After more than a decade of living in France, I have learned to complain from the best. But when it comes to the structure of the French school day, you’ll only hear crickets from me.
Forget about the American latchkey kids of my generation. French parents can drop off their children at 8:30 a.m., still make that 9 o’clock meeting, finish their workday, and pick up the kids at 4:30 p.m. – just in time for a chocolate croissant.
However, when I see how difficult it is to find time for piano or gymnastics practice after the long school day – and fit in homework, dinner, and a bath before bed – I realize the flaws in the system. While the French school day allows parents to more easily work, it does not give much time for children to play.
Why We Wrote This
France is considering adopting a five-day school week. It may seem like the French are late to the party, but it actually highlights how their academic priorities differ from those of the U.S. – and how they are shifting now.
France’s third citizens convention – consisting of 133 randomly chosen participants – has just presented its report on the structure of the French school day after six months of debate. The panel consulted more than 80 experts, education professionals, and youth themselves to figure out how to make the time kids spend in school more conducive to learning, development, and health.
The result? Twenty proposals, from screen time to parental involvement, that could help schools and children succeed.
This is hardly the first time the French have debated the school day. It has been a hot topic for more than 25 years, garnering numerous modifications, reversals of those modifications, and implementation of the same modifications all over again.
Most of the debate centers around the number of days and hours that children spend in school. France first experimented with a four-day week in the 1980s, after chronobiologists said kids needed a midweek break. In 2013, a school reform added an extra half day to the week, but today, 90% of French towns are back to four days.
Since 2013, schools have also been required to dedicate a few afternoons each week to extracurricular activities like music, sports, and art.
Now, the citizens panel is proposing yet another option: the five-day school week. They’re also suggesting starting classes for junior high and high school students at 9 a.m. “in order to respond to the physiological needs of adolescents,” and finishing the school day earlier for everyone, at 3:30 p.m.
If this all sounds familiar, you might have been an American high school student in the 1990s, like me. Back then, many legislators were in debates over why teenagers were dragging themselves to the bus stop at 6:30 a.m. while elementary-aged kids – who bound out of bed at the crack of dawn – weren’t starting school until after 9 o’clock.
While it would be easy to brush this off as yet another example of France stereotypically coming to the table decades after the United States, there is actually a method to the madness. The French school day has always been organized with working parents in mind. The country’s seven-hour workday allows parents to be there for school pickup, homework, and maybe a hobby after school.
But research shows that France’s current way of doing things isn’t working. Even though French children spend more time in school compared with other member countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), France placed 26th out of 81 countries – behind neighbors Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland – in a 2022 PISA study that evaluated 15-year-olds’ understanding of math, reading comprehension, and science.
French schools also offer little in the way of structured extracurriculars, like the band, theater, or sports teams that American students enjoy. That means French parents have to pay for private classes instead. France numbers among the countries in which the public school system increases social inequalities, not reduces them, according to OECD research.
Some observers blame France’s academic flop on its generous school vacation schedule, which gives students two weeks off every eight weeks, plus a two-month summer break.
Teachers often complain of having to start all over every time children come back from vacation. Many working parents, including my own circle of friends, loathe school breaks because they require us to find a way to entertain our children for two whole weeks, all while somehow keeping our jobs and our sanity.
But surprisingly, the citizens convention did not suggest changing the amount of school vacations – which alternate by region – all too much. The French tourism industry benefits heavily from them, as do divorced parents, who may not live in the same part of France.
Instead, the panel proposed dividing vacations into two zones, not three, as is currently the case, and creating a nationwide one-week break in which everyone can benefit simultaneously. As for the shorter school day, the panel suggested creating a dedicated space for extracurriculars and homework for parents who can’t pick up their children at 3:30 p.m. For those who can, that extra hour offers kids a better chance at excelling at their activity of choice.
Now that the citizens panel has presented its report, President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will weigh in, before the report heads to the rest of the government for debate. If it’s accepted, French schools could see changes as early as next year.
So maybe there is hope of a little more time after school. For all I know, my hubby and I have a virtuoso pianist or champion athlete in our midst. I’m not sure what will become of my shortened workday, but if it means my kids have the chance to grow and explore – and get better sleep and grades, too – wouldn’t it be worth it?
