The Senate report denounces in particular a reform “too quickly applied” with programs “unsuitable” and an “overload of work”
The reform of the first cycle of health studies, which abolished the “numerus clausus”, was “too quickly applied” and “not piloted enough”, according to a Senate information report which calls on the government to “rectify the situation “. Promised by the executive in 2018 to put an end to the “mess” of the first year of health studies, “the reform was too quickly applied, insufficiently prepared and not sufficiently piloted”, affirms the centrist senator Sonia de la Provôté in a report, which denounces “a very chaotic implementation”.
The Covid-19 certainly did not make things easier, but the health crisis “does not explain all the difficulties”. Starting with “an unacceptable lack of transparency on the number of open places” in the second year of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and midwifery. Quotas which were to be known at the end of March 2020 but that “all the universities had not yet made public” at the end of April 2021, so that “students pass (have) their exams without knowing their chance of success”. The government finally announced 16,700 second-year places last week at the start of the September school year.
” Work overload “
At several levels, “the spirit of the reform” was not respected: “absence of choice” of “minor” disciplines, “not or poorly adapted” programs leading to “overwork”, maintenance of eliminatory marks … Pointed out for its “late reaction”, the Ministry of Higher Education “must urgently provide concrete answers” to current students, by “favoring the validation” of their first year and by “ensuring (ing) a sufficient number of places in the second year ”.
The reform should make it possible to diversify profiles in medicine. The report also calls on the government to “rectify the situation […] in order to avoid that the same errors do not happen again ”in the future, with“ a tighter framing of the universities ”in financing the reform“ up to the needs ”.
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