Nicole Belloubet spoke on BFM-TV, Sunday February 18, about the establishment of middle school level groups desired by his predecessor at the Ministry of National Education, Gabriel Attal, now Prime Minister. The measure provides that from the start of the 2024 school year, 6th and 5th grade students can be separated into subgroups based on their academic level in French and mathematics – 4th and 3rd grade classes will be affected the following year. A large part of the educational community criticizes the project, both on its educational relevance and because of the lack of resources allocated to support these subgroups in classes.
Questioned several times by journalist Benjamin Duhamel about her support for the reform, Nicole Belloubet, who carefully avoids using the expression “level groups” since his arrival at the ministry, has notably declared that he wishes “effectively that we can work in groups which correspond to individualized care of students according to their level of skills, according to their ability to act”.
“There will be the possibility for each class to take charge of students in groups”she added, while refusing to explicitly confirm the application of the measure as presented by Gabriel Attal for the start of the 2024 school year. “Nominalism is one thing, reality is another”launched Nicole Belloubet in the face of reminders from Benjamin Duhamel.
“I will refuse any social sorting system in our college”then insisted the minister in response to regular criticism from level groups. “We precisely avoid it by working with teaching teams who, at different stages of the year, will be able to check how the students in a group who have weak skills at a given level are able to have acquired them and to change of group “she considered.
“Depending on the nature of the learning to be acquired, a given student could be in the group, let’s say in difficulty, on this skill, but at the same time on another skill, he will not necessarily be in the group of students in difficulty”, Ms. Belloubet then repeated. On this subject, the Minister of Education finally confirmed working on “recruitment of new teachers, some of whom, obviously, will be contract workers”while refusing to confirm the objective of 2,000 additional teachers for the next school year mentioned by Gabriel Attal.
During the same interview, Nicole Belloubet addressed the question of the ongoing experiment on wearing uniforms at school, announcing that 87 establishments had applied to participate, with the agreement of their community. territorial supervision.