Joëlle noticed it in her little school in Lot: yes, the confinement has left traces on her students' notebooks.
"Some who had not returned since March clearly have a high section level, more than CP, others in CE1 have written very little for six months and have forgotten sounds and letters", notes the teacher, in his double level class.
Christine, principal teacher in a high school in Carcassonne (Aude) also notes "delays": "My seconds are goodwill, motivated and happy, but they are also a little lost".
Will the statistics confirm these impressions?
This Monday begins the national assessments, established by the Ministry of National Education to measure the level of children in French and mathematics, at the entrance of so-called “pivotal” classes (CP and CE1, 6th and 2nd).
An imperfect compass: the exercise, imposed by the rue de Grenelle, still bristles some of the teachers, who see in it a lack of confidence from the institution in their ability to exercise their profession: to evaluate and help children progress.
Others dispute the contents, judged obscure, infeasible in the allotted time, useless… "Especially at this time, where the priority is to give back to the pupils the taste for school, not to knock them out with tests", estimates Elisa , a teacher in Hauts-de-Seine, and currently in her fortnight because of a case of Covid in her class.
"Make full use of personalized assistance systems"
Still, the barometer exists and should confirm what the whole school world suspects.
Educational inequalities, the real Achilles heel of the French school, have worsened since the confinement, both because of the social and cultural differences between the students, but also because the management of online courses revealed "de great differences between establishments, and within establishments, between teachers, ”underlines Eric Charbonnier, analyst at the OECD Education Directorate.
And to call for "to make full use of existing personalized assistance systems" to bridge the gaps as quickly as possible.
In Joëlle's school, it is the kindergarten colleague who will come to supervise small groups of CP when the small sections are napping.
"We will do the maximum with the means at hand", she sums up.
“But we have been in dire need of specialized teachers for 2 years, and the school psychologist is crumbling under files.
"
Newsletter - Most of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
The arsenal available to teachers to wage the war against academic failure still does not contain a magic wand, and few new resources.
The ministry only announced at the start of the school year more help with homework in colleges, and a little smaller numbers for schoolchildren.
With 23 children per class on average in primary and 25 in secondary education, France remains above the average for other OECD countries.
