Students will have to participate in an annual “commemorative ceremony” paying tribute to all those who “Died for France” around November 11, starting at the start of the next school year, according to a text from the Ministry of Education published Thursday July 2.
“In addition to the lessons, the commemorative ceremonies constitute a concrete and collective experience of appropriation” of “common memory and national cohesion”, affirms this text published in the official bulletin.
From the start of the school year, “an annual commemorative ceremony paying tribute to all those who died for France” will be “established in each elementary, middle and high school, public or private under contract, including within the network of French education abroad. »
From CM1 to final year
It will take place “within the premises of the establishment”, in the four days preceding or following November 11, “a date established by law as a national day of commemoration of victory and peace and of homage to all those who died for France, civilians and soldiers”.
Students will have to participate from CM1 until final year. Heads of establishments will be able to “call on volunteer staff, in particular operational reservists” and “associations from the fighting world and local elected officials, in particular the municipality’s defense correspondent”. The commemoration must mobilize “coherent educational work” including moral and civic teaching and history-geography, relying on commemorative steles or plaques, if there are any in the school.
In a speech given in Varces (Isère) in November 2025, Emmanuel Macron affirmed that “our nation” must “better support the desire to serve of our youth”. “This is why our young people will have to participate in at least one commemorative ceremony per year in each establishment,” he announced.
