IDuring his trip to Marseille on June 26, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, announced among his new measures: THE development of schooling for children under 2 years old in sensitive neighborhoods”. Although the schooling of 2-year-old children was mistreated during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, when Jean-Michel Blanquer was Minister of National Education, we can only subscribe to this proposal: he is never too late to measure its importance in the fight against the inequalities that affect, above all, students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.
Let us first remember that kindergarten is not a space where it is a question of “changing children’s diapers” – an expression used by Minister Xavier Darcos in 2008 – but a real place of education, socialization, construction of citizenship, based on the values of solidarity, equality, cooperation and responsibility. The kindergarten thus strives to allow each child to develop the maximum of his potentialities, to build his knowledge and his learning.
In this sense, kindergarten is indeed a “school”, and not just one form of childcare among others. It also plays an essential role in the prevention of school difficulties and in the detection of certain disabilities. The education of children under 3 is a formidable tool in the fight against inequalities, particularly in rural areas, but also in disadvantaged neighborhoods, in priority education, where the demand for schooling is high and where the reception of children from less than 3 years old should be encouraged, as specified by the law of refoundation of the school impelled, in 2013, by Vincent Peillon, then Minister of National Education.
Positive impact
With its specific objectives in the areas of language, motor skills and awakening to the world based on play, action and experimentation, the schooling of children under 3 does not compete with childcare facilities.
If, in France, the 4-5 year olds are welcomed in their entirety and the 3 year olds at 99%, only 9.8% of children under 3 years old are educated in 2021-2022 – against 35.2% in 1999- 2000 –, with variations of 10% to 60% depending on the departments (very high rate in Brittany, in the North and in the north-east of the Massif Central, lower in Ile-de-France and in the outlying departments, in Alsace and in the South-East).
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