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 international Pirls study carried out in 57 countries, published on Tuesday 16 may.
With an average overall score of 514 points, France is above the international average (500 points), but below the European average (527 points), according to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, carried out every five years since 2001 and led by the IEA, an international non-profit association whose members are research organisations.
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After fifteen years of continuous decline, France’s performance is stable in 2021 compared to 2016, notes the statistical agency of the Ministry of Education (Depp).
In the context of Covid-19, while France is one of the OECD countries that closed their schools the least during the pandemic, the vast majority of European Union (EU) countries show a statistically significant drop, in average of 11 points compared to 2016.
Higher results for girls in the majority of countries
In the 2021 study, 21 countries score higher than France. Singapore (587), Hong Kong (573) and Russia (567) show the best results. The first countries in the European Union are Finland (549) and Poland (549).
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The Pirls study tested a total of 400,000 school children on their ability to understand texts.
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The results of French schoolchildren on the most complex comprehension processes (” interpret “ et ” enjoy “) increased by nine points and those relating to the simplest processes (“take” et “infer”or draw a consequence) remain stable.
Finally, girls perform better than boys in all the countries studied, except Spain and the Czech Republic. This is also the case in France, where the difference between the average score of girls (521) and that of boys (507) is quite marked, notes Depp.
