CP, is the youngest class in the French primary school. Children in this year group are usually 6 or 7 and in my school, there is only one CP class. Something that I have recently noticed in my school is that some of the pupils from the CP class are in the CE2 class at certain times of the day. Initially, I found this confusing, as the next class up from CP is CE1, therefore I did not think this was a composite class. Why were 6/7 year olds sometimes in the same class as 8/9 year olds? I thought that my teacher, Madame Royer, would be the best person to ask as she speaks English well. When I began to ask her about this, she knew immediately what I was talking about, and I realised that this was probably quite a big issue in the school. She said that the CP class is the largest class in the school (this is also something I have noticed during my first couple of weeks), with 29 pupils. The other classes have around 20-25 pupils in them, and therefore the CP teacher can sometimes find that 29 pupils are too many to handle. This is also made worse by the fact that these children are the youngest, meaning they are harder to manage and usually do not concentrate as well. These two factors combined, means that the CP teacher has a lot of work to do, therefore the teachers in the school decided that it would be best if around 5 of the CP pupils went into the CE2 class (the smallest class in the school), whenever the CP teacher saw it as appropriate (for example, if she needed a rest from looking after 29 6 year olds!).

Madame Royer explained to me that this was really not popular with the parents of the children who spent time in 2 different classes, as they would rather their children remained in the same class all day, with children of the same age. She then told me that Emmanuel Macron (the French President) wanted there to be a maximum of 12 pupils in every CP class in poorer neighbourhoods of France, in order for the younger children to receive more teacher attention earlier on. Another change that has recently been implemented in some primary schools (particularly in Nice and Marseille) by The President, is that they are only having 4 day weeks (a whole day off on a Wednesday instead of a half day). This means that children are in school for four days, and out of school for three. In Scotland, the majority of schools are open Monday to Friday, with no half days. This is not seen as an unachievable number of days for children to be in school by Scottish teachers.

Emmanuel Macron also wants compulsory education to start at the age of three, from September 2019. This means that schools across France will require an additional 800 school staff in total. The current age for compulsory education in France is six, when children enter the CP class. The President feels that nursery in France should no longer merely be treated as ‘childcare’, but it should be educational too.

In my opinion, I think that three is too young for children to begin compulsory education. However, I do also agree that six is too old. I also feel that 12 as a maximum number of pupils for CP classes in disadvantaged areas seems like not enough. This would mean needing more teachers in every school and from my previous experience, 12 pupils seems more than manageable.

• The Connexion, (2017), “Changes in Store as Children Head Back to School”
• The Connexion, (2018) “School to Start from Age 3 in 2019”.