Education Minister Pap Ndiaye announced on Wednesday the creation of an hour a week of reinforcement or deepening in sixth grade French or mathematics, provided by primary school teachers.
“We will implement a sixth grade reform, which involves two very important things in particular. The first is the creation of a weekly hour of reinforcement or deepening in French or mathematics, in small groups, according to the level of the students,” said Pap Ndiaye on BFMTV. “This weekly teaching hour will be provided by teachers from the school, who come from elementary school,” he added.
Generalize “Homework done”
“The second thing is that we are generalizing ‘Homework done’, which is this device with which sixth graders do their university homework, instead of doing it at home in conditions that are sometimes acrobatic,” he continued.
Established in 2017, the Homework Program aims to ease the burden of academic work at university to tackle inequalities at home, for students who wish to do so.
As for the additional weekly hour of French or mathematics, Pap Ndiaye stressed that this measure would allow for “better tapping between primary and secondary, because we know that the step to enter 6th grade, especially for more tangent pupils, is very difficult” .
College “is the priority”
This measure is inspired in particular by a “6th springboard” device tested this year in several colleges of the Amiens Academy, where school teachers will help 6th graders in need.
“There are slightly different methods, but overall this is the case, to make the transition to sixth grade better and to insist on the frailties of students”, indicated the minister, underlining that “it is obviously a novelty in Public Education to involve teachers from schools (…) in the boarding school”. The boarding school “is the priority, because we have assessments at the beginning of sixth grade which are problematic”, explained the minister.
He also announced measures for the last two years of primary school, classes CM1 and CM2, “concerning classical things, dictation, conjugation”. “It is very important (…) to insist on these foundations,” she said.
