Since the Pisa studies, that is to say since 2000, we know what types of children are students at risk: Children from immigrant backgrounds and/or from socio-economically disadvantaged families. With the pandemic, this problem has become even more acute. In his “Carte blanche”, Gaston Ternes examines the possibilities for action on this issue.

It is no surprise that the “Luxembourg Center for Educational Testing” (LUCET) at the University of Luxembourg drew attention to the inequalities of the Luxembourg school system in its recent report on education monitoring. This declaration is also supported by the National Observatory of School Quality. In particular, listening comprehension competence in the German language has declined significantly, due to the fact that during the pandemic, young people with a migrant background have had little or no contact with the German language. And for digital home education to be successful, strong parental involvement is necessary.

The solutions currently being implemented are, overall, the following: more German lessons during the third and last school term in primary schools, as well as the proposal of a "summer school" of 14 days before classes resume in mid-September. This seems to be a drop in the ocean.

An effective approach to the problem of inequity of opportunities must be based on two pillars: it is part of continuity and the effectiveness of the measure is regularly evaluated.

Equity in education extends well beyond the school itself. A first step would be much better networking of existing teaching and support structures. It is important to identify the barriers that currently make access difficult for families.

Thinking about equity automatically means offering a maximum of possibilities in the school itself so that these possibilities are accessible to each learner. As an example, it would be useful to have a committee in the school which, in close contact with the family, can react quickly and flexibly to any situation. To meet this challenge, the school needs additional human resources.

The school system itself should be completely restructured; he should select much later, because early separation limits the young person's abilities and makes good orientation difficult.

Linguistic support in German and French is the “alpha and omega” of academic success in the Luxembourg school system. School initiatives that offer, for example, personalized language support by adapting the individual learner's timetable, within the 30 hours per week, should not only work in some schools, but across the country. .

And what about the introduction of a compulsory program limited to 25 hours per week at all levels of primary and secondary education, and 5 hours that can be scheduled on an optional basis to meet the needs and talents of students? The pandemic showed us the way by forcing us to focus on the essentials of the program.

These are just a few suggestions. Are they not reason enough for a real educational offensive?

The challenge of multilingualism at school
Luxembourg is characterized by a multilingual and multicultural environment, the likes of which are rarely found abroad. In terms of school provision, there is today a clear trend to resolve the difficulty of this heterogeneity through international, European or private school structures, focused on a specific language. Are we not missing a great opportunity for an inclusive national school offer? In this carte blanche, Gaston Ternes talks about the subject.

Our advantage so far has been that in our small country we have learned German, French and English languages at a high level. It is an asset for our schools that there are on average around fifty different mother tongues spoken at home. The schools in the Luxembourg national school system are therefore, by their very nature, all “international schools”. However, this richness also has its drawbacks: Researchers regularly point out that too many students are not up to the high demands of our language teaching and therefore do not make sufficient progress in learning other subjects.
Unable to meet these ambitious demands, young people undergo two regulatory mechanisms: Repeat class or move to a less demanding structure, general or preparatory education. The first measure of grade repetition has long been deemed completely ineffective in scientific studies on the subject. The second measure is also bad: due to a lack in one language, one is downgraded overall and deprived of possible performance in other subjects.
A child who repeats a year costs the State around 45,000 euros in secondary education and 25,000 euros in primary education. This is a lot of money that would have been better invested in in-depth reflection on our language teaching.
Why aren't we tackling this problem? After all, we can count on many school initiatives. We have enough studies that indicate possible solutions. We can draw on the experience of teachers who face language challenges on a daily basis. However, the framework is unfortunately too narrow to allow effective solutions.
The answers lie in the didactics of language teaching, in the importance of learning the language in its context, in the motivation to learn a foreign language because one needs it in one's environment. In this sense, language teaching must be rebuilt from the ground up, that is, from primary school to the baccalaureate. As an example, languages could be offered with different accentuations and levels. We absolutely must give our language teachers a common voice in national working groups and thus define a new framework!
Foreign languages are essential for citizens who want to work together across borders. The answers to this great challenge cannot therefore be limited to offering ever more specific language study programs.

At the heart of multilingualism at school.

Luxembourg is characterized by a multilingual and multicultural environment, the likes of which are rarely found abroad. In terms of school provision, there is today a clear trend to resolve the challenge of this heterogeneity through international, European or private school structures, focused on a specific language. Are we not missing a great opportunity for inclusive national school provision? Gaston Ternes talks about language teaching in this carte blanche.

Our advantage so far has been that in our small country we have learned German, French and English languages at a high level. It is an asset for our schools that there are on average around fifty different mother tongues spoken at home. The schools in the Luxembourg national school system are therefore, by their very nature, all “international schools”. However, this richness also has its drawbacks: Researchers regularly point out that too many students are not up to the high demands of our language teaching and therefore do not make sufficient progress in learning other subjects.
Unable to meet these ambitious demands, young people undergo two regulatory mechanisms: Repeat class or move to a less demanding structure, general or preparatory education. The first measure of grade repetition has long been deemed completely ineffective in scientific studies on the subject. The second measure is also bad: due to a certain lack in a language, we are downgraded overall and deprived of possible performance in other subjects.
A child who repeats a year costs the State around 45,000 euros in secondary education and 25,000 euros in primary education. This is a lot of money that would have been better spent on in-depth reflection on our language teaching.
Why aren't we tackling this problem? After all, we can count on many school initiatives. We have enough studies that indicate possible solutions. We can draw on the experience of teachers who face language challenges on a daily basis. However, the framework is unfortunately too narrow to allow effective solutions.
The answers lie in the didactics of language teaching, in the importance of learning the language in its context, in the motivation to learn a foreign language because one needs it in one's environment. In this sense, language teaching must be rebuilt from the ground up, that is, from primary school to the baccalaureate. As an example, languages could be offered with different accentuations and levels. We absolutely must give our language teachers a common voice in national working groups and thus define a new framework!
Foreign languages are essential for citizens who want to work together across borders. The answers to this great challenge cannot therefore be limited to offering ever more specific language study programs.

On data protection: who says A must say B
By law of May 28, 2019, a 2016 European directive was translated into Luxembourg law, in order to guarantee high security for networks and information systems in the European Union. So what about the protection of individual data? Has the maximum been done to protect the citizen? Gaston TERNES studies the question.
In times of COVID, we are using the Internet more than usual.

It is clear that a scourge has increased considerably since the start of the pandemic: “phishing” from the English “Fishing”. This is a dishonest method to identify our sensitive data.

The statistics are shocking: only 3% of us open “SPAM” emails, i.e. advertising emails, but phishing emails are viewed by around 30%. The annual amount of damage thus created in the Benelux is currently estimated at 1 billion euros. In the first month of the Corona pandemic, there were 16,000 phishing attacks in the Netherlands, compared to only 6,000 in previous months.
The Corona pandemic is the perfect opportunity for dishonest people. The strategy is always more professional and is based on the original visual support of services that we regularly consult, the Post Office, the major distribution networks and the banks. We are invited to update our sensitive data by arguing that there is a security breach, or that a delivery is on hold because data is missing. These are just a few of the many reasons to remove sensitive data from us. Recently, these criminals took advantage of the health crisis by inviting us to transfer 50 euros for a COVID test, even though these tests are free.
All right! Banks and other institutions take care to regularly inform us about ongoing phishing attacks. We also have a very laudable initiative managed by the Government, CIRCL, the “Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg”, which collects these dishonest attempts and supports us if we have been the victim of a fraudulent attack.
It is also true that it is difficult to trace these offenses, because the initiators hide their identity behind very sophisticated methods and because they operate from a multitude of countries, often far from us, and with legislation very different.
But are we doing enough to make life difficult for these fraudsters? My plea is as follows: we should launch a vast information campaign which indicates an easy and rapid procedure for immediately reporting a phishing attack, so that after a few seconds, an investigation is launched. So these thieves would feel a little less sure in their action.
By the law of May 28, 2019, we said “A”. It’s high time to say “B”!

It seems to me that in the numerous reforms of primary and secondary schools, fundamental reflection on the topic of "assessment of student performance" has been missing. There are only requirements for the teacher that are added to an existing model. This had a considerable impact on the quantity of writing work to be done by teachers: detailed comments on each assignment in class, analyzing each error, as well as a precise distribution according to the targeted skills which are also always linked to the notes.

There is absolutely no relationship between the number of hours the teacher spends writing all this feedback and the benefit the student derives from this work. The young person himself lives to the rhythm of multiple tests and forgets what he has learned, because other subjects also have a duty in class. The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire speaks in this context of "banking pedagogy" student takes an exam, he is “paid” by a good or bad grade and the action stops there.

Shouldn't we attach importance to the young person, subsequently, on the basis of brief suggestions from teachers, reviewing their production and thus gaining more and more satisfaction in their work? Interestingly, at present, research into brain functioning favors reactivation and learning in small steps as two major pillars of effective learning!

The Corona pandemic has put schools in a state of emergency and teleworking has gained considerable momentum. However, it shows limits when we consider the balancing effect within the class and the numerous social interactions that take place there. Teleworking also makes it difficult to evaluate student performance, because not all young people have the same working conditions.

Confinement forces us to not consider From now on as the essential elements of the curriculum and performance assessment. It is essential that learning takes place in continuity and that repetition, cooperative behavior and personal commitment are reflected in it. It is also essential that learning is given enough time to go in depth because busyness only results in superficial learning and triggers stress and fear. Dividing the year into semesters instead of quarters would already have the effect of reducing the number of tests by a third.

The health crisis gives us another look at learning; it also shows us the importance of cooperation rather than competition and it is exactly this element which should have a much stronger impact in the evaluation.
Carte blanche 08-05-20 Leeschtungsberwäertung an der Schoul (Gaston Ternes)_Script

At a time when the iPad is becoming the standard tool for teaching, the voice of its opponents is also increasing. At the end of 2015, the OECD-PISA consortium published a very critical report entitled “Connected for learning?” with the main statement: "The more children use software, the Internet and educational programs, the more their academic performance declines." Prominent neuroscience researchers, including Manfred Spitzer, have consistently warned of “digital dementia” and therefore want to completely ban technology from schools. Recently, Michel Desmurget, director of the CNRS, the National Center for Scientific Research in France, supported the thesis with his book “The factory of the digital moron, the dangers of screens for children”.
However, alarmist discourse prevents us from asking the right questions. The name “screen” now hides a myriad of interfaces and applications: television, smartphones, social networks, video games as well as educational software. The subject therefore concerns very diverse issues.

A nuanced discourse is required: there are times when the use is useful and important, there are others when this is not the case. We are quickly led to ask ourselves the question of reasonable use and a maximum duration per day. Reasonable use is that which has no impact on daily life, learning or the organization of work.
Note that, among all the experts who express themselves so differently on this subject, there is a minimal consensus: a child under 12 should in principle not be left alone in front of a screen.

Today, our duty is to prepare young people for the digital world, and therefore to transmit digital skills to them. For this, the iPad at school is a good tool: it not only supports learning, it also allows us to show how the Internet and its algorithms want to influence us, how the business model of collecting our private data works.
My response to the theme is this: screens do not make children stupid, they are a wonderful resource on one condition: that we support young people! This is why the next initiative of our Minister of Education “Screens in the family, manage, educate and support” is entirely appropriate. Hopefully this will have an impact and become a topic of conversation, both in the family and at school.

About the fragmentation of the educational landscape

seen Gaston TERNES

The fragmentation of the educational landscape is not specifically “Luxembourgish”. This is a general phenomenon! According to researchers Anne Barrère and Bernard Delvaux (University of Paris-Descartes and Namur), there are three major reasons for this in the context of globalization: the increasing heterogeneity of the population, the desire to be able to continue one's studies with like-minded people and an individual design of the learning path.

Fragmentation itself is reflected in Luxembourg by the creation of international or European schools, Montessori schools, to name just a few.

Three years after the launch of this idea of fragmentation of the educational landscape in Luxembourg, we must now ask ourselves where we want to go: do we want an ever greater division of the educational landscape in order, like the government program, to be more able to satisfy the needs of each learner? Or, on the contrary, does this fragmentation contribute to even more inequalities? The differences “expensive schools” versus “free schools” or “unconstrained teacher recruitment” versus “state-regulated recruitment” support the latter idea.

The most likely scenario for the years to come will be an ever-increasing fragmentation of the educational landscape, with private and public actors. In this scenario, it is young people and their parents who decide what they choose in the diverse “marketplace” of the school landscape. It seems obvious to me that the scale of inequalities will widen.

Fragmentation poses a second problem: if a young person can, to a certain extent, choose their school system "à la carte", is there not a great danger that they will choose the easiest path for themselves? ? It may well be that the full intellectual potential of certain young people is no longer being exploited.

Sweden is today, after more than 30 years of an increasingly fragmented school landscape, finding its way towards a more unified school landscape. Indeed, inequalities have increased massively and the overall performance of Swedish education provision has fallen from the leading pack to below average.

For us, this does not mean that we should not wait for the reforms to take effect, but that we must support them now!