La Rentrée, strikes and special education for disruptive students

On Monday 6^th September, my children went back to school after nine weeks of summer holidays. Like millions of other returning students they were faced by two days of scholastic chaos. Teachers went on strike on Monday to protest education reforms and then joined other public sector workers on Tuesday to protest reforms to the pension system, which will raise the minimum legal retirement age from 60 to 62 with a full pension at 67 instead of 65.

Monday saw the implementation of wide-ranging reforms to the lycée system. The reforms change the way the baccalauréat is taught by introducing a core curriculum in ‘première’ (the second year at lycée). This includes two foreign languages regardless of the orientation of the Bac being studied and accounts for 60% of the timetable. The reforms also introduce a ‘mentoring’ system from ‘seconde’ (the first year at lycée), new provisions for helping students in difficulty, changes to teacher training, and job losses - hence the strikes. Vive la Rentrée!

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of last week’s strike actions, my experience, and more importantly my children’s experience, of the French education system is overwhelmingly positive. Xavier’s path has been straightforward; he went to the village primary school, and is now in his second year at the catchment area ‘collège’. Cassandra is handicapped, so her path has been a little more crooked; but even though at times we had to fight for it, she has been in full-time education since she was six after being part-time from the age of three.

In the eleven years that Cassandra has been at school, the emphasis on education of children with special needs (in a fairly wide sense) has moved increasingly towards integration rather than separation. The 2005 law on equal opportunities for the handicapped advocates integration of handicapped children in an «ordinary environment» and reinforces the right to an adapted education locally. Before Cassandra started full-time primary school in Menton, the education authority had proposed sending her to school west of Nice, a minimum one hour journey each way in rush-hour traffic on the A8. Luckily, politics and pushing contrived to free a place just ten minutes away. She is now in a special needs unit in a mainstream collège also in Menton.

In view of this policy, I was interested to see that the education minister, Luc Chatel, has just opened a new type of school in Saint-Dalmas de Tende in the back country. The school, an ERS or établissement de réinsertion scolaire’ (no translation needed), is the first of some 20 new national schools which aim to deal with seriously disruptive pupils. At present, schools have little recourse other than suspensions. Last year a pupil in Xavier’s class was in constant trouble, and although he was threatened with expulsion, when push came to shove, there was actually little the school could do. As the deputy head explained at a meeting to discuss his future, the only real option would be to send him to another college either locally or in Nice, and that would just transfer the problem rather than solve it. The ERS are intended to provide a solution.

The ERS, boarding schools which will take 14 children aged 13-16 for a one year minimum period, are controversial. Mr Chatel defended them in an interview with the Nice-Matin editorial team, when he was asked if they were not just modern-day reform schools. As he explained, the pupils at the new school are all there with the consent of the parents, and the schools are not part of the justice system. He did concede, however, that in extreme cases a child could be sent there under a court order. He also emphasised that «respect for authority» would be a priority, and that lack of respect for either teaching staff or school mates would be sanctioned. Pushed to elaborate, he said that pupils who were disciplined would be required to do several weeks of community service rather than being suspended.

It remains to be seen whether the new schools will be effective or not. But clearly a solution is needed, if the education of the many is not to be disrupted by the very few. As with some handicapped children, integration is not always either possible or productive.


Hilary Spronken, September 2010