«Մեդիան հանուն կրթության» ՀԿ–ն հետևում է էթիկական լրագրության կանոններին։
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Photo: Official page of ESCS
“Middle school is the ‘blind spot’ of the reforms, and one of the key priorities for the next five-year period should be to enable teachers to use more effective teaching methods.” According to Le Monde, France’s Minister of National Education, Edouard Geffray, responded to the PISA 2025 results in these terms, as the assessment showed a decline in student performance in France as well.
Geffray noted that France should have asked earlier what measures were needed for middle school. The minister believes that learning objectives should be defined more clearly, particularly in middle school, and that schools should be given greater autonomy.
The minister identified shortcomings in the system he leads, emphasizing that France had focused for too long on reducing class sizes without giving sufficient consideration to teaching methods.
According to the recently published PISA 2025 report, the average mathematics score of 15-year-old students in France is 458 points, 16 points lower than in 2022 and almost 30 points lower than in 2018. Compared with 2006, the score has fallen by 35 points.
This decline is significant.
According to the OECD, a difference of 20–30 points on the PISA scale roughly corresponds to the progress expected over one school year.
France’s reading score in 2025 was 456 points, 18 points lower than in 2022 and more than 40 points lower than a decade ago. The score in science was 483 points; here too, a decline was recorded, although it was smaller.
The difference is significant when compared with Armenia’s results. The average scores of 15-year-old students in Armenia were 376 points in mathematics, 348 in reading, and 369 in science. Thus, France’s scores were higher than Armenia’s by 82, 108, and 114 points, respectively.
Yet France, which is far from being at the bottom of the 91 participating countries, is not responding only to the decline recorded in its education system. The country’s Minister of National Education is also addressing the question of what has not worked and what needs to change. This is despite France remaining close to the OECD average in all three domains.
Geffray also spoke about the need for continuous teacher training, greater flexibility in the work of primary school teachers, and the resumption of the certification process for reading and mathematics textbooks for first and second grades.
The minister also plans to present the diagnosis provided by the PISA results more broadly to teachers and families. One of his proposals is to inform families during the school year about what their children will be learning, with the aim of involving parents more actively in the learning process.
Geffray also links the PISA data to changes taking place outside school, particularly the use of social media, screen time, and declining parental interest in children’s learning. He notes that parents often ask, “What grade did you get?” instead of “What did you learn?”
Thus, the response of France’s Minister of National Education is not limited to listing reforms that have already been implemented.
The minister uses the PISA 2025 results to reassess the effectiveness of previous policies, acknowledging that reducing class sizes, although necessary, has not been sufficient on its own, and identifying the areas that, in his assessment, need to change in the coming years.
