France's National Education Ministry this week announced new measures to get school childrens' basic French and maths skills up to scratch, including two extra hours of reading and writing, and daily dictation exercises.
According to recent figures, 27 percent of students cannot read on entering high school, Education Minister Pap Ndiaye pointed out.
He called this fall in reading level a "point of dissatisfaction and major concern".
"The decline [in the national French level] observed in 2022 concerns all establishments regardless of their social profile," the ministry said, referring to the results of nationwide skills tests for students in their final year of primary school (known in France as CM2).
Figures from the ministry show that in 1987, students made 10.7 mistakes and today they make an average of 19.7 mistakes in a set test.
Ndiaye on Thursday announced a set of measures to rectify the problem.
In its latest recommendations to teachers nationwide, the ministry wants at least two hours a day of reading and writing in the last two levels of primary school (CM1 and CM2), as well as a short daily dictation.
Similarly, for students entering secondary school, an extra hour of French and maths will be added to the programme. This hour will be integrated into the 26 hours of lessons for students and will replace technology class, according to the ministry.
On entering the second-to-last level of primary school (CM1), "all students who are unable to read a text with fluidity and expressiveness, at a speed of 90 words per minute, must benefit from specific daily practice for at least four weeks", the ministry said.
The ministry also plans to introduce national assessments in CM1, for French and mathematics, from the start of the 2023 school year.
Disgruntled teachers
The daily dictation method is not new. It was already forward by Ndiaye's predecessors at the Ministry of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer and Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.
But for some teachers, it simply increases the workload without necessarily improving levels.
"This famous dictation is not revolutionary and we have known for a long time that it is above all a means of evaluating, of checking what the students know, but unfortunately it is not learning", primary school teacher Isabelle Rioual in the northern town of Dieppe told French news agency AFP.
"We are quite annoyed because we are already doing a lot of work on spelling and we do not need yet another internal note. We would rather have less overloaded classes to work better with the students," she added.
First lady chimes in
"Between 1987 and today, we went from 27 hours of lessons to 24 hours of lessons per week in elementary school, all while adding other disciplines," Stéphane Crochet of teachers' union Se-Unsa told AFP.
France's first lady Brigitte Macron – a former teacher – told the press in an interview on Wednesday that she agreed with the principle of stepping up dictation.
"We absolutely must not lower the level of requirement on spelling, and I recommend doing a little dictation every day", she told daily newspaper Le Parisien.
Uniform debate
On a separate school topic, Brigitte Macron also said she was in favour of school uniforms.
She hailed them as a way to mask social differences, and to save time and money.
This subject is controversial in French politics, and has resulted in the creation of a working group in the parliament to look at the issue.
But Ndiaye said again last week on BFMTV that he did not want to "open this debate, at least on a national scale".
A bill from the far-right National Rally that aims to make uniforms compulsory in public schools and colleges was rejected in mid-December by a parliamentary committee, despite support from the right.
The text is expected to be addressed again on Thursday.
