At the start of the 2021 school year, all first grade "Cours Préparatoire (CP) "or second grade "Cours Elémentaire première année (CE1)" students were assessed in French and mathematics (nearly 1.6 million students in 33,000 schools) after a school year still disrupted by the health crisis in 2020-2021.
At the beginning of both CP and CE1, there is an increase in the proportion of students with satisfactory mastery in all domains assessed compared to 2020. Students’ results return to the 2019 level or better.
At the beginning of CP, the least successful exercises are still the same (recognizing letters among letters and associating a number with a position), but these are the ones that show the most significant progress since 2020 and even 2019.
At the beginning of CE1, in French, fluency exercises remain the least successful, although students perform better there than in 2019. In mathematics, students continue to struggle with problem solving and the number line, despite marked progress.
Online calculation sees a strong increase in its mastery rate.
Between 2020 and 2021, these changes are accompanied, particularly in CE1, by a decrease in the performance gap between students in priority education and those in schools outside of priority education, contrary to the increase observed in 2020.
In mathematics, as in previous years, the performance of pupils by gender reverses at the start of CE1. In fact, boys perform better there than girls, unlike at the beginning of CP.