Question 9483 — teaching

Summary

The Minister of National Education and Youth entrusted a mission on mathematics to Cédric Villani, deputy for Essonne, and Charles Torossian, inspector general. The report on mathematics teaching in France was submitted to the minister in February 2018. The mission was responsible for establishing an assessment of current strengths and weaknesses, specifying blocking points and potential levers before formulating concrete proposals, drawing inspiration from the most conclusive practices and in the light of international studies. This report proposed 21 avenues for improving the results of French students in mathematics. It has attracted the attention of the educational community and public opinion through the analyzes developed, the directions indicated and the avenues proposed to advance our students. The minister therefore gave a mission to Charles Torossian, in June 2018, to coordinate, on an extraordinary mission to the Director General of School Education, the implementation of these 21 measures, as part of the deployment of a mathematics plan. The third recommendation of this report was to “launch experiments to carry out a scientific evaluation of explicit methods and the effectiveness of their implementation”. Among these is, in fact, the method of Singapore. Singapore's performance is particularly remarkable in the field of mathematics, as evidenced by the results obtained in the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2009, 2012 and 2015. This is the consequence of the place of mathematics in students' timetable, but also of effective teaching, based on rigorous, progressive and explicit. Students are thus invited to study mathematical operations and concepts until they fully master them. The repetition of exercises and the resolution of numerous problems are part of this learning process which allows students to gradually and deeply master mathematical concepts and approaches. The so-called “Singapore” method is the result of the adaptation of various methods to a local context: it has been tested, corrected and improved for almost fifteen years. Its implementation was accompanied by training for all teachers. It should be noted, however, that the factors that determine the effectiveness of the education system in the city-state of Singapore are not directly transferable to other countries. In our country, the priority given to the mastery of fundamental knowledge (reading, writing, count, respect others) and the deployment of the mathematical plan resulted in different actions. Two memoranda were published in special BO no. 3 of April 26, 2018. They specify the educational guidelines which are in line with the recommendations of the Villani-Torossian report on the meaning of operations, memorization, automatisms and effective strategies for problem solving. The minister of National Education and Youth also contacted the Higher Program Council so that school and college mathematics programs be clarified and adjusted with regard to the objective of mastering fundamental knowledge by all students. Coming into force at the start of the 2018 school year, this new version of the programs is based, in the field of mathematics, on the daily exercise of mental calculation throughout the elementary schooling, the work of the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) from the CP class and the intuitive approach to mathematics. Learning is based on manipulation, verbalization and abstraction which develop students' abilities to research for themselves and reason. In college, they can thus master the challenges of the demonstration. At the start of the 2019 school year, annual benchmarks of progression came into force. From CP to 3rd grade, they enable teaching teams to carry out rigorous teaching throughout school and college. These benchmarks help teachers to better organize their year and to progressively approach concepts throughout the three years of each cycle. They must make it possible to conduct learning at a sufficiently sustained pace so that the concepts are reinvested during the year. These benchmarks also set expectations which specify what must be acquired at the end of each year of school and college. The educational mobilization refocused on mastering the fundamentals was clearly affirmed and shared by all managers and trainers. First degree management is based on three levers of action: training enriched with all the actors on fundamental knowledge; recommendations and resources that create an educational framework of reference; the use of evaluations of student achievement at different levels of the educational territory. Since the start of the 2018 school year, the 18 hours of educational activities and continuing training for school teachers have been used with a view to consolidating the teaching of fundamentals and 9 hours have been devoted to mathematics. Other measures resulting from the recommendations of the Villani-Torossian report have been implemented: establishment of the network of mathematics project managers and mathematics referents in primary school districts; installation of mathematics laboratories in schools to contribute to the team-based professional development of teachers; inventory and sustainability of related clubs with mathematics to integrate extracurricular activities into educational projects. Also in high school, the place of mathematics is reaffirmed as part of the implementation of the new programs at the start of the 2019 school year. Compulsory scientific teaching in first and final classes for all students was created while students in the ES and L series did not benefit from any teaching of this type in class. terminal. If scientific teaching is not a teaching of mathematics strictly speaking, it is on the other hand a teaching where mathematics is fully present: it makes it possible to consolidate the acquired knowledge of middle school and second grade, but also to reconcile students who do not always give them meaning when they are not anchored in reality. The specialty education program 4 hours of mathematics in the first general class is part of a dynamic of deepening the concepts covered in the second class. Students who wish to make mathematics one of the essential components of their higher education can continue the 6-hour specialty course in the general final year. In addition to the specialty courses already chosen, the general final year student has also the possibility of following the “expert mathematics” option if they retain the mathematics specialty or the “complementary mathematics” option if they need to supplement their knowledge and skills with teaching adapted to their pursuit of studies. Finally, the 2019-2020 school year is marked as “the year of mathematics”, which aims to show the living face of mathematics and to strengthen the link between the world of research and secondary school teachers. All of these actions must contribute to arousing a taste for mathematics, to developing the logical mind, to strengthening the image of the discipline, to raising our country in the ranking of student performance in mathematics and to allowing it to regain its place in the global community.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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