Primary school reforms in France - what is your child's school going to do?

[Bonsoir]

I'd be really interested in knowing what primary schools are going to be doing across France and what your schools/parents think about it all.

Here in Paris the suggestion is that public schools extend the lunch break to 2h45 or 3h.

how long will your lunch break be then? My daughter is going to get a shock here in Belgium, going from the standard 90 minutes here to 50 minute at her secondaire, maybe the secondaire teachers prefer going home early to spending 2 hours eating and sleeping in the middle of the day and not wanting to go back in the classroom!

Not sure yet, no-one has said anything...They are all on strike at ds's school tomorrow.

I really liked the 4 day week and I am concerned that changing the school hours will cause me all sorts of trouble with work :s

Yeah, there's a strike here tomorrow, too!

Our school is planning to extend the lunch break to 11.30 - 2.15, which is a very long break, IMO!

My middle daughter studies in the Conservatoire on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, which makes it a long tiring week for her anyway. I can't honestly imagine adding an extra half-day of school into the mix. I really think kids need the mid-week break. (The reforms won't actually affect her, as she'll be en sixième in September - in a Classe à Horaires Aménagés, studying part-time in school and part-time at the conservatoire). My youngest will be in CM1.

Before Saturday morning school was scrapped, I paid for my kids to attend private school, just so we could have a proper weekend as a family. The younger 2 are currently in a state school, but I will probably consider going private again next year if the reforms actually go through.

We don't know what our timetable will be as the Paris private schools don't yet have official guidelines as to what they will be allowed to do. She will have to do extra-curricular activities during the break but I will try to do piano, English etc rather than some kind of silly filler activity offered by school. Maybe the solfège classes can be scheduled at lunch time rather than the evenings, too.

The mairie here has decided that all schools in the city must follow the same schedule, but I'm not sure if that also includes private schools. I need to check on the Académie de Grenoble website, I guess...

As far as I understand it, the mairies can decide for public schools because the mairie is going to be funding and organising the extra-curricular activities and supervision that are going to be filling in the school day for children who don't go home.

Since the mairies do not get involved in this aspect of private schools, I don't think they get to decide.

What are the proposed reforms exactly? Am in France but without children...know that DSS's school is on strike tomorrow, but didn't know what for...

The current government wants to go back to a 4.5 day school week (it's been 4 days - Mon, Tues, Thurs Fri since they scrapped Saturday mornings in 2006).

Instead of Saturdays, they want to add in Wednesday mornings, although schools can apply for permission to work Saturdays instead.

Children will still only do the same number of hours per week, but with a longer lunch break (in most cases) or an earlier finish. Extra-curricular activity schemes will be available during those "down times", but at a cost to parents!

It will make life complicated for many parents who work - having to pick kids up at 11.30am - as well as many teachers who will need to find childcare arrangements for their pre-school aged kids!

Reform for Dummies (in French - very good).

Why does the lunch hour have to be SOOOO long? Here the primaire/maternelle children do 8.30-12 then 13.30-15.30, except weds 8.30-12, so in total 25.5 hours a week. I have minused the mid morning break from that either. Children often to extra-curricular activities at lunch, meaning 30 minutes to eat and 60 minutes of dance/music/art/cooking. We pay around ?100 a year for each day, don't know anyone who has their children in 4 lunch hours a week, 2 lunch times seems typical. So I pay an extra ?200 for 2 lunch times of cooking/dance. Secondaire do a few hours more hours than primaire/maternelle. How long do French schools do on average per week? I'm not sure how our children would react to being told the already 1.5 hour lunch was going to be longer.

Currently, French maternelle and primary schools do 8 x 3 hour sessions, on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings and afternoons ie a total of 24 hours.

The reform wants children to have a session on Wednesday morning but without increasing the total number of school hours. The most widely adopted idea seems to be extend the lunch break by 45 minutes to compensate for the three hours on Wednesday. In state schools which have a 2-hour lunch break at present, it will therefore increase to 2h45. Filler activities are going to be on offer.

Thanks, bonsoir, I'll read that in the morning as off to bed right now with a v. horrible headache...

Dd's primary had Saturday mornings until 2008.

The head thought it was much better, as the maximum was 2 and half days on the trot with a day and a half break, 2 days school and then a day off. His take on it was that it was too much to expect 10 and 11 year olds to work at the rythmn demanded for more than 2 days without a break.

He was against the changes forced on him by the chattering classes - as he saw it.

It also meant the end of the Saturday morning events such as dictionary presentations to CM2 accompanied by buckets of vin blanc/cassis.

But then I live in France profonde, where Occitan is still spoken, and Paris is a very long way away....

I am quite certain that it is all wrong to expect the whole of France to keep to the same primary school timetable. I can quite see that in rural areas, Saturday morning school might be preferable to Wednesday morning school. However, in Paris it is not at all popular - families often see very little of one another during the working week and their weekends are very precious.

We are in a private school in the western suburbs and so far, we have heard nothing, not so much as a whisper, from the school. There's rumour a go-go at the school gate, but nothing from the school, which I find incredible and yet strangely unsurprising considering these changes could come into effect in 6 months time. Not exactly a lot of time to make alternative arangements.

We have a complication in that the DC attend an international school for three hours of English every Wed morning at the moment, so if French school moves to Wed am, we are going to be struggling to fit in the int school, even if, as has been mooted, they start a class on Wed afternoons (we are an hour away from the int school, so logistical problems kick in, transport etc.)

I wish they would make their bloody minds up and just do it. This fannying around is so annoying. You hear all this guff about France being ultra centralised, but on a major issue like this, it is going to depend on whether the teachers' strikes stymie the whole thing, whether your school is private or public, what the local mairie decides to to.

FFS

Our school is not going to change its timetable for 2013/14 - the parents' association told us last week that the school was going to make an announcement shortly. Other Parisian private sous-contrat schools seem also to be taking the wait and see whether it really happens postponement attitude.

We voted last night that our commune would delay change until 2014. When change does come it will be to keep lunch as it is and finish earlier at 15H45.

Yes, my understanding is that the proposed lengthening of the lunch hour has been the nail in the coffin of the implementation of the reform for September 2013 - no teachers and no parents agree with it! Bertrand Delanoë seems to have backed down on the long lunch hour for Paris schools.

Frenchfancy, does that mean that after 15h45 there will be "activities" financed by the local council, or that the kids will be in garderie? Who voted? The conseil municipal?

There are so, so many things wrong with how this whole issue is being managed, it's awful.

At least there's an option to put off till 2014, though, unlike the new CAPES reform they've sprung on us, which hasn't been voted, has no official texts and is meant to be in place in Sept.

Kids will be in garderie after school. We have no money in the budget for activities. And even if we did where would we find someone to work for 45 mins?

Vote was by the council. When it finally comes into place the reforms will cost us 10k+ . That is a lot of money for a small comune.

Thanks.
45 mins is daft. There is no time for an activity, nowhere to do any activities except the classrooms, so no option for smaller groups, and no money to pay anyone to oversee the activities.
Shifting financial responsibility from central gvmt to the municipalités while claiming it's all for the good of the children is just cynical and deceitful.
Can I ask whereabouts you are? (Vaguely, I mean, am not going to stalk you ).

We are in the Vendée.

Something the French never seem to mention (realise?) is that their school facilities are so poor compared to those in many other countries. "Activities" that are not chalk & talk (or interactive whiteboard) classroom based are almost impossible to implement in most French primary schools because there aren't any rooms beyond classrooms.

On the Ville de Paris forum about the reforms, there was one eminently sensible and popular suggestion: that all DC should go to school from 8h30 to 12h30, five days a week, and that each level should have two afternoons of school, but not all on the same day eg all CM2 would have school on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the conservatoires and sports clubs etc would offer CM2 level activities on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Ditto for all other levels. This would enable much better capacity utilisation of conservatoires, swimming pools, gyms, art schools etc and also allow all teachers to have a bit more space at school in the afternoons (for example to split classes into two and share with specialist teachers ie music).

The trouble with that sort of plan is that it is a nightmare for the parents. if you have 2 or more children in different classes then every afternoon would be taken up with going back and forth. At least at the moment it is just Wednesdays so Mums can actually work. Many of my friends have part time contracts so they don't work Wednesdays.

The suggestion was that the communes would do the logistics, not parents, so that DC would be "free" at 16h30 or 17h00 - they just wouldn't have been in the limiting environment of school premises, rather doing sports/music/art/catechism/whatever.

If parents wanted to use and pay for private facilities, then they could, providing they were "agréée".