Secondary education in France

In France, secondary education is in two stages:

The school year starts in early September and ends in early-July. French school holidays are scheduled by the Ministry of Education, by dividing the country into three zones (A, B, and C) to prevent the overcrowding by family holidaymakers of tourist destinations such as the Mediterranean coast and the ski resorts. Lyon, for example, is in zone A, while Marseille is in zone B, and Paris and Bordeaux are in zone C.

In contrast to the practice in most other education systems, the various school years in France are numbered on a decreasing scale. Thus, pupils begin their secondary education in the sixième (6th class), and transfer to a lycée in the seconde (2nd class), while the final year is the terminale.

In French, the word for "étudiant(e)" is usually reserved for university-level students, while collège and lycée students are referred to as élèves (pupils or students in English).

The curriculum (le programme officiel) is standardized for all French public institutions. Changes to the programme are made every year by the French Ministry of Education and are published in the Ministry's Bulletin Officiel de l'Éducation Nationale (BO), the official reference bulletin for educators.

The collège is the first level of secondary education in the French educational system. A pupil attending collège is called collégien (boy) or collégienne (girl). Men and women teachers at the collège- and lycée-level are called professeur (no official feminine professional form exists in France although the feminine form "professeure" has appeared and seems to be gaining some ground in usage). The City of Paris refers to a collège in English as a "high school."

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