Primary: nearly one pupil in two is in a "multi-age" class

When we think of classes where children of different ages live side by side, we usually think of the one-room classes in small rural schools. This association of ideas was reinforced in the collective imagination by the success, in 2002, of Nicolas Philibert's film, Être et avoirwhich followed the daily lives of pupils at Saint-Etienne-sur-Usson in the Auvergne region of France.

Sylvie Jouan, University of Montpellier

But "multi-age classes" or "multi-level classes" actually cover a wide range of realities. They range from single-grade classes for children from kindergarten to CM2, to double-grade classes. These configurations reflect very different contexts and operations, and the weight of each has shifted over time.

An underestimated reality

A standard feature of rural France throughout the ^19th century, lasting through the first half of the ^20th century until the rural exodus, the one-room school can now be considered an endangered species: according to figures from the French Ministry of Education, in 2018 there were just 667 one-room schools left out of a total of almost 15,000 public elementary school, i.e. less than 4.5%. And this despite strong local support, since a village that loses its school knows it's on the road to desertification.

At the same time, double-shift or double-level classes have continued to develop in urban areas, so that today it's wrong to associate multi-age classes with rural classes. The figures provided by the Ministry's statistical services are there to remind us of this overlooked reality: in mainland France, almost one child in two is now enrolled in a class mixing several levels (48.6% at the start of the 2015 school year), rural and urban combined, precisely because of the presence of double-grade classes in urban areas.

There are certainly more rural pupils in multi-age classes, but the reality of this type of grouping now affects the whole of France - almost 40% of urban pupils are in multi-age classes.

The problem is that such an ignored reality is accompanied by a lack of pedagogical reflection on the potential benefits of this type of grouping, which is more often than not seen as an adjustment variable for fluctuating pupil numbers and the number of posts in a school.

Cooperation between students

However, French studies of multi-grade classes in rural areas have shown real added value in terms of academic success, especially when the number of grades is large.

This result goes completely against the grain of decisions taken by a ministry that, since the 1960s, has been constantly grouping small rural classes together to form more homogeneous groups. With one model in mind: the single-level urban class. Yet even today, this objective obscures some very interesting findings on the teaching practices developed in multi-age classrooms.

This is the case when it comes to theuse of time: pupils in multi-level classes are less likely to be on hold. As the teacher can't be with each level at the same time, these classes are places where new arrangements for mutual support and autonomy are invented, so that they can be considered overall as laboratories for pedagogical innovation.

Some urban teachers have understood this, setting up three-grade "cycle" classes in working-class areas, where the heterogeneity of ages multiplies the opportunities for cooperation between pupils, and tutoring in particular.

School cycles

Conversely, the double-grade class, most often imposed to smooth out the number of pupils in each class in a school, arouses a great deal of reticence - among teachers, who see it as an extra workload, and among parents, who fear for their children's success.

And the only French study of double-grade classes does nothing to allay these fears, since it shows no positive impact on student success, except when teachers have chosen this configuration and decided on the distribution of students with this factor in mind.

So, because the multi-age class is a real unthinkable feature of the French education system, we prefer the double-grade configuration, imposed by default when we can't manage to maintain the single-grade class, to the detriment of the class with at least three grades, when research would rather encourage us to do the opposite.

A three-grade class covers an entire cycle. Yet these famous learning cycles - which have structured pupils' schooling since the 1989 Loi d'Orientation - are still struggling to gain real acceptance, even though they meet the much-vaunted requirement of taking into account pupils' different learning rhythms.

Innovation laboratory

However, the multi-level, heterogeneous classroom can be seen as a way of making a clean break with the simultaneous teaching method, inherited from the ^17th-century schools of Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, in which everyone does the same thing at the same time.

It's the method we've all experienced as ^{twentieth-century} pupils at every stage of our schooling, and which we can guess without being great pedagogues that it doesn't allow us to take into account the diversity of our pupils: the fastest pupils get bored, while those with difficulties don't progress at their own pace.

To say that the multi-age class is a laboratory for pedagogical innovation is to assume that reflection on the functioning of this type of class, and in particular on its tools for autonomy and differentiation, is a lever for rethinking the organization of a class that meets the objectives of the inclusive and caring school we are aiming for in the 21st century.^e century.

Sylvie Jouan, Professor of philosophy, teacher trainer/knowledge of the education system, University of Montpellier

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