Like a Manichean situation. All white, or all black. Repeating a year, brought back into the debate by Gabriel Attal this week as part of his announcements for the overhaul of secondary school learning, is far from unanimous among our readers who are called to tell us their experience. If some have had a “very bad experience”, others, on the other hand, consider their repetition as a chance, an opportunity, which allowed them to find their way.
An “injustice” for some students
At the end of each quarter, the same refrain. It’s time for the class council to give feedback on the students’ report cards. The last day of the year has long been decisive in schooling: teachers decided whether or not they wanted the student to repeat a year. The Minister of National Education wishes to return to this old formula which leaves control to the teaching staff rather than to parents. Painful memories come back for former students. As for Alphonsine, aged 34 today, who experienced her transplant “as an injustice”. “It “broke” my schooling and demotivated me because during this year of repeating a year I was repeating homework from the year before and I was getting good results by doing nothing. At the end of this year of repeating a year, I moved to the second general year but, having been demotivated during the unfair year of repeating a year, I no longer had the desire,” she recalls, bitterly.
At 40, Kevin also experienced this school experience as “a failure, a punishment”, he tells 20 minutes. Although he finally succeeded in becoming an entrepreneur today, this former student in difficulty was forced to repeat twice: the sixth grade and the final year. “I was separated from my friends to find myself at the back of the class with other students in my situation or who sometimes had real difficulties, it dragged me down. After that, I followed an extremely chaotic and difficult schooling, school was my enemy,” he regrets. “My doubling was useless, the second year passed like the first. Without a change in relationship with the student, without more sustained attention, everything repeats itself identically,” agrees Denis, 67 years old. Many of our readers have experienced repeating a year as a negative ordeal, particularly in terms of social relationships. Anthony, 35, regrets this third year when he saw “all [ses] friends go to high school” while he was forced to redo his class.
A “necessary” step
For others, it was clearly beneficial. Despite this feeling of failure, Claudine, 67, does not regret “absolutely not her repeating a year” which she sees as a “necessary” transition. “I would never have obtained my baccalaureate which subsequently allowed me to have a great professional career,” she explains. “I don’t know what studies are supposed to prove that repeating a year should be banned in principle, because if I hadn’t repeated a year I would probably have failed even more in Terminale,” argues Laurent, 45, who was able to pursue the course of his choice by doing his First year a second time.
Sophie also assures that she managed to “find her professional path” when repeating her first grade. “My level to reach final year and pursue the studies I wanted to do was too fair, I convinced my teachers to repeat the year,” explains the woman who finally “passed” her “bac on the first try”. Éric, 45 years old, repeated his third grade and it was “the best decision of [sa] schooling. Not mature, not sufficiently prepared, this repetition allowed me to acquire more autonomy,” he salutes. Aged 46, Olivier even sees his transplant as “a chance to start again, to consolidate, to relearn”.
The path to teaching
Surprisingly, some former repeaters seem to have enjoyed their extended stay at school so much that they made it their career. Like Robert, 52, who repeated his second year in the 1980s to finally “flourish” in a technological sector. “Science teacher for 20 years”, the fifty-year-old does not think that he would have “arrived without this repetition”.
“Having repeated my third year in 1972, I would never have thought at the time that this necessary refresher course would lead me to become a teacher (the hated species of my adolescence). I experienced quite well the thing which allowed me to understand my students with empathy; knowing that their teacher was a former bad student who was ready to listen to them gave, for some, confidence in the future and in the education they were given,” also confides Didier, 66 years old.