Christmas holidays: why does the start of the school year take place on Tuesday?

This is one of the oddities of the 2022-2023 school calendar.

A quirk that few parents had spotted when this official document was published in May.

Instead of returning to school on Monday January 2 after the two weeks of Christmas holidays, French pupils will be entitled to an additional day of rest.

The start of the school year is indeed set for Tuesday, January 3 for educational and road safety reasons, related to fatigue.

“The French, in any case a large part of the French, enjoy spending the night of the 31st with family and friends, often with their children.

Sometimes it can be quite far from their homes, at the other end of France, explains Edouard Geffray, director general of school education, number 2 of the Ministry of National Education.

So it is not very prudent, nor reasonable, nor even respectful to have them resume on Monday morning, that is to say the day after the feast day.

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No lost school day

This resumption, on a Tuesday morning, is one of the subtleties of the calendar, such as the start of the summer vacation set this year for Saturday July 8, 2023. That said, Rue de Grenelle ensures that no teaching time will be taken away from schoolchildren. French and that the 36 weeks of class, a pedagogical imperative, will indeed be respected.

“There is no day wasted, because it is a global approach on a year-round scale, deciphers Edouard Geffray.

The volume of annual lessons is the same each year for all students in France.

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Still, this staggered recovery could pose custody problems for some families, even if the FCPE (Federation of Parents' Councils) claims not to have received any complaints in this regard.

“I have already planned to do a day of teleworking, anticipates Julia, mother of a girl attending elementary school in Paris.

This type of staggered recovery is less of a problem today for the tertiary professions, people manage to organize themselves better.

This can get stuck for some parents, but resuming on January 2 would also have posed problems for families who would have had to return to their vacation spots in a hurry.

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