It notably allows them to have much more pareddown days

JESSICA BERTHEREAU, Les Echos

This is not France but the Denmark starts thinking about the organisation of school time in schools, colleges and high schools. The Minister of National Education, Luc Chatel, went Thursday to Copenhagen to her first trip in the National Conference on school rhythms, that it was installed on 7 June last to rethink the time spent at the school. With 913 hours of annual courses spread over 144 days of course, French schoolchildren have the days of class among the longest in Europe. The Minister wants to "go look elsewhere how is organized school time" so that "reflection on the rhythms is not only focused on the franco-français debates", explains his entourage. The choice has focused on the Denmark because this country "is located in the same platoon as the France in international assessments while the education system is completely different", adds is from the same source.

"This is one of the countries making the largest number of educational reforms in the past ten years, particularly under the impetus of the results of the Pisa survey," said Bernard Hugonnier, the Deputy Director for education at the Organization of cooperation and development (OECD). This survey, conducted every three years, evaluating the performance of students in 15 years in the OECD countries. The Denmark is also representative of the Nordic countries "are considered as the pupils of the class with a grade that is roughly 200 days", under Laurent Bigorgne, Director of the Institute Montaigne studies. Seven and eight years old Danish small thus follow 671 hours spread over 42 weeks and their Finnish comrades have 608 hours for 38 weeks. It notably allows them to have much more pared-down days. "In the countries Northern courses generally last three quarters of an hour, with a quarter of an hour off for break between each," says Bernard Hugonnier.

Another interesting feature of the Danish system, its adaptability to local realities. "Denmark, the Department fixed framework and each school, in agreement with the regions, the decline", said in the entourage of Luc Chatel. "In France, on reasoning at the national level because the system is highly centralised but in European countries with strong local traditions, situations may be very disparate," says Laurent Bigorgne.

Indeed, in Germany and Spain, education is the responsibility of the Länder and the autonomous communities, respectively. German, the half-day class, with courses beginning around 8 a.m. and ending around 1 p.m., remains majority even if, since 2003, schools have been encouraged to lengthen the day of course with sporting, cultural or artistic activities the afternoon.

In the United Kingdom also, the school rate is determined by local authorities, and sometimes even by the schools themselves when they are private. English students have relatively short summer vacations (1 month to 1 month and a half), unlike the Spanish or Finnish (2 and a half months). In France, the reduction of the summer holidays, whose duration was established when the children had to help their parents during the harvest and the vintage, is one of the studied to ease the school year.