School rhythm: shorter summer holidays for children
Remove the four-day week in primary and shorten the summer holidays to decrease the daily class schedules to theschool and in college ... it's the working tracks from a year-long debate on school rhythms. The steering committee on school rhythms has reported but Luc Chatel has not made a decision immediately. The Minister of Education has simply declared Monday that he engaged "consultations" to announce in the fall measures on school rhythms to shorten two weeks of summer holidays and bring the lunch break at 1:30 at the beginning of the 2013 school year.
The main avenues envisaged
The question of summer vacation is clearly asked because a shortening of two weeks would reduce the daily number of class hours, judged today too heavy, while keeping the same number of hours per year. Therefore, a "zoning" of three zones with different holiday dates could be considered, as well as for other holidays, except Christmas. But the families single-parent or blended do not see this change of a good eye.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, 18% of under-25s lived in 2006 in families single-parent, with one parent without a new spouse, and 9% of minors in a blended family, with a parent and his / her new spouse and at least one child born of a previous union.
These families Recomposées are particularly worried about the possibility of seeing the summer holidays divided into zones, of which only a few weeks would be common to all the academies. They highlight the experience they have of "zoning" for the only holidays of February and spring.
Regarding the pace of seven weeks of class and two weeks of vacation, it is good for children, according to experts. The respect of this rhythm should allow to extend to fifteen days the holidays of All Saints.
Four days ofschool is indeed a source of fatigue for children. The return to four and a half days for all primary school students is seriously considered. The idea makes its merry way and is shared by almost the entire educational world. Back from school on Saturday morning or Wednesday morning?
In terms of daily schedules, the steering committee tended for up to five hours of class per day in primary, sixth and fifth grade. And six hours in the fourth and third. Today, schoolchildren have six hours, not counting personalized help for the weakest of them. The committee then proposed an ambitious project of educational accompaniment from the CP to the 5th, one of the goals being that the children have "more homework to do at home". The other goal is to bring schools and colleges, in the spirit of the "common foundation" that every student must acquire at the end of college.
The schedule from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm would become common to all students and, as claimed by the parents of CIPF students, a lunch break of 1:30, during which there would be no classes or support, should be respected at the national level. From the CP to the 5th, would remain two hours that would be devoted to all types of aid and support, support both at the expense of the state and communities.
