French children have longer school days, and longer holidays. FRANCE: France's education minister has sparked uproar by proposing to cut school summer holidays from eight to six weeks to prevent the country's children falling further behind in league tables. France's huge, unwieldy state education sector is known as "le mammouth" ("the mammoth") and reforming it has been the bane of both left and right governments. Militant teachers' unions are prepared to go on strike over even modest timetable changes. Industrial action was a matter of course last month when Vincent Peillon, education minister in President Francois Hollande's socialist government, announced he wanted to end the four-day week in primary schools to include a half-day on Wednesday. Now, he has further inflamed the teaching profession by announcing his intention to lop two weeks off French schools' summer holidays. French pupils spend among the longest hours daily in class in the world, while the number of days spent in school is among the lowest in all countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Primary school lessons start at 8.30am and finish at 4.30pm. Pupils cram the national curriculum into an average of just 144 days per year, compared to 190 in Britain and an OECD average of 187 days. This extreme concentration in teaching time is harmful to learning. It is a source of fatigue and educational difficulties," Mr Peillon's ministry has said. It is believed the gruelling tempo has led to France losing ground in international league tables, such as Progress in International Reading Literacy, in which it comes 29th out of 45 countries in the literacy of 10 year-olds, compared to 11th for Britain. Under the proposals, French primary pupils will have to spend more days in school - 190 on average per year. Classes will end an hour earlier at 3.30pm, but children will stay in school for another hour to do their homework. Later, secondary schools will also have to open on more days. Teachers' unions say the proposed change is a way of paying teachers less to do more, and of bringing in lower-paid helpers to oversee the extra days in school. We must be capable of having six weeks of holiday. It's enough," Mr Peillon told BFMTV on Sunday. Cutting a break that runs from early July to early September was not to the liking of Bernadette Groison, head of France's biggest teaching federation, FSU. She warned: "If you extend teaching time, you'll have to tell teachers they'll get something in exchange. No employee would accept his timetable being changed without looking at working conditions. Didier Arino, head of the tourism industry lobby group Protourisme, warned that concentrating the summer holidays into a shorter period would have "dramatic" economic consequences. But Christian Forestier, who led a think tank on school reform under the previous government, welcomed the idea. He said: "Nowhere on the planet do primary pupils have six or seven hours of class per day and only go to school 144 days a year like our little kids." France's biggest parents' union, FCPE, also welcomed the proposal.