In some European schools, classes started as early as August
As RFI notes, the start date of the school year in France changes every year. This year, 12.8 million students will go to school on September 4. Private schools, which educate about 20% of children, can set their own dates according to their schedule, and only the total number of school days must comply with the curriculum.
Le Monde informs its readers that on September 4, children in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Poland, Montenegro, and some regions of Austria and the Netherlands will also start the new school year. Ten other European countries have decided that schools will open their doors on September 1. "And this despite the fact that the first day of classes falls on a Friday," the newspaper notes.
For children in Lower Saxony (Germany), the holidays ended as early as August 3. But students in Malta are lucky—they can stay on the beach until September 25. Le Monde publishes a diagram illustrating the start dates of the school year in EU countries and their regions. According to it, September 1 remains the most popular date.
Not only the start dates of the school year, which span seven weeks, vary by country, but also the length of holidays. Bulgarian schoolchildren have the most holidays—for the youngest, they last a total of 21 weeks, almost five months. That is twice as much as for young Danes, who have only 11 weeks of free time. The French stick to the golden mean (14.5 weeks). And the canton of Aargau in northern Switzerland has the right to distribute holiday weeks at its discretion: three mandatory weeks in summer, and four additional weeks at the discretion of each district of the canton.
A feature of French holidays is the existence of a large number of "short holidays," which, according to many politicians, are not so short. In October, December, February, and March or April, the break each time lasts two weeks, totaling the length of the "long" summer holidays.
The press has recently paid special attention to the autumn holidays, which fall on All Saints' Day, November 1, and last, like other "short" holidays, two weeks. Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer stated on August 24 that in the next two months he intends to begin a broad discussion on the length of holidays in France. The minister finds the autumn holidays particularly long.
Comparison with other European countries indeed does not favor France. In 18 countries, children rest for only one week in autumn, and in another 11 countries, there are no autumn holidays at all. Only schoolchildren in several Swiss cantons rest for three weeks in autumn.
In addition to regular schools, "second chance schools" start operating in France in September. One of them is reported on by the radio station FranceInfo. Since 2011, up to 140 students per year have been studying here. These are young people who left the education system without obtaining any diploma and now want to catch up. Classes are divided into small groups, and alongside training, they undergo internships at enterprises. Recently, 15 migrants have been studying at the school, reports FranceInfo.