[Music] Frances national education system the system scolaire is a source of fascination around the world some say the quality of learning is exceptional and indeed studies show that Frances over 12 million students are smart and well educated so some say the system should be copied by other countries but others say the system is rigid strict old-fashioned it only encourages people to be the same instead of promoting individuality so what is it like to really go through the French school system and just how smart or French kids grab your book bags and join us for this
French Connexions Plus [Music] [Music] Frances education system is highly centralized and organized just like in other countries it's divided into three stages so you have austin llamo Prima primary education Oh Sonya mall segunda secondary education and Austin llamo Supervia higher education a whole other kettle of fish will explore in another show now primary and secondary education that we're focusing on today are regulated by the all-powerful Ministry of National Education and the ministries chief objective is to set the national curriculum so that goes for public schools of course but also the vast majority of private schools
and friends at the primary and secondary levels the core curriculum is the same for all students at any given grade the idea is for people to get an equal chance at life by starting out with the same education former government minister Zuffa he is widely credited as creating the modern French school laiqa hitt began in the 1880s he passed laws making education free public and secular Lake schooling today is obligatory for children between the ages of 3 and 16 if you're familiar with the anglo-saxon system the names of French grades might seem confusing primary education
is divided into two sections école maternelle with grades 56 remain sexual and gone sexual and econ animal fair city sulla seduced sama and Sindhu secondary education is divided into two other sections caleche middle school that goes from cesium to Toit's m and lease a high school three years segunda Palmilla and the final year definitely in France students are mostly graded out of 20 and the system is notoriously harsh teachers in public primary and secondary schools are civil servants with nearly a million members of staff the Ministry of National Education is Frances largest employer and education
is the government's biggest budget the driving philosophy behind French education is in Getti date everyone should have the same education and that goes as far as everyone having the same hand right it's funny G because this is something that foreigners tend to pick up on French people don't really seem to notice the fact that they have the same and writing at least when they're little when you grow up you kind of grow into your own handwriting but when you're learning how to write there's a special kind of handwriting that you learn and it's a special
kind of handwriting but teachers use as well and moreover everyone here learns to write in ink not even in pencil it's right in France you use a fountain pen and all your homework is handwritten it's not written on a computer and then printed that goes for essays in high school as well in fact there's a special kind of paper that you use in France that has squares essentially in lines that you basically have to fit your hand right into and this is one of many school supplies that French people take very seriously I'm here with
Liv and Savannah two sisters so Liv you're going into the equivalent of second grade and Savannah you're going in to sit and do the equivalent of fifth grade and you're going to show us what's in your backpack do you mind if I take a look I actually have your list of school supplies for this year and as you can see it's quite long here and quite detailed they have my pencil cases the first one is for pens to write with and the second one is for colored pencils one two three four notebooks an agenda write
down your homework the Pichette paper holders two folders it's here on your list yes Neverending very big pack of paper and lives you you write on this kind of paper - yeah unless it's a board there's one thing missing though in your bag books yeah yeah so on top of on top of all this you'll have books as well seems like you've got a quite a heavy load for when you get to school says good luck at all thank you at the end of high school French students take a state exam called the baccalaureate or
the back for short now this is a monument of French education that's been around for more than 200 years and French people love to brag about the baccalaureate and just how difficult it is because it implies that French children are very smart now there are three kinds of baccalaureate that you can pass there's the professional baccalaureate that prepares you for about 80 wide-ranging professions from cooking and carpentry and also dentistry so many professions you also have the technological baccalaureate that focuses on Sciences and computers and then you have the general baccalaureate as well the back
has a few core subjects that everyone has to take things like philosophy or even sports but for those students who take that last back the back gen aha they have to choose one of three tracks and these are called PDF and french and you can see there three of them here you have the S which focuses on sciences and math yes which focuses on economics and social sciences and then you have L which focuses on literature and the humanities and arts and which interesting is that here in France there's an unsaid hierarchy between these three
fie das is considered to be the most prestigious followed by us which is which is very good for the smart students but perhaps not the nerds in the class and then you have L which is considered to be the back for slackers which is really unfair and a complete exaggeration but what is true is that you have to be very careful when you choose which vdl you take because in France you're put on an academic and then a pretty much a career track and it's really hard to jump tracks afterwards so you pretty much have
to decide what you want to be when you are just sixteen years old the back of course has its critics some people even say it's lost its value over time as almost everyone who takes it now seems to pass well let's take a look at the statistics in the 1960s 60% of people taking the baccalaureate passed whereas these days it's closer to 90% so a lot of people say what in the world is the value of the baccalaureate if everyone seems to pass changing the national education system though is a hot issue successive governments have
tried to reform what's been called the mammoth but just how hard is it inside a French classroom flow you went to find out more [Music] so I'm joined with a Peter Gumbel here we're at the Ithaca a school in the heart of Paris and Peter you've written several books about the French education system they shoot school kids don't they for instance elite Academy French school without tears what would you say characterizes the French style of teaching well the one hand free schools are very demanding they have very high standards if you come out of a
French school with the baccalaureate classic school evening exam you're very good at lots of things you could have lost a few good at maths you have a good general education on the other hand you also have a very high failure rate a lot of kids almost one in four really struggle at school and when you look into why that is you discover quite quickly that there are important differences between the culture of French schools and the culture in many other countries particularly in the Anglo phone world and those differences are primarily the role of the
pupil and the relationship with the teacher for example the classic things of encouraging and motivating of helping kids progress and saying you know you can get there which you find in English in American schools is really quite rare here you have much more this idea that you have to fit into a mold in France you play a much more passive role in the classroom as a child you're there to seep in information from from the teacher what consequences does this have on French students there's a lot of stress in the system there's some tests by
the the OECD the Pisa tests we show that French kids are more stressed than anybody else in the world about French homework especially in maths and overall you can see that kids come out of French schools less willing to participate less sure about their abilities and plays a role this this takes a toll on on people's egos and psyches now equality is a driving force in French education and yet there's massive inequalities within the system what do you think this is due to well this is one of the great paradoxes of the system in that's
the word eagle eta equality is actually written on the front of many many schools around the country and yet when you look at the statistics the number of kids who fail it's particularly kids who are from disadvantaged backgrounds who do badly and there is a sort of a situation in the system and the school system of the class structure so that if you come from a relatively well-off family you're going to do relatively well in in school and if you don't then you weren't in fact if you look at again at the OECD statistics international
statistics you'll see that the French school system is one of the most unequal in the world do you think it's possible to change the French education system well what we've seen is that over the last 20 years there's been a realization that the system isn't working you know education everywhere is incredibly difficult to change parents and teachers have high expectations they have memories of their own education so changing anything is always complicated but what's important is that the French themselves understand the system doesn't work the phony rate is too high it's it's embarrassing and more
it's it's seriously damaging to a society to have an education system where a quarter of the kids are failing and so people are saying we need to change and finally we need to get on with it well we'll have to leave it at that Peter thank you so much for being on our show French connections plus many of you sent in questions about the French education system starting with Robert Skelton he says even though France is a secular state can parents opt to send their children to religious schools well Robert religious schools do exist in
France and they are of course private the majority of them are Catholic but you also have Protestant Jewish and Muslim schools now public schools meanwhile are of course secular which means that there aren't religious classes but students learn about religion world religions in a kind of trance disciplinary way through history civics and philosophy and other question now from a wa m she says can parents choose to homeschool their kids in france homeschooling does exist in france it's very rare and it's highly regulated in fact families that homeschool their children are subject to inspections from the
state they have to prove that they're giving their children a proper education and if they can't prove that well they can be subjected to a fine and in some extreme cases they can actually spend some time in jail well I guess I just shows you how seriously people take education here in France that wraps it up for today's show thanks so much for watching be sure to tune in next time when we'll graduate up to a special on higher education and in the meantime please keep sending us your questions you can tweet me at Flo
Vilma know or you can check out our Facebook page and we'll see you soon for the next French Connection plus and don't forget your bookbag you
