The aim of these lessons is to give young people the opportunity to catch up on any missed material accumulated as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown. This form tutoring programme already existed at secondary level, but they are a novelty for basic education.
In general, they have proven to be quite popular. 4,830 pupils in cycles 2, 3 and 4.1 of basic education had previously enrolled, as had 1,100 secondary school students.
During a presentation of the courses, Minister of Education Claude Meisch stated that up until now, young people had to give up “a lot” at school, but now it was up to the politicians to give something back to them. The “Summer School” lessons are scheduled to last for two weeks.
The minister made it clear that it was important for the ministry not to make children feel that school started two weeks early. This is why pupils at the primary level can only attend one class, for a maximum of two hours a day.
Meisch explained that if it had been two or three subjects, it would already have been four to six hours a day and there would have been more classes than in the normal school programme. He stressed that students were entitled to summer holidays.
However, they also have a right to education and unfortunately this has been severely restricted in recent months due to the lockdown. Catching up is the obvious objective, but also offering the pupils the opportunity to bring their knowledge up to date before the start of the school year.
According to Meisch, a fundamental weakness shared by a lot of primary school students in general is languages. The minister thinks that this is precisely the case this year too, because at home, not all parents have a good command of every language taught in Luxembourg’s schools, due to contact with these languages being interrupted for some parents during the weeks when they had to school their children at home.
On the other hand, a majority of secondary school students chose tutoring lessons in mathematics.
Meisch also stated that he intends to maintain the concept during future summer holidays.
344 staff members provide courses at the primary school level, including students, who can thus accumulate professional experience.
A range of teaching materials is also available on the schouldoheem.lu website, where some 47,000 files have already been downloaded.
Video report in Luxembourgish:
Claude Meisch to announce further school and education details on Friday
