Disaster for Emmanuel Macron as France snubbed in 15 'smartest' countries in Europe list

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Disaster has struck for Emmanuel Macron as French “cleverness” has been slammed by a new education study.

Conducted by online tutoring service TutorSpace, researchers assessed the intelligence of 44 European countries across 17 different areas. Combining all their findings into one, they awarded each country a score out of 100 in a crystal-clear indicator of their brainpower.

Whilst every Nordic country, alongside Germany and the UK, made the top 15, France languished in a mid-to-bottom tier position in a humiliation for the French government. German education giant Patrick Nadler, CEO of TutorSpace, reflected on France’s absence and said: “It is surprising that out of the largest countries in Europe, only Germany and the UK make an appearance on this list.”

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The report’s findings will come as an embarrassment for the Macron administration, while previous studies have been similarly despondent about the state of French education and intelligence.

2018’s PISA test – an international assessment which ranks students in every country on their maths, science, and reading ability, reported on the failure of France’s education system.

Whilst the UK hovered around the 15^th mark, France fell to a shocking 26^th in mathematics. Moreover, historic PISA rankings highlight the French’s fall from grace. In 2000 they weighed in at 9^th place, by 2009 they had sunk to 20^th, before reaching the lows of 26^th place in 2015.

Unfortunately for Macron, the report comes as his administration faces another fresh crisis in the education sector, involving new education minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.

Caught sending her children to an elite, private Catholic school after only six months of state education, Oudéa-Castéra’s attempts to defend her position worsened the situation.

She said that she had become “fed up” with the “stack of hours” in school lost due to absent and sub-standard teachers, showing that the crisis in French education is obvious even among those charged with solving it.