How can we successfully meet the challenge of a common, ambitious, multi-disciplinary training program that prepares students for the world of tomorrow?

The challenge of a common, ambitious, multi-disciplinary training program that prepares students for the world of tomorrow.

In spring 2019, the brand-new "Socle de savoirs et de compétences du tronc commun" (common core knowledge and skills base) (ages 2.5 to 15) will be finalized and begin the long road to approval. This will be followed by curriculum development and teacher training. Implementation of the Socle will begin in 2020, in principle for the first 5 years of common education, from the first year of nursery school through to the second year of primary school. From 2021, it will then cover a further year, at the start of each new school year.

Objective and theme

With this in mind, on May 14, 2019, the University of Namur organized a Study Day devoted to the conditions for successful implementation of the Socle, looking both at the factors conducive to such curriculum changes and at the ups and downs of similar foreign experiences from which a number of lessons could be drawn.

Developing this Socle has certainly been a delicate operation, but implementing it and getting thousands of teachers to adhere to it will be even more so...

When it comes to pedagogical reform, there is indeed often a long way to go, and the road to fully achieving the objectives of the "Pact for excellent teaching" via the common core will undoubtedly be strewn with pitfalls :

  • How can we ensure that the new Socle repositories will contribute to making the ambitions and hopes of the Pact effective?
  • Under what conditions will these repositories be able to install, for the benefit of all students, a high-level training adapted to the demands of the 21st century?
  • How can we ensure that the new reference frameworks are embodied in effective teaching practices capable of meeting the 4 aims of the common core:

o The mastery by all of a common, solid, ambitious and broad-spectrum baggage of fundamental knowledge;

o The construction of a common citizenship;

o A better maturation of a positive choice of orientation;

o Greater social equality in the face of school.

  • What are the main levers for the enthusiastic and proactive adoption and implementation of this curricular reform? What are the roles and contributions of the various players, both external and internal to the school, in the mechanisms for transforming pedagogical practices with regard to a new curriculum?

Resources and interventions