Four-Day School Week in France

The French Minister of National Education has announced three weeks ago that there will be no more school on Saturday morning.

You're probably wondering right now why on earth French children were ever going to school on Saturday morning in the first place. One of the french moms explains it this way: historically, the church in France put a lot of pressure on the state to close schools on Wednesdays so that children could go to church (the idea being that if church was held on Saturday, no one would attend). And so, to this day, there is school on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 8h30 to 16h00 or thereabouts, and on Saturday morning from 0830 to 12h00.

But as of September 2008, there will be no more school on Saturday morning, in any school in France.

So the million euro question becomes: what about Wednesdays? And much to the delighted surprise of many parents and to the annoyance of many other parents, the Ministère de l’Education Nationale has decided that there will be no school on Wednesdays either, and children will have a four-day school week.

So, thhis generation of French children will be pushing for the four-day work week once they are adults...

The four-day school is a good idea since thre are activities on Wednesdays that children can do. To me, the French system sounds better than the traditional U.S. system of school Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM!

This doesn't apply to Juliette until she turns five and we will be leaving here then.