In CP and CE1, students find a level before the health crisis – archyde

What are the long-term effects of the health crisis on the level of students? The question has been on everyone’s mind, parents and teachers alike, since the outbreak of the pandemic more than eighteen months ago. National assessments carried out in September at entry into CP, CE1 and 6^e come to provide rather reassuring answers. If, in 2020, after several months of “home schooling”, the results were rather down in CP and especially in CE1, this will not be the case in 2021. At the start of primary school, pupils generally find a level equal to, or even slightly higher, than that of their classmates in 2019. “In primary school, the negative effect of confinement on learning has been erased”, rejoices Jean-Michel Blanquer in the columns of Parisian.

At the entrance to 6^e, the results increase slightly between 2020 and 2021, as was already the case between 2019 and 2020. “The health crisis has weighed more heavily on the youngest students”, notes Fabienne Rosenwald, head of the statistics department of the Ministry of National Education. Since 2018, these national assessments passed by 99% of students in CP, CE1 and 6^e offer a photograph of the level at the start of the school year. More than one in two teachers today say they use it to detect their students’ difficulties.

“The health crisis has weighed more heavily on the youngest students”

In detail, the first-grade students found performance levels equivalent to or even higher than those of the start of the 2019 school year in French as well as in mathematics. Among the strongest progressions, 64.1% of students at this level mastered the skill “recognizing letters” in 2021; they were 57.4% in 2020 and 59% in 2019. In mathematics, it is on the item “compare numbers” that the increase is most noticeable. The concept is acquired by 79.1% of students in 2021, against 75.8% in 2020 and 76.6% in 2019.

In CE1, the drop in results was sharper than for CP students in 2020, but in 2021, students also return to a level comparable to that before the pandemic. Fluency, knowledge of numbers and problem solving are even improving compared to 2019. Thus, “reading a text aloud” is mastered by 73.1% of students at the start of CE1 in 2021, against 66, 6% of students last year and 71.4% of the cohort two years ago.

Another point of satisfaction put forward by the Ministry of National Education: the gaps that had widened between students in priority education and others in 2020 have almost returned to the level of 2019, in both CP and CE1. “The impact of the closing of schools in 2020 on the level of inequalities was practically absorbed at the start of the 2021 school year”, welcomes Fabienne Rosenwald.

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