🚨 Prevention actors: entering the second year is a gateway to action. This guide invites secondary schools to identify vulnerabilities, promote psychosocial skills, and open up to partnerships. This is an opportunity to offer your support to the teams, in response to the needs they identify.
🎙️🎥 "
1. Summary
The vademecum Entry into the general and technological second year offers eight practical sheets to prepare for the transition from middle school to high school and to support students throughout the year. It encourages teams to identify academic difficulties and signs of vulnerability early, to adapt learning, to support guidance, and to prevent dropout. The approach relies on cooperation between educational, social, and health staff, families and partners, as well as on the evaluation of actions undertaken. While not constituting a health promotion guide, it mobilises several levers that contribute to it: psychosocial skills, confidence in one's abilities, mutual aid, and an inclusive school environment. The proposed actions should be adapted to the needs of students and the context of each establishment.
Organisation : identify students in difficulty (sheets 1 to 3); support them throughout the year (sheets 4 to 6); measure this support at the level of the establishment (sheets 7 and 8).
2. What to remember
Also identify what grades do not show
Sheet 1 invites better identification of weak signals related to mental health, deteriorating social situations, and bullying, which are not always visible in academic results. It proposes defining common indicators for middle schools and high schools, taking into account vulnerabilities (p. 4).
Respect a precautionary framework
The vademecum reminds of the requirements for personal data protection, the necessity to avoid stigmatisation, and the distinction between educational identification and diagnosis. It recommends not to substitute for medical assessments and to refer, if necessary, to competent professionals (p. 7).
Evaluate actions without presuming their effectiveness
Sheet 8 proposes indicators for monitoring and evaluating systems, particularly regarding attendance, pathways and satisfaction. The document does not present evaluation results demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed actions (sheet 8).
3. To act
Organise the link between college and sixth form
Proposal of the document: bring together CPE, headteachers and teachers to share useful information and define criteria for identifying students in need of support. The proposed timeline extends from the end of June to September (p. 4-5).
Promote psychosocial skills
Proposal of the document: during meetings between college and sixth form teachers, promote psychosocial skills to enhance the school climate and academic success. A resource titled “ Developing psychosocial skills in students” is mentioned (p. 5).
Suggestion Health Practices: prevention actors who support the development of CPS can make their resources known to sixth forms and offer tailored support to the needs identified by the teams.
Develop external partnerships
Proposal of the document: develop collaborations framed by agreements. The guide mentions AFEV as well as the Cordées de la réussite (p. 12). Note: the latter constitutes a partnership mechanism between institutions, not an association.
Suggestion Health Practices: in the continuation of this partnership opening, a prevention or health promotion structure can propose cooperation tailored to the needs identified by the school. This possibility is not explicitly developed in the vademecum.
4. Three practical questions
Are health professionals involved?
Yes. The document cites nursing staff and social workers among the actors to be mobilised (p. 3), associates them with the identification of difficulties in sheet 2 (p. 6), and mentions medico-social staff in sheets 6 and 7 (p. 18 and 21).
Can a teacher identify difficulties suggesting a DYS disorder?
They can observe learning difficulties, document them, and contribute to pedagogical adaptation, but this identification does not constitute a clinical diagnosis. The vademecum recommends not to substitute for medical assessments and to refer, if necessary, to competent professionals (p. 7).
What are the levers to combat dropout?
The document distinguishes three levers: prevention, aimed at all students; intervention, at the first signals; and remediation, when the break in the educational path is confirmed (p. 7).
5. To go further
Public Health France, Psychosocial skills. An operational framework for expert professionals and CPS trainers. Volume II, 2026. The institutional notice indicates a publication on 2 February 2026.
Intended for expert professionals and CPS trainers, this framework allows for a deeper understanding of the psychosocial skills mentioned on page 5. It is a supplementary resource selected by Pratiques en Santé, and not a reference cited in the vademecum.
Framework CPS — Volume II : https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/docs/referentiel/les-competences-psychosociales-un-referentiel-operationnel-a-destination-des-0
To understand the system of the Cordées de la réussite : https://eduscol.education.gouv.fr/5355/les-cordees-de-la-reussite
6. Hashtags
#pratiquesensante #PsychosocialSkills #YouthMentalHealth #SchoolDropout #CollegeHighSchoolTransition #EducationalAlliance #HighSchool #HealthPromotionInSchool
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