France

Use and Impact of PIRLS

France participated in PIRLS for the fourth time during the 2016 assessment cycle. PIRLS 2001 presented the first international snapshot of student achievement in reading in France. The results of further assessments in 2006 and 2011 have allowed for diachronic comparisons of student achievement and synchronic comparison in measuring France’s performance against that of other participating countries.

Despite dissemination efforts, the public paid little attention to PIRLS 2001 results, perhaps because student performance was above the international average. Also, the performance of French students on previous large scale studies of educational achievement had not been unexpected or overly concerning.

Results of PIRLS 2006 had a much greater impact because the results allowed for consideration of the evolution of French student achievement in reading literacy over time. For France, the administration of PIRLS 2001 took place just before the new (2002) curriculum became effective. A comparison of the performance of the 2001 students with the performance of the 2006 students provided a valuable indicator of the effectiveness of the new curriculum’s focus on language skills, especially (within the context of PIRLS) on reading comprehension. PIRLS results for France were not significantly different between 2001 and 2006; consequently, the 2002 curriculum did not seem to have changed achievement.

Using PIRLS 2006 results confirmed by other information gathered nationally, the Minister of National Education, Youth, and Sport reformed numerous aspects of primary school during the fall of 2008. For example, new syllabi were elaborated on and made shorter and more readable, and school time was reorganized with differentiated student schedules. PIRLS 2011 results did not show any significant difference in overall student achievement.

Like all processes that take place in the educational field, the implementation of new programs takes a long time. Therefore, it is likely that the programs set up at the beginning of the 2008 school year had not been able to achieve their full potential by the 2011 evaluation. PIRLS 2016 results should provide more reliable information on the impact of the 2008 programs on student achievement, as they have now been in use for eight years and all students assessed in 2016 have fully followed their primary school curriculum in light of these 2008 programs. The 2016 results also will allow France to have valuable information regarding trends over a period of 15 years.

In a press release on December 11, 2012, Vincent Peillon, then Minister of National Education, stated that France’s results on PIRLS confirm the urgency of the “re-founding of the School”:²⁶

“Several worrying findings emerge from this survey, which highlights the failure of the policies implemented since 2007. The reform of the programs, the four day week, the easing of the school map, did not allow promised improvements. With the measurement of reading scores of our pupils, the PIRLS 2011 survey completes the diagnosis made by other national assessments.^c These results confirm the relevance of the orientations presented for the re-founding of the School: The priority given to the primary school, which has not received the necessary attention in recent years.

• The success of all students and the improvement of the quality of learning: the new system of “more teachers than classes,” the reception of children under the age of three, the redesign of the missions and programs of the primary school.
• The reform of scoring, to restore students’ confidence in their abilities and strengthen their willingness to succeed.
• The improvement of teaching practices. It involves in particular better initial and in-service training for teachers with the creation of ESPEs (Écoles supérieures du Professorat et de l’Éducation , or Higher Schools of Professorship and Education) and the development of innovative pedagogical practices with recognized effects.

The PIRLS survey recalls more than ever the urgency of an evolution of the School and also obliges us to succeed in this re-founding of the School which is a major stake for the country.”

Each year since 2003, the Direction de l’évaluation, de la prospective et de la performance (Evaluation Directorate) has administered a study called CEDRE (Cycle des Evaluations Disciplinaires Réalisées sur Echantillons, or Cycle of Disciplinary Assessments Conducted on Samples). CEDRE measures student skills at the end of primary school (Grade 5) and at the end of lower secondary school (Grade 9), covering most subject areas alternately in the following programs: language proficiency; foreign languages; history, geography, and civics; experimental sciences; and mathematics. Administered every six years (2003, 2009, and 2015 in reading comprehension and language study), the assessments are used to track student achievement over time. The analysis of student skills in the various disciplines provides a rich resource for teachers.

The most recent cycle of CEDRE indicates that the level of student achievement in language proficiency (reading and writing) at the end of primary school has remained stable for 12 years. On the other hand, the distribution of students is changing, with the proportion of students in the upper and lower groups decreasing; there is an increase in the intermediate groups. Girls still are performing better than boys, and the gaps are widening. The performance of students enrolled in priority education increased from 2003 to 2015.²⁷