What if we shortened the school holidays? Former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe reopened the debate on Friday June 9, during a public meeting in Bordeaux during which he detailed the main lines of his vision for the school. Among the points addressed by the president of Horizons (center right), that of the “reorganization of rhythms over the year” with, as a result, a potential reduction in the duration of the summer holidays.

This proposal, which provokes many reactions, comes up regularly in the public debate. The ecologist Yannick Jadot had submitted the idea on the occasion of the presidential election of 2022. Vincent Peillon, Minister of National Education from 2012 to 2014, also recommended reducing the duration of “long holidays”.

With precisely 8.2 weeks of summer holidays, France is below the average for European member countries of the OECD. Swiss children are entitled to 5 weeks when Portuguese children are entitled to 12.6 weeks. On the other hand, with a total of 16 weeks of vacation per year (including 8 so-called “intermediate”), French schoolchildren rank in the high average.

The current distribution – 8 weeks in summer, therefore, and 2 weeks on All Saints’ Day, Christmas, winter and Pentecost – has not always been the same. “Little by little, we shortened the long holidays in favor of the intermediate holidays,” recalls education historian Claude Lelièvre.

So much for the meaning of the story. Now, what are the benefits of yet another reduction in summer holidays? Édouard Philippe, who is rumored to be preparing for 2027, considers that the current pace favors the reproduction of inequalities. “Yes, inequalities are accentuated in the summer because children do not all have access to the same cultural and economic environments”, confirms Éric Charbonnier, analyst in the OECD’s education directorate. To caricature: some of them go to the seaside and work on their holiday notebook while others stay at home without being intellectually stimulated.

Another supposed virtue is that of fighting against the loss of knowledge. This is the hypothesis put forward in La Croix by Jean-Paul Delahaye, former director general of school education. If learning is indeed not sustained, the risk is that students will end up “forgetting” some of what they have been taught during the school year. Vincent Peillon recommended as such to reduce the summer holidays to six weeks.

Snacking on the summer would also make it possible to lighten the weekly timetable of the pupils. Primary school children attend 900 hours of lessons per year spread over 36 weeks. This is the densest pace in the OECD (25 hours per week)! Short of reducing the time devoted to teaching to approach the average (800 hours per year), extending school time by two weeks seems the most acceptable alternative.

So much for the ideas on the table. Beyond the traditional reservations expressed by the tourism sector, this debate on school time raises several points of friction. “We tend to think too much in terms of quantity and not in terms of quality, regrets Éric Charbonnier, of the OECD. However, the debate should focus on the resources allocated to support students in an individualized manner. »

Historian Claude Lelièvre also approaches this debate with skepticism as it stands. “The school of the Fifth Republic, considered ‘lax’, suffers from an image deficit compared to the school of the Third Republic, considered more ‘hard-working’. However, the number of weeks of vacation at the end of the 3rd is identical to that of the 5th”, he recalls with a hint of mischief.

The numbers are cruel. French primary school children are those who, in the OECD, spend the most time in class and have the most lessons devoted to reading comprehension. However, according to the latest Pirls results on CM1, they rank below the European average in terms of understanding narrative and informative texts… This is proof that quantity does not equal quality.

Lisa Kamen-Hirsig, a school teacher, suggests short-circuiting the debate by leaving schools to decide for themselves how to allocate each of the school vacation periods. “Everything about the school is laced with Jacobinism. Why not decide based on regions or local sociology? asks the essayist, also a columnist at Le Point. A disruptive idea, but which risks angering the mammoth.