Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: Thibaut Durand / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP 18:24 p.m., May 16, 2023

According to an international Pirls study conducted in 57 countries, the reading and comprehension skills of French schoolchildren in CM1 class stabilized in 2021 despite the Covid-19 crisis, but remain below the European average. The performance of the France is stable compared to 2016.

The reading and comprehension skills of French schoolchildren in CM1 class stabilized in 2021 despite the Covid-19 crisis, but remain below the European average, reveals the Pirls international study conducted in 57 countries, published on Tuesday. With an average overall score of 514 points, the France is above the international average (500 points), but below the European average (527 points), according to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, conducted every five years since 2001 and conducted by the IEA, an international non-profit association whose members are research organizations.

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Stability compared to 2016

After 15 years of continuous decline, the performance of the France recorded stability in 2021 compared to 2016, notes for its part the statistical agency of the Ministry of Education (Depp). In the context of Covid-19, while France is among the OECD countries that have closed their schools the least during the pandemic, the vast majority of European Union (EU) countries show a statistically significant decline, on average by 11 points compared to 2016.

In the 2021 study, 21 countries score higher than France. Singapore (587), Hong Kong (573) and Russia (567) are the best performers. The leading countries in the European Union are Finland (549) and Poland (549).

Girls generally outperform boys

The Pirls study tested a total of 400,000 schoolchildren on their ability to understand text. The results of French schoolchildren on the most complex comprehension processes ("interpret" and "appreciate") increased by nine points and those on the simplest processes ("to take" and "infer", i.e. to draw a consequence) remained stable.

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Finally, girls outperform boys in all countries except Spain and the Czech Republic. This is also the case in France, where the gap between the average score of girls (521) and boys (507) is quite marked, notes the Depp.