During a visit to Marseille with the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, Emmanuel Macron announced the return of mathematics in the Première class as an option from the start of the school year in September 2022.
Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday, during a visit to Marseille, the return of mathematics “optional”, “not compulsory”, in First class from the start of the next school year.
“As I had promised in the campaign, we will reintroduce in Première class the possibility of choosing mathematics as an option”, said the President of the Republic. “There will always be the math specialty, but there will be the possibility offered to all students to choose outside the specialty the hour and a half of mathematics which had been taken out of the common core”, he added.
Mr. Macron stressed that this teaching “will not be compulsory from this first year”, in order to “do it quickly”.
“I think we also have to get out of this dilemma, before it’s mandatory. Let’s give freedom to children and families,” he continued. “We will offer them this freedom which corresponds to my commitment”.
According to the Ministry of National Education, in a press release, “this new + scientific and mathematical education + will be increased to 3 hours 30 per week (compared to 2 hours today devoted to scientific education). It will be evaluated as part of the continuous assessment, without modification of the coefficient currently attributed to scientific education (coefficient 3 for the year of Première)”.
“This teaching will allow non-specialists to consolidate the learning and mastery of fundamental notions and to continue, if necessary, with the complementary mathematics option in terminale”, adds the ministry.
An expert report recommended in March to reintroduce mathematics in the common core from the First class
Since the high school reform in 2019, mathematics was no longer part of the subjects taught to all high school students (the common core). Previously, even students in the literary stream benefited from mathematical education.
An expert report recommended in March to reintroduce mathematics in the common core from the First class, at the rate of an hour and a half to two hours more per week. A proposal which also appeared in the program of Emmanuel Macron, candidate for his re-election.
“With this choice of reintroducing math + as an option +, the government is taking a third way so as not to completely apply it from the start of the school year and also not to postpone it to 2023 because Emmanuel Macron had promised it”, said to l AFP Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the first secondary school union.
According to her, “this is a political display”, which will “unfortunately not bring more students, nor more girls to choose maths, when that was the goal”.
In a press release, a collective of learned societies and associations of professors and scientific academics asks the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, “to set up a working group bringing together the various competent actors to propose lasting solutions for the start of the 2023 school year”.
In addition, Mr. Macron announced in Marseille that, “from the start of the school year, elementary school students will do 30 minutes of sport every day”.