Spelling plummets over past 20 years

SCHOOL pupils’ spelling has plummeted over the last 20 years, a recent study has shown.

An experiment by the association Sauvez les Lettres, which is campaigning for a return to more traditional teaching methods of spelling and grammar, showed that two-thirds of pupils in seconde (first year of lycée) scored zero, and only 14% managed to achieve half marks.

This was in a traditional dictée in which pupils start with 20 points and lose two for each grammar error and one for each spelling one. The text had 200 words and 1,348 pupils took it.

The results of the study come as the Ministry of Education revealed that pupils make on average four faults more during a dictation exercise than 20 years ago.

Results in reading and mathematics are also dropping.

The government’s general director of education Jean-Louis Nembrini said: "It is precisely because we are aware of this drop in standards that we have launched primary education reforms."

Statistics published by government body Direction de l'Evaluation et de la Prospective (DEEP) between 1987 and 2007 compared the development of pupils’ skills at the end of primary school over the past 20 years.

The percentage of pupils making more than 15 mistakes during a dictation exercise using the same text as tested 20 years ago had risen from 26% to 46%.

While intermediary results published in 1998 showed a general stability, results over the past 10 years have fallen steeply.

In spelling tests, the number of mistakes in a passage of around 10 lines has risen from an average of 10.7 in 1987 to 14.7 in 2007. It is mostly grammatical errors which have increased.

While 87% of pupils knew how to conjugate the verb tomber 20 years ago, the figure is only 63% today. For the verb voir, figures have dropped from 61% à 44%.