On the occasion of the start of the school year, Valérie Glatigny was interviewed by several media outlets to present the priorities for this new year. At the heart of these: the quality of education, strengthening basic skills and pupils' success.
“The priority of priorities is basic skills,” the Minister reminded Sudinfo. An ambition that this year translates into 10 concrete positive measures, with a common thread: raising standards while giving pupils more resources to succeed.
First new feature: the CLÉ Test (Calculate, Read, Write) will be run for all Year 4 primary pupils between 15 and 30 September. Non-certifying, it aims to quickly identify difficulties in basic skills and give teachers tools to intervene as early as possible.
This drive to raise standards will also mean, from June 2027, raising the pass thresholds for the CEB, CE1D and CESS to 60%. The aim is to ensure pupils genuinely have the skills needed to continue their schooling with confidence.
However, higher standards must go hand in hand with more support and more autonomy for the school jury. An extra €25 million is being invested in personalised support, equivalent to 460 additional full-time posts in primary school and Year 7. The funds previously allocated to the first differentiation year (which is being scrapped) are also being kept and redirected towards enhanced support for pupils entering secondary school with difficulties in the CEB. As Valérie Glatigny points out: “It makes no sense to raise the pass threshold if you don't also raise support for pupils.”
We should also reassure any worried parents that school juries have been kept. Our teachers are assessment professionals who can take into account each pupil's particular situation, for example a moment of stress during a certifying exam.
In Year 7, learning is also being strengthened with an extra hour of mathematics and two periods of digital skills. This is not just about mastering tools, but also understanding algorithms, studying artificial intelligence and developing pupils' critical thinking towards new technologies.
The quality of education also depends on young people's ability to gradually build their future plans. Orientation activities and career discovery will be introduced from Year 7, with meetings with professionals, company visits and workshops at school, to develop genuine education in choice-making and avoid orientation by default.
Several measures also aim to ensure a school environment conducive to learning: a new scheme to tackle school dropout, including the rollout of the APP100 app to better detect repeated absences and inform parents sooner, continuation of the framework programme against bullying and cyberbullying, and the strengthening of the neutrality framework in state education with a ban on religious and ideological symbols.
Respect for and the authority of teachers form another major focus of this school year. From 1 September, the new Criminal Code strengthens their protection: teachers are now fully recognised among those exercising a societal function, and violence against them can lead to harsher penalties.
Restoring teachers' authority also means supporting the legitimacy of their pedagogical decisions. From this year on, decisions such as holding a pupil back a year will no longer be subject to automatic appeal, as had previously been the case for common-core years. This automatic process could give the impression that decisions taken by teaching teams were inherently biased. Yet teachers are assessment professionals and the first to be able to gauge their pupils' needs. Placing greater trust in their pedagogical decisions also means concretely supporting their authority.
Finally, administrative simplification continues, particularly regarding steering plans, the DAccE (pupil support file) and circulars (limited to 100 per school year), so that head teachers and teachers can devote more time to their primary mission: pupils' learning and success.
CLÉ Test, thresholds raised to 60%, strengthened mathematics and digital skills, personalised support, education in choice-making for better guidance, tackling dropout and bullying, neutrality, respect for and authority of teachers, administrative simplification: this new school year must put the quality of learning and mastery of basic skills back at the centre.