Emmanuel Macron wants to reduce the number of school holidays “to be able to relax the weeks to learn better”

This Sunday, February 2, 2025, President Emmanuel Macron relaunched the debate on the organization of school time, which he wants to reexamine. According to him, reducing the length of vacations would make it possible to lighten the pace of school weeks.

Will students soon have fewer holidays ? Questioned by a child on this issue during a trip to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Colmar (Haut-Rhin) this Sunday, Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to “reopen” the “question of school time”, reports Le Parisien.

“France has longer holidays than many countries. The question we can ask ourselves for our children is: should we not review the holidays a little to be able to relax the weeks to better learn”, declared the Head of State.

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Sophie Vénétitay, Secretary General of the Snes-FSU, reacted this Monday morning on franceinfo : “Emmanuel Macron brings up the idea of ​​school holidays. It's no surprise, he does it every time he needs to create a diversion and talk about something other than urgent school issues. Talking about holidays when school is collapsing is still very easy”.

Not a new idea

She calls for “putting emergencies back where they belong”, emphasizing that “schools are collapsing, we are short of teachers, we need to recruit and above all, we must increase wages and improve working conditions”.

This idea is not new. As early as August 2023, Emmanuel Macron was already considering a reduction in summer vacations, believing that their current length was widening learning inequalities.

More recently, in an interview with Le Parisien – Aujourd’hui en France in mid-January, the Minister of National Education Élisabeth Borne also mentioned the negative effects of “long breaks (during summer vacations)”, which would lead to “losses in level for the most vulnerable students”. She had specified that the 2026 summer holidays could be modified depending on “discussions on the subject”.