Evaluation Nationale

Just wondering if anyone's kids have just gone through this. My daughter is in CE1 and although she has achieved 76/100 would love to know if this is considered average or is it pretty good. My opinion is that it is average, my husband says it is damn good - which is it? Her teacher says it hasn't told her anything she doesn't already know apart from that her score in reading French is far below than she would have expected (she scored 12/20)

I remember being worried all the time had I done the right thing bringing my daughter to France. Had I ruined her chances by making her learn in two languages, everytime there was a little blip I would over think everything. I did have a lady read with my daughter in Ce2 for an hour a week at home for 8 weeks to get her used to reading interesting books and that got her interested. Another tip leave the subtitles on some TV programmes English and French. My daughter has just finished year 6 at college and has no worries about anything apart from PE because we spent so much time concentrating on Maths and Reading.

Your daughter is doing well, if you want to help her with reading then you should but she will get a teacher who loves reading and will try to help her, my daughter now gets through so many books french and English it makes my head and purse spin. Also I think they mark them on reading to the class which for some children will always be a nightmare causing them to stutter and speak badly so thats something to think about is it just fear of reading to lots of children.

CLIS, that's the one for children with learning difficulties - our daughter is Down Syndome - and may be the only class they are ever in all the way through primary. Unless you get involved in your local school with a CLIS or have a child who needs it, do not worry. However, we produced two extremes, Down and a child who in just humgry for knowledge at this point in time and good in all disciplines. The standard marks she told you are pretty well right. It is part of the system that does things by rote learning and puts emphasis on hand writing and such details as standards, not the more creative education of other countries. It is a case of teachers teach as they were taught but a few are a bit more motivated. You wait until later when English comes in and find it is no advantage whatsoever because of the way it is taught! Our daughter read her first Harry Potter book when she was six, a year ago she read Around the World in 80 Days in French but that level is not encouraged at school. The two who scored above her, and whose parents we know quite well, really push their daughters but neither even tries reading at that level.

We were all at dinner with friends recently, following a birthday party of one of that class, so their teacher was there, his teacher ex-wife and our hosts were also teachers and part of discussion was about the year's results. Normally they do not talk about other people's kids, but when pushing half of the class is there with parents and teacher is a parent himself...

Just as a personal opinion, as we are completely new to the school system and Twerp will be re-taking CE1 (he only started in March so totally accept that decision, I think Chiara's results are very good. Three out of four of her subjects were well above average. The reading part can now be concentrated on as a separate issue as she is achieving so well in the others which reduces the stress on her. I would try to take it in stride so she does not become overly anxious - she's doing well.

What is CLIS Brian?

Thanks for your replies, I was mainly concerned that the teacher would not respond about whether Chiara's result was good, bad or indifferent. She totally evaded it saying that 30 out of 60 was the moyen for French and 20/40 was the moyen for maths, so overall her score of 43/60 and 33/40 was 'above moyen' although her score for French reading and comprehension (her grammar was high scoring) was 'disappointing'.

I guess the reason we are concerned is that we would like to think that being bi-lingual is an advantage not a disadvantage.

I have one CLIS daughter and the other who is nine next month in a normal class. The latter was temporarily top of her class until the very last assessments and came third of 28 overall. Her French is 18.something, she is the only non-French child in the class. We have been here for three school years and she had no French when we came, but are a multi-lingual family. 76/100 is very respectable. The achievers at the top are mainly pushed, which is what we are not doing, but a few natural high achievers always do the 96.something type of mark. Antoine, her teacher, is one of our best friends and could have pushed and favoured her a bit but did not, then his own son in his class is in the lower third overall. We did some 'homework' by talking to parents with children in other schools and what Nikki says about the French literacy stuff seems to be about right,

Much of it depends on the teachers though. Some are so disinterested and appear to be going through the motions, others are disciplinarian (which is next year's case) and a few are great. The scoring and assessing does make the children competitive in unnecessary ways and probably the most comfortable place to be is in the upper range of the 'middle' where teacher is happy, child is not pressured, and basically everybody just gets on with it.

http://www.education.gouv.fr/recherche.php?recMot=Evaluation+Nationale+ce1&submit=OK&type=Simple&recPer=per&site=educ

Somewhere on this site is the answer, I put it in google translate you may not need to. At that age I would not be too bothered about the teachers comments about reading, practice and good books that are interesting and Bingo. Teacher does sound a little unhelpfull.