1 million-strong teaching body, is filled with powerful lobbies, which fiercely defend subjects, teachers, students and other corporatist interests. It “has an interest in keeping the system as it is,” says Descoings.
(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)