Not intended as a rant, though might end up in the Wurst anyway.
I’m tagging it as discussion, not whinge, because that’s what I want here, not to be a whinge or trigger a lot of other whinging. I honestly want to understand what’s going on 🙂
I have a question about the Luxembourgish education system.
Why so complicated?
No, not the multiple languages – I get that, and appreciate it, and can’t really see how it could be simplified.
No, not the mix of national, international and private systems – I get that, and sigh a bit, but it is what it is.
No, not even the multiple different streams of high schools – It’s a bit unfamiliar, but I get it, and it has its advantages.
What I mean is the simple stuff.
Things like the names of the year levels each child goes through from precose to graduation:
Precose
* 1.0? (optional)
Primary
* 1.1
* 1.2
* 2.1
* 2.2
* 3.1
* 3.2
* 4.1
* 4.2
Secondary
* 7
* 6
* 5
* 4 (or 1st CCP/DAP)
* 3 (or 2nd CCP/DAP)
* 2 (or 3rd CCP/DAP)
* 1
Take a look at the diagram on [https://today.rtl.lu/luxembourg-insider/family-and-school/a/1962098.html](https://today.rtl.lu/luxembourg-insider/family-and-school/a/1962098.html) where it explains the Luxembourgish public school system(s).
Surely someone in the Luxembourgish Ministry of Education has seen the “European Curriculum” column and noticed how much simpler and more logical the year naming is. They must have – they created the diagram! (See p22 of the booklet here: [https://men.public.lu/en/publications/divers/informations-generales-offre-scolaire/systeme-educatif-luxembourgeois.html](https://men.public.lu/en/publications/divers/informations-generales-offre-scolaire/systeme-educatif-luxembourgeois.html)).
When I were a lad (in a completely different country!), it was even simpler. Prep (which I think was short for preparatory, but I never really asked), then grades 1-12, and 13 if you had to repeat 12. A bit like the German/Luxembourgish column, but instead of starting at 5, it started at 1.
Yeah, other countries have different systems (and the French also count backwards in High School), but usually it’s one year per number, in order, and maybe starting again in high school, and if you’re American you make up special names for the years (what’s a Sophomore anyway, and why is Junior one of the senior years? But I digress).
I know, I know – Luxembourg organises schools in cycles, and kids have two years to learn particular primary skills with the same teacher, and that seems quite sensible (except when that teacher goes on maternity leave so instead of one teacher for two years, it’s one official teacher plus two temporary ones), but you could do this with simple naming too.
Even kids here seem to refer to their years numerically, like “4th year” – which I assumed would be 2.2, but I’m told it’s 3.2, but then perhaps it could be Cycle 4 depending on context.
And then, do we have regular school hours?
No, because that would be simple.
Kids finish their mornings at either 11:40 or 12:30 depending on the day, and then three days a week they have another school session from 2-4. Why not just make it consistent, at least for the morning end time?
And what do parents who don’t have a foyer place do with their kids in the breaks between morning and afternoon sessions? Are they taking their kids to and from school four times a day three days a week? Is this considered a good idea by anyone, even those who aren’t working full time? What do you do with your day when it’s got 2 hours of kids lunch in the middle? (I mean, who doesn’t love to have lunch with their kids sometimes, but sometimes it’s nice to have lunch with your friends too).
Not to mention the complexity of the school year – there are six (6!) holiday periods (Summer, All Saints, Christmas, Carnival, Easter, Pentecost), plus St Nicholas Day for younger kids. No wonder they have special names for all these different vacation periods, because you run out of seasons to name them after. At least the school year starts and ends on the same date each year – a bit weird starting on a Thursday, but hey!
And then for every vacation, you have to sign a document for the foyer during a specific three-day window to enrol them – no, you can’t do this in advance for the whole year, or even before a specific date. It must be during that precise three day window.
On top of this, our school has three different buildings with roads between them, and there are two different foyers with different managers, across the road from each other, with names that differ only by the number, which isn’t written anywhere on the foyer building, so I \*still\* get confused which is which (I know which kid is where, just not what they are called or how to contact the right one).
And then, foyers aren’t linked to schools – so just because your kid has a school place, doesn’t mean they have after school care (or lunch!), even if the foyer is in the same grounds as the school. Enrollment is independent, you have to apply for both separately.
And there aren’t enough foyer places for the Precose kids because there is more housing construction than school construction, and nobody thought there’d be more kids, despite the housing being built specifically for families.
I get it, some of this stuff is just growing pains, or administrative oversight. And we’re a diverse country, even if a small one – there’s bound to be more complexity here than in a more homogeneous place like … pretty much everywhere else!
But a lot of it seems like needless complexity.
Do native Luxembourgers like this system?
Do they think of it as normal and natural, it’s just part of how things go (like Americans love their imperial system and find metric with its simple logic terribly confusing)?
Has it always been this way? Was it simpler before? Or was it more complex, and \*this\* is a simplification?
I guess simplifying it isn’t going to win an election, so we’re unlikely to see much change – but are there advantages to this complexity I’m not seeing? Is it a ploy to keep parents minds sharp?
If you’re a native Luxembourger, you probably went through this same system – what’s your take?
Are there other countries (European or otherwise) with these complications, or is it unique to the Grand Duchy?
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by Appropriate-Bag-6807