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Three weeks before the baccalaureate exam, final year students have already started to desert classes, even before the official end of classes, to take private support lessons or to devote themselves to group revision. Teachers are in despair and deplore a worrying increase in absenteeism for the remainder of the third term.
A phenomenon that has grown significantly in recent years. A good part of the students applying for the baccalaureate exam in Algeria no longer go to high school. This repetitive practice as each baccalaureate exam approaches has become worrying.
The trend is already observed in several secondary schools, where students have not returned to school after the spring break, i.e. since the start of the third term. They chose to join private lessons.
Worse still, school leaders tolerate these absences and do not always call the parents of the students. However, explains Bachir Hakem, pedagogue and former mathematics teacher, a student who is absent in the third term will no longer have the right to repeat the year. “The school heads have established this rule but it is not enough because it is not applied on the ground,” regretted Bachir Hakem.
Contacted by the Young Independent, Mr. Hakem warned against the phenomenon of student absenteeism in final year classes. “Absenteeism in the third trimester has become a common phenomenon in education since the establishment of the program threshold,” said the teacher, adding that: “teachers plan in advance subjects similar to those offered at the baccalaureate , and now they’re not just telling their students, they’re even going on television and social media to announce this. »
He places responsibility for absences on the parents of students, but also on the heads of educational establishments, who tolerate this situation.
Convinced that teachers are not giving everything in class, final year students resort to private lessons. Some said they could no longer keep up with the teachers’ pace. “In class, teachers explain their lessons at a relatively high pace, which prevents us from following correctly and understanding the lessons,” laments a final year student.
“During the third quarter of each school year, most students in the third year of secondary school, that is to say those who are required to take the baccalaureate exam, do not follow classes regularly in their establishments. They are absent and prefer to take private lessons,” lamented Sarah, a French language teacher in Boudouaou.
Contacted by the Young Independent, the teacher affirmed that the final year students began to increasingly leave the classrooms to the point that the latter became empty in the month of May. According to her, this relaxation was predictable. “Last year we already noticed a lack of attendance. Absenteeism increases each year compared to previous years, and as the baccalaureate exam approaches, I fear that it will get worse,” she confided, adding that the presence of students varies from one to another. day to day. She also noted that students even tend to choose which classes they want to attend, over the teacher.
“There were times when I found myself with only five or six students, and this situation discouraged me from teaching my class. Frankly, it’s sad to see exam class students skip class and, sometimes, not do their homework,” the teacher regretted.
An essential revision of the programs
As for the reasons behind the proliferation of this phenomenon, the teacher Hakem mentions the recourse of students to private lessons. “As the exam approaches, students will have private lessons in all subjects. Also, they are forced to be absent,” he said.
Mr. Hakem affirmed that 90% of the subjects have for several years focused on the courses taught in the first and second trimesters. “This is the reason why students are no longer interested in third term courses,” he said.
To combat this phenomenon, Mr. Hakem first recommends moving away from the political baccalaureate and moving closer to an educational baccalaureate. For this, he suggested, we must review everything since the primary cycle and return to quality teaching and not quantity.
According to Mr. Hakem, we must also review the programs and subjects to have students who have a good level and therefore will no longer think of deserting classes in the third term.
He also recommended creating bridges for students whose level is very low and not capable of long studies, creating large schools for the most gifted so as to no longer talk about educational wastage, because everyone has -he says, will thus be recovered whatever its level.
“So, it is a major reform at all levels which must be made to restore credibility to the teacher and to the exam, but above all we must give more resources to public schools,” he said. -He underlines.