Back to school 2026 in France: the changes to know at collège and lycée

Students in mainland France go back to school on Tuesday 1 September 2026. The new school year brings several concrete changes for students, including the new modern foreign language curricula.

Article checked and updated on 10 August 2026 using the official texts available on that date.

Back to school 2026: what really changes at collège and lycée

The back-to-school circular published by the ministère de l’Éducation nationale (the French Ministry of Education) itself states that 2026 is not a year of new structural reforms. The changes are more targeted: a gradual roll-out of new curricula, adjustments to certain forms of support and the continuation of measures already under way.

Year group	Main change in September 2026	What to remember
6e (first year of collège)	A possible new organisation in French and Maths	Stronger teaching support, with the option of smaller groups or groups formed according to need.
5e (second year of collège)	New curricula	New curricula in French, Maths and modern foreign languages.
3e (final year of collège)	Citizenship, media and information education	Projects of up to 18 hours a year extended to 3e.
Seconde, general and technological tracks	New Maths curriculum	The curriculum published in the Bulletin officiel of 2 April 2026 comes into force.
Première, general and technological tracks	New Maths curricula	They cover in particular the Maths specialty, the Maths integrated into the general science course and the technological track.
Première	Early Maths exam	The exam has existed since June 2026 and concerns Première students: 2 hours, coefficient 2, no calculator.
Lycée	Tighter rules on mobile phones	The ministry asks lycées to implement the ban through their internal rules; the details must be checked school by school.

For families, the sensible approach is therefore less to look for “the 2026 reform” than to identify the changes that apply precisely to the student’s year group and subjects.

Key dates for the 2026 school year

For mainland France, the 2026-2027 calendar is set by the decree (arrêté) of 22 October 2025. The return date for students is the same in zones A, B and C; it is mainly the winter and spring holidays that differ.

Period	Zone A	Zone B	Zone C
Students return	Tuesday 1 September 2026	Tuesday 1 September 2026	Tuesday 1 September 2026
All Saints’ holiday (Toussaint)	17 October to 2 November 2026	17 October to 2 November 2026	17 October to 2 November 2026
Christmas holiday	19 December 2026 to 4 January 2027	19 December 2026 to 4 January 2027	19 December 2026 to 4 January 2027
Winter holiday	13 February to 1 March 2027	20 February to 8 March 2027	6 to 22 February 2027
Spring holiday	10 to 26 April 2027	17 April to 3 May 2027	3 to 19 April 2027
Summer holiday	From 3 July 2027	From 3 July 2027	From 3 July 2027

There will also be no classes on Friday 7 May 2027. Calendars may differ for Corsica and the overseas territories. The school calendar of the Ministry of Education lets you check the dates for each académie (education authority).

Which new Maths curricula come into force in 2026?

The 2026 Maths curriculum does not change at the same time for every collège (lower secondary school) and lycée (upper secondary school) student. The roll-out is gradual.

Year group	Situation in September 2026
5e	New cycle 4 Maths curriculum
4e (third year of collège)	New curriculum planned for September 2027
3e	New curriculum planned for September 2028
Seconde, general and technological tracks	New curriculum in September 2026
Première, general track, Maths specialty	New curriculum in September 2026
Première, general track, without the Maths specialty	New Maths curriculum integrated into the general science course
Première, technological track	New Maths curriculum
Terminale	The new curricula will apply from September 2027

The timetable is confirmed by Éduscol (the Ministry’s resource portal for teachers): the new cycle 4 curriculum applies first in 5e, while the new lycée curricula cover Seconde and Première from September 2026.

This gradual roll-out has a practical consequence: a student in 5e and their brother in 4e are not yet working from the same generation of curriculum. Before buying a textbook, reusing an older sibling’s revision sheets or preparing private tutoring, you therefore need to check the year group concerned.

What changes for 5e students

5e is one of the year groups most affected in 2026. The new cycle 4 (the last three years of collège) curricula for French and Maths, published in the Bulletin officiel (the Ministry’s official gazette) of 5 March 2026, come into force in this year group before being extended to 4e and then 3e.

A more explicitly structured Maths curriculum

The new official cycle 4 curriculum organises learning in 5e around several areas: numbers and calculation, literal and algebraic calculation, geometry, statistics and probability, proportionality, functions and computational thinking.

The text also gives an explicit place to automatic skills, problem-solving, reasoning, gradual proof and putting one’s method into words. This changes what effective revision looks like: knowing a rule is not enough if the student cannot recognise when and why to use it.

A few skills quickly show whether the foundations are solid enough:

• carrying out simple calculations without losing time on basic procedures;
• handling negative numbers and fractions correctly;
• translating a situation into a calculation or a mathematical representation;
• explaining the steps of a line of reasoning;
• checking whether a result is plausible;
• reusing a method in an exercise slightly different from the one seen in class.

A student who gets an exercise right immediately after seeing its correction but gets stuck on a variant does not necessarily have a problem with knowing the course content. They may lack an understanding of the mechanism or the ability to identify the right method. This is exactly the kind of distinction to look for at the start of the year, as our article on the mistakes in functions in Seconde that reveal a real gap in prerequisites shows.

French and modern languages are changing too

The changes in 5e are not limited to Maths. The new cycle 4 French curriculum also comes into force in September 2026. In modern foreign languages, the curricula published in May 2025 continue to be rolled out and now apply to 5e.

A possible new organisation in French and Maths

From September 2026, students in 6e and 5e receive stronger teaching support in these two subjects. According to the official organisation of teaching at collège, schools may in particular organise all or part of the timetable with smaller groups or groups formed according to the needs identified by teachers.

This does not mean that every collège student will automatically be placed in a fixed ability group for the whole year. The organisation may vary depending on the school and on teaching needs.

What changes in Seconde and Première

In Seconde: a new Maths curriculum

The new Maths curriculum for Seconde (the first year of lycée), general and technological tracks, applies from September 2026.

It remains organised around familiar broad areas: numbers and calculation, algebra, geometry, functions, statistics and probability, to which are added in particular algorithmics, programming, logic and regular work on automatic skills.

The text stresses a decisive challenge of Seconde: making a successful transition from collège to lycée while preparing for subject choices, notably the possible choice of the Maths specialty in Première (the second year of lycée).

For a student entering Seconde, trying to “get ahead” on several chapters over the summer is rarely the priority. It is usually more useful to check the basics that will be needed straight away: fractions, literal calculation, equations, percentages, functions, reading graphs, geometry and reasoning.

In Première: several Maths curricula are affected

The change does not only concern students who have chosen the Maths specialty. In September 2026, new curricula come into force for:

• the Maths specialty in Première, general track;
• the Maths integrated into the general science course (enseignement scientifique) for general-track students who do not take the specialty;
• Maths in Première, technological track.

In the specialty, the curriculum covers in particular sequences, quadratics, differentiation, functions, the exponential function, trigonometry, geometry, probability, statistics and algorithmics. The new text also strengthens the explicit place of automatic skills to be kept up throughout the year.

The early Maths exam becomes a milestone to factor in from September

The early Maths exam is not being introduced in September 2026: it was held for the first time in June 2026. But students entering Première in September 2026 will also sit it at the end of their year.

According to Éduscol, the exam lasts two hours, carries a coefficient of 2 and is taken without a calculator. It has a first part on automatic skills, marked out of 6 points, followed by two or three exercises worth 14 points.

For Première students in 2026-2027, the exact date of the June 2027 exam will need to be checked once the corresponding national calendar is published. It would therefore be wrong to simply carry over the date used in June 2026.

Other changes affect lycée

Modern foreign languages are also continuing their change of curriculum. The new curricula, already applied in Seconde since 2025, cover Première and Terminale (the final year of lycée), general and technological tracks, from 2026. The timetable differs for some regional languages.

September 2026 is also marked by tighter rules on mobile phones at lycée. A circular of 2 July 2026 asks schools to amend their internal rules to ban their use within the framework provided.

A legal clarification is useful here: the Code de l’éducation (the French Education Code) still provides that a lycée’s internal rules may ban this use. The Conseil d’État (France’s highest administrative court), asked in July 2026 to suspend the circular, rejected the urgent application and pointed out that amending the internal rules is a matter for each lycée’s governing bodies. To know which rule actually applies to a student in September, the document to consult is therefore still their school’s internal rules.

What are the consequences for families and private tutors?

A change of curriculum does not justify rebuilding a student’s whole way of working. The first step is to identify what really changes for them.

A simple approach is to proceed in this order:

1. Check the official curriculum for the exact year group. A 4e revision sheet or an older textbook can still be useful, but it should not be the sole reference for a 5e student in 2026.
2. Test the prerequisites. Before starting the new material, check the calculations, methods and reasoning that will be taken for granted.
3. Sort the mistakes. A calculation error, a concept not understood and a misreading of the question do not call for the same response.
4. Have the student explain their method. Asking “why are you doing this step?” often tells you more than a series of ten identical exercises.
5. Measure progress on new tasks. The real question is not only “is the exercise right?” but “can the student redo it alone and adapt the method?”.

For families who want outside support, the tutor too must know the year group, the curriculum and the type of difficulty before building their work. On NOEO, you can search for private tutors by subject and year group rather than choosing only from a general label such as “Maths tutor”.

How to prepare for the first tests in September?

The best preparation is not necessarily the one that covers the most chapters. It consists in quickly identifying the knowledge that really holds up when the student works alone.

What you observe	Likely difficulty	Useful work	Sign of progress
The student understands the correction but cannot start again alone	Method not sufficiently absorbed	Rephrase the method, then tackle a variant	They choose the first steps on their own
Sign or fraction errors keep recurring	Fragile automatic skills	Short, regular series of mental and written calculation	Basic errors decrease without help
The student knows the course but gets stuck on problems	Difficulty with modelling or reading	Identify data, question, unknowns and relationships before calculating	They build a diagram, an expression or an equation on their own
Direct exercises go well, mixed tests much less so	Insufficient recognition of methods	Mix several types of exercise without announcing the method	They recognise the right tool without a hint

In Première, it is also worth gradually adding short exercises without a calculator, since the early Maths exam is taken under those conditions. The aim is not to prepare for the exam from September as if it were a few weeks away, but to avoid a reliance on the calculator setting in for operations that should become automatic.

The first month then lets you compare these observations with actual tests. A single mark is not enough to draw a conclusion. Look instead at whether certain mistakes disappear, whether the student starts an exercise more quickly, explains their reasoning better and transfers a method to a new situation.

Official sources and update schedule

The information in this article is based on the texts available on 10 August 2026. Several elements have already been published in final form: the school calendar, the 5e curricula, the Seconde and Première Maths curricula and the framework for the early exam.

Other information must be checked during the year, in particular the precise timetable for the June 2027 exams and the practical arrangements set locally by schools. A lycée’s internal rules or the organisation of groups in a collège should therefore not be inferred from a general rule without checking the decision of the school concerned.