French schoolchildren are progressing in French, college students stagnate

The latest Cedar study reports a slight improvement in language skills and writing understanding for CM2 schoolchildren, while 3rd school students stagnate.

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When it comes to assessments of the level of French students, good news is often mixed with nuances. The latest study of the cycle of disciplinary assessments carried out on samples (cedar), conducted by the Statistical Directorate of National Education (DEPP) and published on September 28, is no exception to this rule. If the assessment is good in primary, it is less so in college.

Schoolchildren, evaluated at the end of CM 2 sub>, have slightly progressed in “language mastery” compared to the last cohort tested in 2015. Among the skills evaluated: vocabulary, grammar , understanding a text, including non-literary, the ability to formulate answers and, for college students, to build an argument and to be critical.

This is the first time that the level has grown at the end of primary school, after more than a decade of stagnation, between 2003 and 2015. Thus, “62.5 % of students have a satisfactory mastery of skills due at the end of primary schooling, while they were around 60 % until 2015, “said Depp.

In the weakest group, which represents 1.2 % of students, children are however considered “in very great difficulty in reading and in studying the language”. The group just above them, which has 9 % of schoolchildren, is that of “low compreheurs”, little comfortable to restore the overall portrait of a text. In the most efficient categories, we find in mind the group of “critical readers who have an understanding of the evolution of the narrative frame” (9.2 % of the workforce) and the second group, capable of among others to select Information chosen in a text to answer a question (21.2 %).

a slight decrease in third level

Despite these encouraging results, several problems persist: first, their increase is “carried by students outside priority education”. Those who are educated in the REP and REP + networks remain more in difficulty than the average. The DEPP also specifies that the students evaluated are those of the 2021 cohort, the vast majority entered in CP in 2016, before the entry into force of the duplication of the classes of this level.

Independently of the classification of schools in priority education or not, the DEPP is capable of measuring the differences in results according to the average social positioning index (IPS) of the school. Unsurprisingly, the weak point of the French system persists: the levels remain very marked by the social origin of the students, “the average score progressing as the social level increases”, writes the Depp. On the other hand, this gap has ceased to increase, and it stabilizes around 30 points between the least favored and the most favored schools.

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/Media reports.