The Importance Of European Education

The new, single-market Europe already offers apparently boundless occasions for both practical involvement and the more detached practice of discursive commentary. The business of education is no exception, in that teachers have the chance to involve young people in a more specifically European experience, and comparatistes have rich terrain from which to observe, infer and inform. For example, quite how far the British Government will insist on the implementation of its own directive that there should be a European dimension in the curriculum of both primary and secondary schools [1] will be a matter of serious interest to professional educators on both sides of the Channel, if for differing reasons. The regular examination of state responses …show more content…
The lycees consist, therefore, of age-groups the equivalent of our years 11, 12 and 13; the French classes are known as seconde, premiere, and terminale. The first of these three years, la seconde, is widely recognized as being tough for many of the pupils. Transfer from a college to a new environment which still carries many of the rigorously academic expectations of times past, large classes (average between 35 and 40), and the very heavily charged programmes of study in the chosen subjects leading to the Baccalaureat (even in the less 'academic ' sections of this examination, and in the special lycees offering specifically technical or vocational courses), have all conspired to elicit concern and criticism from different quarters within the French education system. In addition, two particular phenomena have, in the last 15 years, exacerbated what was already acknowledged to be an over-demanding routine. First, since 1987, parents have been able to choose which lycee their child will attend, the strict notion of catchment areas being effectively abolished in the name of democratic parental choice. To be fair, the much-feared repercussion of lycees poubelles ( 'sink ' schools) has been very largely limited to the major cities, where it is a more inevitable consequence of dense populations and a high number of schools from which to choose within relatively easy access. Second, since 1981, Le Monde de l 'Education has published Baccalaureat results of every lycee in France, a practice also based on parents ' democratic right to know what is going on in their child 's school. There is deep concern about this amongst the teaching profession in France. According to one lycee head teacher, the results have been