Secondary education in France

"Lycée" redirects here. For other uses, see Lycée (disambiguation).

In France, secondary education is in two stages:

• collèges (French pronunciation: [kɔlɛʒ]) cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14
• lycées ([lisēh]) provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between the ages of 15 and 18. Pupils are prepared for the baccalauréat ([bakalorea]) (baccalaureate, colloquially known as le bac). The baccalauréat can lead to higher education studies or directly to professional life.

Organization of the school year

The school year starts in early September and ends in early-July. French school holidays are scheduled by the Ministry of Education, by dividing the country into three zones (A, B, and C) to prevent the overcrowding by family holidaymakers of tourist destinations such as the Mediterranean coast and the ski resorts. Lyon, for example, is in zone A, while Marseille is in zone B, and Paris and Bordeaux are in zone C.

In contrast to the practice in most other education systems, the various school years in France are numbered on a decreasing scale. Thus, pupils begin their secondary education in the sixième (6th class), and transfer to a lycée in the seconde (2nd class), while the final year is the terminale.

In French, the word for student (étudiant(e)) is usually reserved for university-level students, while collège and lycée students are referred to as élèves (pupils or students in English).

The curriculum (le programme officiel) is standardized for all French public institutions. Changes to the programme are made every year by the French Ministry of Education and are published in the Ministry's Bulletin Officiel de l'Éducation Nationale (BO), the official reference bulletin for educators.

Collège

Collège
Age	Name	Abbreviation
11-12	Sixième	6e
12-13	Cinquième	5e
13-14	Quatrième	4e
14-15	Troisième	3e

The collège is the first level of secondary education in the French educational system. A pupil attending collège is called collégien (boy) or collégienne (girl). Men and women teachers at the collège- and lycée-level are called professeur (no official feminine professional form exists in France although the feminine form "professeure" has appeared and seems to be gaining some ground in usage). The City of Paris refers to a collège in English as a "high school."^[1]

Entry in sixième occurs directly after the last year of primary school, called cours moyen deuxième année (CM2). There is no entrance examination into collège, but administrators have established a comprehensive academic examination of students starting in sixième. The purpose of the examination is evaluating pupils' level on being graduated from primary school.

Curriculum

Subject	Remarks	Starting in
Humanities & Languages
French Language and Literature	Features French and translated foreign works; concentrates on grammar and spelling	6e
History & Geography	French-based, but includes foreign history and geography	6e
A first foreign language1	Known as Première langue vivante étrangère (LV1)	6e
A second foreign language1 or a French regional language	Deuxième langue vivante étrangère (LV2)	4e
Arts & Crafts		6e
Musical Education		6e
Civics	Éducation civique	6e
1Available foreign languages include: English, German, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian; other languages available per locale. Most pupils study English as the foreign language, either first or second.
Natural & Applied Sciences
Mathematics		6e
Biology & Geology	Sciences de la vie et de la Terre (SVT)	6e
Technology		6e
Physics & Chemistry		5e
Optional courses
Technology	Hours in smaller groups	6e
Latin		5e
Ancient Greek		3e

The table at the right details the French curriculum. Along with three-to-four weekly hours of physical education, a typical school week consists of some twenty-six (26) hours of schooling. French language and literature occupy the most time, 4–5 hours per week, followed by mathematics, 4 hours per week; other subjects occupy some 1.0-3.5 hours per week.

The curriculum is devised by the French Ministry of National Education and applies to all collèges in France and also for AEFE-dependent institutions. Académies and individual schools have little margin for curriculum customisation. Teachers compose syllabi per precise government educational regulations, and choose textbooks accordingly; every major French publishing house has a textbook branch.

Process & purpose

Each subject is usually taught by a different "professeur" or teacher; most teachers teach several different age groups. Collège pupils stay in the same class throughout the school year, and in every subject (except for optional courses, e.g. foreign languages, where students from several classes mix), so each grade is divided into as many classes as necessary. The strong belief in teaching in mixed-ability classes means streaming is rare.

Class size varies from school to school, but usually ranges between 20-35 pupils. Each class has a professeur principal (main teacher or class tutor) who is the link between the teaching staff, administration, and pupils. Early in the school year, the pupils elect two délégués (delegates) and two suppléants (substitutes) from their classes. These representatives act as links between the students and the class tutor and represent the pupils at the termly "conseil de classe" (class council), at which teachers, administrators, and delegates of each grade meet to discuss each student's work and level of achievement, that of the class as a whole, and matters of logistics and discipline relating to the class.^[2] It is during those meetings that the conseil de classe bestows honours and records warnings on the bulletin de note (report card).

Ultimately, the role of the collège is to prepare students for the advanced subjects of the lycée. At the end of the troisième class, students sit for le diplôme national du Brevet, an end-of-collège examination; The brevet is not required for entrance to the lycée, nor does passing it guarantee that a pupil will progress to the higher-level school.

During the last conseil de classe of the year, held in June, teachers and administrators decide whether or not a pupil can progress to the next grade. In deciding, they evaluate the student's skills, participation, and behaviour. Three outcomes are possible:

1. the student progresses to the next grade;
2. his or her redoublement (redoubling or repeating the year) can be required;
3. he or she can, in specific cases, be offered to skip over a grade and be promoted two grades.

A student asked to repeat a grade can appeal said decision. The decision of the appeals council is final.

Carte scolaire

A lycée in Rennes, from the 19th century.

French parents are not free to choose the state school that their children will attend; unless the children have special learning needs, they will attend the school allocated to them by the carte scolaire (school map). Reasons for attending a state school which is not their nearest include studying an option unavailable in the school to which they were originally assigned (e.g. a rare foreign language).

For many reasons, many parents consider the allocated school inadequate, particularly if they do not like the idea of their children mixing with some of the other pupils at the school. This is especially the case in poor neighbourhoods with large foreign immigrant populations. In any city, there are "better" lycées and collèges, which parents would prefer their children attend (usually dating from the 19th century, in the city centre). The two main methods used in such circumstances to get children into a school other than their assigned school are:

• paying for partly subsidised private schooling;
• having the child choose an unusual option (e.g. Ancient Greek) available only in the preferred school.

A similar trick is used in cases where some classes in a school are seen as "better" than others. For organisational reasons, students taking certain options are grouped into special classes, which may be academically attractive. These typically include classes taking German as a first foreign language, or Latin or Ancient Greek as options.

Lycée

Lycée
Age	Name	Abbreviation
15-16	Seconde	2de
16-17	Première	1e
17-18	Terminale	Tale

The lycée is the second, and last, stage of secondary education in the French educational system. The City of Paris refers to a lycée in English as a "sixth-form college."^[1]

At the end of the final year of schooling, most students take the baccalauréat diploma.

Lycées are divided into (i) the lycée général, leading to two or more years of post–baccalauréat studies, (ii) the lycée technologique, leading to short-term studies, and (iii) the lycée professionnel, a vocational qualification leading directly to a particular career. General and technological education courses are provided in 'standard' lycées, while vocational courses are provided in separate professional lycées.

In practice, competent pupils at a vocational 'lycée professionnel' can also apply to take short-term, post–baccalauréat studies leading to the Brevet de technicien supérieur (BTS), a vocational qualification. This option is also available to pupils at a lycée général.

Lycée général & lycée technologique

In France, the lycée général is the usual stepping stone to university degrees. During their year in Seconde students make their final choice of série (course) for the final two years. During the seconde, students mostly take the same courses, despite having different academic skills and interests, so it is usually thought to be an easier year than either the première or the terminale.

General streams

After the seconde, most French students choose a general course. In all courses, some subjects occupy more hours in the student's timetable. The baccalauréat examination is different for all three séries, and subjects are weighted according to the course taken.

Streams	S scientifique (various hard sciences)	ES économique et social (economics and social sciences)	L littéraire (humanities)
Description	The sciences course requires high-level mathematics (very heavily weighted), physics, and chemistry.	The série ES is balanced between literary and economics courses; students must take economics and social sciences exams.	The série L heavily weighs French language, French literature, and Philosophy, and to a lesser extent, history, geography and foreign languages. Students must take examinations in one-to-three modern languages, and also have the option of taking examinations in either Latin or ancient Greek or both.

According to the official statistics, for the 2003–2004 school year, 33 per cent of students chose série S; 19 per cent chose série ES; and 11 per cent chose série L.

All students take philosophy courses in terminale, while French language classes end in the première, excepting the série L, where they become French literature classes, where pupils are to study four books during the year, from French writers, or foreign books translated into French (e.g. Romeo and Juliet during the school year 2007-2008, or The Leopard from Italian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa).

There also is a required option for further specialisation in all séries, although it is restricted to the chosen course. For example, a student in série S can choose to specialise in mathematics, physics, "SVT" (biology and geology) or "engineering sciences", but not in philosophy. Specialisation adds a separate, weekly two-hour class in the chosen discipline; also, it increases the weight of the chosen subject at the baccalauréat. The syllabus in the specialisation class is unrelated to the material learned in the common class. Specialisation is an important step in choosing a post–secondary career or subject at university, especially for admission to a classe préparatoire (CPGE).

Technical streams

International educational scores (1995) (13-year-old's average score, TIMSS Trends in International Math and Science Study, 1995)
Countries: (sample)	Global rank	Maths		Science
		Score	Rank	Score	Rank
Singapore	1	643	1	607	1
Japan	2	605	3	571	3
South Korea	3	607	2	565	4
Czech Republic	4	564	6	574	2
Belgium (Fl)	5	565	5	550	11
Hong Kong	6	588	4	522	24
Bulgaria	7	540	11	565	5
Netherlands	8	541	9	560	6
Slovenia	9	541	10	560	7
Austria	10	539	12	558	8
Slovakia	11	547	7	544	13
Hungary	12	537	14	554	9
Australia	13	530	16	545	12
Russia	14	535	15	538	14
Switzerland	15	545	8	522	25
Ireland	16	527	17	538	15
Canada	17	527	18	531	18
England	18	506	25	552	10
Sweden	19	519	22	535	16
Thailand	20	522	20	525	21
Israel	21	522	21	524	23
Germany	22	509	23	531	19
France	23	538	13	498	28
United States	24	500	28	534	17
New Zealand	25	508	24	525	22
Norway	26	503	26	527	20
Belgium (W)	27	526	19	471	36
Denmark	28	502	27	478	34
Source: TIMSS data, in The Economist March 29th, 1997, p.25

The lycée includes eight other streams, called séries technologiques:

• sciences et technologies de la gestion (Management Sciences and Technologies, STG) (replaced sciences et technologies tertiaires (Service Sciences and Technologies, STT) for the June 2007 Bac Exam)
• sciences et technologies industrielles (Industrial Science and Technologies, STI)
• sciences et technologies de laboratoire (Laboratory Science and Technologies, STL)
• sciences médico-sociales , (Health and Social Sciences SMS) - The name was changed in 2007 and became: Sciences et technologies de la santé et du social, (Sciences and Technologies in Health and Social ST2S)
• sciences et technologies du produit agroalimentaire (Food Science and Technologies, STPA)
• sciences et technologies de l'agronomie et de l'environnement (Agronomy and Environment Science and Technologies, STAE)
• techniques de la musique et de la danse (Music and Dance Techniques, TMD)
• hôtellerie

The STPA and STAE stream are only available in lycées agricoles, speciality schools for agricultural sciences.

Lycée professionnel

The Lycée Professionnel leads to several different vocational diplomas in all fields of study. The enrolled students are not planning on getting a higher education, as the schooling is vocational training for craftspeople and through internships in companies. It is a good track for students more interested in a hands-on educational approach than in academic schooling and learning.

French secondary education outside France

Main article: Agence pour l'enseignement français à l'étranger

See also

	France portal
	Education portal

• Baccalauréat
• Grandes écoles
• Education in France
• Agence pour l'enseignement français à l'étranger
• Lycée Lakanal
• Lycée en France (in French)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Children & families." City of Paris. Retrieved on 20 July 2010.
2. ^ H. D. Lewis (1985). The French Education System. Routledge. pp. 58. ISBN 0709916833. 

External links

• French Ministry of Education (in French)
• Bulletin Officiel (in French)
• Centre national de documentation pédagogique website (in French)