This was the emblematic measure of the “knowledge shock”, announced in December 2023 by Gabriel Attal, then Minister of National Education. As soon as it was known, the level groups set all the teachers’ unions against this principle, as well as the specialists in educational sciences. Nicole Belloubet, who came to power in February, after the departure of the ephemeral Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, successor of Mr. Attal, who left for Matignon, devoted a good part of the spring to carrying out this project, which she then basically did not approve of. The measure began by changing its name, Mme Belloubet, now a resigned minister, prefers the expression “needs groups”.
At the beginning of the school year, the implementation of this system in the middle school, for classes of 6my and 5mytakes very diverse forms from one place to another. “There are several ways to create “needs groups”. Each establishment responded according to its own needs”, said m.me Belloubet, Tuesday, September 10.
According to the survey on the return to school carried out by SNPDEN-UNSA, the majority union of school principals, this is correct: 60% of respondents have created heterogeneous groups, 18.5% have mixed them, creating groups that were both homogeneous and heterogeneous. Only 21% grouped children by grade. The SNES-FSU, which carried out its own calculations, arrives at slightly different orders of magnitude: 35.5% of universities “fully implement the reform”According to the union’s general secretary, Sophie Vénétitay, 64.5% do not implement it or do so only partially. According to the two studies, the schools where the reform is being implemented as planned are therefore in the minority.
Without “overtime”
In reality, the system is not very restrictive on paper: it is the teams that constitute the groups. Only the group of students with the greatest difficulty must not exceed fifteen students (and even this figure is only suggested), and there is no limit on the number of others, as specified in the note of March 15, which “The number of students per group is at the discretion of the school.”
This, however, poses a first problem, since most schools do not have the means to form a group of fifteen without overwhelming the others, including those who, despite everything, have needs: “Thirty students together is no longer a “needs group”, it is a class”says Thierry (name has been changed), a mathematics professor at Essonne.
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