Emmanuel Macron says he wants to make French school holidays shorter, sparking a debate among teachers’ unions and parent groups.
In a broad interview in Le Point magazine to mark his return to Paris after three weeks at the presidential summer residence on the Mediterranean coast, Macron said there were “too many school holidays” in France.
He said children who were assessed to be behind with school work should return to classrooms on 20 August for catchup lessons instead of the usual return at the beginning of September. Secondary schoolchildren, who are often allowed to finish in June if they do not have exams, should stay at school for the whole of that month, he said.
But the debate is not clear cut. France has about two weeks’ more school holidays across the year compared with the average in similar countries, although some European countries such as Italy have longer summer breaks.
But French school days are often considerably longer than in neighbouring countries such as Germany or the UK, finishing later in the afternoon. Macron said in Le Point that French school days were “too full”.
A review of holidays would also include looking at what the president has previously called the “packed” and “crammed” French school days, which he said were exhausting children, as well as a discussion on the curriculum and how to spread learning better across the year.
“If he wants to rethink the school holidays, it should be across the year, not just the summer,” Guislaine David, the secretary general of the SNUipp union, told Le Parisien. “The real issues are the heavy curriculum, the workings of the school day and a school calendar which has been set up around tourism professionals, namely for winter sports, and not around children’s needs and their rhythm.”
School winter holidays are staggered in France, allowing ski resorts to maximise the winter sports season.
Sophie Vénétitay, the secretary general of the teachers’ union Snes, said Macron’s comments seemed cut off from the climate reality. She told Le Parisien that the president had made the comments at a moment in August “when a large part of France is crushed by a heatwave”. She said of the suggestion of bringing children back to school in August: “How can children return to school in buildings which haven’t been adapted to climate change?”
Others said cutting holidays for children in difficulty in school was stigmatising and would exacerbate social inequality.
Macron first raised the issue of reducing holidays and reviewing the long school days when he visited a school in Marseille in June.
The government spokesperson, Olivier Véran, said the government would begin a discussion process.
