Nursery schools of France

[1] The nursery school cycle is an important element of the French education system and aims to ensure the awakening and socialisation of young children.

[2] Centres for caring for such children opened at the end of the 18th century, including with the so-called “knitting schools” in Alsace.

In 1810, the Welsh philanthropist, Robert Owen, founded a school for small children in his cotton mills at New Lanark, Scotland.

Mme de Pastoret - a wealthy philanthropist who had already started a kind of crèche for the care of very young, working class children in Paris - heard these accounts and resolved to put these ideas into practice in France.

[2][7] It was at this time that Jean-Denis Cochin, mayor of the second arrondissement of Paris, who was devoted to the cause of protecting and developing children, contacted the Women's Committee.

He feared a setback for Mme de Pastoret's work (she had earlier created a crèche that had to be closed because it had insufficient personnel to take care of the number of children it enrolled[7]).

He shared his apprehensions with the Women's Committee and persuaded a colleague, Mme Millet, to go and study Buchanan's infant schools in London.

[8] The Falloux law of 1850 took a further step toward universal education by requiring towns with more than 800 inhabitants to create schools for girls.

The law, whose main thrust was to promote the role of Catholic education, devoted just three short articles to the écoles maternelles.

It sought to provide a certain amount of freedom to private asylum rooms, while also organising state control over them and integrating them into the broader mixed public-private school system.

The écoles maternelles were non-compulsory, but were provided as a free public service and fully integrated with elementary school education.

[5] A decree of August 2, 1881 established the primary mission of nursery schools as one of providing young children with the possibility of obtaining the care necessary for their physical, moral and intellectual development.

Her emphasis was on promoting the natural development of the child and the full integration of the écoles maternelles into the broader school system.

[5] Until the 1950s, attendance at nursery schools was mainly limited to cities and large towns located in industrial France and it remained relatively low.