Ch 30 · Lesson 26French · Chapter 30 · Lesson 26 · Themed review
L'école
How French school works: years that count down from , marks out of twenty, the and the .
Practise this lesson
19-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
Counting down from sixième, and marked out of twenty
French school is national, centralised and taken very seriously. The same programme runs from Lille to Marseille, and the exam at the end is a national event.
The stages
| Age | School | Years | Ends with |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 to 6 | , moyenne, section | ||
| 6 to 11 | CP, CE1, CE2, CM1, CM2 | ||
| 11 to 15 | | 6e, 5e, 4e, 3e | the brevet |
| 15 to 18 | | , , terminale | the |
School has been compulsory from age three since 2019. Note the years: they count DOWN, so a child starts in sixième and leaves in troisième. A French is not a British college: it is the school for eleven to fifteen year olds.
Marked out of twenty
Every mark is out of 20. Ten is a pass, fourteen is good, sixteen is excellent, and twenty is so rare that teachers joke it is reserved for God. A British pupil's "eight out of ten" is a sixteen.
The bac
The bac, short for baccalauréat, is the exam at the end of , and passing it opens the door to . Results are published, and families crowd round to look for names. Most pupils now pass, but a mention (a distinction) still matters.
The teacher
In primary school the teacher is or . From on, he or she is , or , and pupils say to their teachers.
La rentrée
, the return in early September, is a national moment: shops fill with notebooks, newspapers talk about little else, and the whole country, not only children, goes back to work.
Holidays
| Holiday | When |
|---|---|
| summer | early July to early September |
| Toussaint | two weeks around 1 November |
| Christmas | two weeks |
| winter and spring | two weeks each, at different times in three zones so the resorts are not overwhelmed |