France will lower the compulsory school starting age to three from six, as part of new educational reforms introduced by President Emmanuel Macron, reports said Tuesday. The reforms are expected to affect only 2.4 percent of the children, as most French parents already send their children to school at the age of three, according to government stats.
With the change, France will take the top spot for lowest compulsory education starting age in Europe, followed by Northern Ireland, where children start school at the age of four.
President Macron claimed that the reform aims to reduce inequality, as parents in poorer regions of the country are less likely to send children to school at an early age.
"I hope that with this obligation, from the start of the school year in 2019, we can... correct this unacceptable differential," he told a conference organized to discuss pre-school education.
He promised that pre-school "is and will be more in the future a founding moment in the French education system."
Macron, who has named education one of the priorities of his term, has appointed neuropsychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik to help shape changes to the pre-school curriculum in conjunction with Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer.
While in only around five European countries children start school at the age of five, the compulsory education age for the rest of Europe, including Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey is six.
