Lifelong Learn. 2016, 6, 8-22
French Lower Secondary School—Collège
The paper deals with the comprehensive lower secondary school—Collège de France. It describes its origins, objectives, current configuration, development and present problems. In this context the author highlights the importance of this school level in terms of school system characteristics as well as in terms of different ways of addressing currently important problems such as grade retention, social and performance homogeneity or heterogeneity of class groups as well as social and performance diversity of educational institutions of this level. With regard to the fact that French system of education is not commonly known to the wider teaching public, the author initially presents the current state of this type of school as a result of a series of reforms and innovations which this school went through since its origin in the 70s of the 20th century, and which were primarily aimed at deepening its internal differentiation, while retaining its original goals of a school for all eleven to fifteen-year-old pupils. On this basis, the author shows the persisting problems coming from the great social and intellectual heterogeneity of pupils of this school type. These problems are documented in the form of opinions of various participants in the educational process, especially teachers and educators—researchers as well as in the form of results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In conclusion, the study presents the expected development in solving all the mentioned problems.
