A Parisian elementary school.

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Jacques Witt / SIPA

Math is not automatic.

Among CM2 schoolchildren, performance even fell sharply between 2014 and 2019, according to a survey by the Ministry of National Education, and made public this Thursday.

Students from the least privileged backgrounds are the most concerned.

According to this survey conducted by Depp, the statistics agency of the Ministry of Education, 54.4% of students (against 42.4% in 2014) have “fragile” or even insufficient knowledge in mathematics.

While between 2008 and 2014, the average score had remained stable, it fell by 17 points in 2019 to reach 232 points.

Calculations difficult to reproduce in "real life"

For example, for a quarter of the students (25.8%) in the classes, "the use of deductions in the subtraction is not acquired".

Only one in five schoolchildren (20.2%) is able to reuse math concepts seen in class in everyday situations or in solving “complex problems” that require independent thinking.

The differences in levels remain very marked by the social origin of the pupils, the average score increasing with the social level.

Thus, the least advantaged schoolchildren show a drop in their math results of 22 points.

The drop is 21 points for the intermediate social categories.

On the other hand, “the drop in performance between 2014 and 2019 does not concern students belonging to the most advantaged schools”, underlines the study.

Inequalities between girls and boys

In general, fewer students say they do math for fun (67.1% in 2019 compared to 75.8% in 2014).

Inequalities between girls and boys, without increasing, remain significant: schoolchildren have a score 9 points higher than schoolgirls.

The Cedre study also looked at 300 middle schools, focusing on the performance of third year students.

The drop in the average score observed in 2014 continued in 2019 with a drop of 6 points of the same order as that already observed five years earlier between 2008 and 2014. As for schoolchildren, we note an increase in the number of pupils in the schools. low levels and a reduction in higher levels.

The survey on the performance of CM2 students in arithmetic and geometry covers a representative sample of 200 schools comprising a total of 6,000 young people.

This “national assessment by discipline” (Cedre) looked at math this year.

This type of study is carried out every six years for each subject in order to measure the evolution of the pupils' level.

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