Arrêté du 17-7-2020 et J.O. du 28-7-2020

To understand what this Bulletin Officiel de l'Éducation Nationale, the French National Education Bulletin, Preschool Curriculum, implies, we must first understand how schools in France work and how the Ministry of Education operates (or at least is perceived by teachers).
The French compulsory school is divided into four cycles^[1], which currently gives :
- Cycle 1 corresponds to the preschool composed of Toute Petite Section (TPS), Petite Section (PS), Moyenne Section (MS) and Grande Section (GS), which are children from 3 years old (2 years old, for the youngest) to 6 years old ;
- Cycle 2 corresponds to the Cours Préparatoire^[2] (CP) and Cours Élémentaires^[3] (CE1 and CE2) for children from 6 to 9 years old;
- Cycle 3 corresponds to Cours Moyens^[4](CM1 and CM2) and Sixième^[5] (first year of middle school), for children from 9 to 12 years old;
- Cycle 4 corresponds to the last classes of the middle school, the Cinquième (second year of middle school), the Quatrième (third year of middle school) and the Troisième^[6] (fourth and last year of middle school).
This is followed by the three years of high school (in order: Seconde, Première and Terminale^[7]) which are not part of compulsory school.
Each cycle is governed by a program and each year of the cycle by a sort of "sub-program". These are decided by the Ministry of Education and change approximately every 7 years. It is also important to know that the Ministers who put their names to the education reforms are rarely themselves from education. During the Fifth Republic, 29 different Ministers of Education succeeded one another, only 11 were ever professors or teachers (mostly from universities, rarely from middle or high schools, never from elementary schools).

The document I am going to talk about is concerned with the reform of the preschool program initiated at the beginning of the 2017 school year. Preschool is more than ever seen as the first place to get used to school: it is neither a daycare center nor the school for the "big kids". The child is welcomed as much as his parents, as well as his relationship with his parents. It is a first place of formal learning where the most important thing is to follow children's rhythm and to teach them to live in a community.
The five learning areas are: "Mobilizing language in all its dimensions", "Acting, expressing oneself, understanding through physical activity", "Acting, expressing oneself, understanding through artistic activities", "Building the first tools to structure one's thinking" and "Exploring the world". The objectives in each area are rather vague, leaving the teacher, especially a beginner, alone with its questions. Fortunately, the end-of-cycle expectations are more precise, but do not give any clues on how to achieve them.
Finally, the 26-page document is made up of nearly 24 pages of ideals for 2 pages of concreteness. I would like to thank the thought conveyed by this paper which no longer separates the pupils by age or level but leaves room for everyone to express themselves and to learn at their own pace. However, as a former teacher, I deplore the absence of a guide. Working in a team, in a network, it is not only within a school, it is not only with teachers of the same grade, it is with all the strata of the hierarchy and that is what is missing in this document.