Religious Unity and Diversity in Sixteenth-Century Europe

2007 - The French Education System in the First Decade of the Twenty-first Century

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, French education policy underwent a series of reforms with the aim of adapting education in France to the demands of a unified European education system, as defined by the governments of the EU member states in Bologna in 1998 and in Lisbon in 2000, and to international competition. To this end, policymakers continued to drive the policies of decentralisation and Europeanisation of the French education system in conjunction with that of promoting competition between state and private schools on the one hand and between individual collèges and lycées within the state education sector on the other.
The reforms to the structure and content of education which led to the comprehensive reform project initiated by the education minister François Fillon (loi d’orientation et de programme pour l’avenir de l‘école) in 2005 gave rise to considerable protest on the part of pupils and teaching staff; their implementation in accordance with the government’s intentions failed, due largely to financial constraints.
The Bologna process, embarked upon in 1998 with the aim of coordinating university education within Europe more effectively, led to a reform of teacher training in France in 2005; these changes brought to an end the independence of teacher training colleges or Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres (IUFM) and provided for them to be successively integrated into planned university clusters (pôles universitaires). As a result, the educational focus which had formed the core of IUFM training took a back seat to teacher training geared towards specific subjects.
In the context of international competition, education policy in France defended the values of the national education system while increasing efforts to improve pupils’ language and intercultural skills. In light of the debate on cultural globalisation, the French education minister François Fillon reasserted the authority of the secular French education system in the face of challenges from individual members of Muslim communities.
At the same time, curriculum reforms of the first decade of the twenty-first century placed emphasis on teaching structured around specific topics, the comparison of cultures, and global history, aimed at transcending national boundaries and challenging Eurocentric perspectives. Yet these efforts to broaden the cultural horizons of teaching found themselves faced with attempts on the part of the French government to influence history and citizenship education by means of direct intervention, as exemplified by the law of 2005 requiring the teaching of the civilising achievements of the French colonial regime for indigenous populations.
Our review of French education policy over the last century leaves us in no doubt that, in terms of the organisational and legislative frameworks, the promise of equality in school education for all pupils from pre-school age to the end of the first stage of secondary school has been fulfilled.
In the decades following the introduction of a single first stage of secondary education in 1975, the realisation of formal equality ensured that the level of education of all pupils up to the upper-secondary level examination increased nationwide, a change from which pupils from backgrounds traditionally less associated with education have also been able to benefit.
Nonetheless, these achievements in democratising secondary education have to a degree been qualified by the emergence of a multiplicity of new forms of social distinction between pupils in this period. These include an increase in competition between different schools within individual administrative districts;  the social hierarchy which has dictated differing levels of value and significance attached to the Baccalauréat S (maths and sciences), L (humanities) and ES (economic and social studies); and the small proportion of working-class children among pupils attending the preparatory classes leading to the entrance examination for the nation’s elite private and state universities, the grandes écoles.
All this considered, we may close by observing that, even in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the French education system still faces the formidable challenge of reconciling the ideal of high-quality education for all and the need for adequate differentiation of pupils according to ability in the light of societal changes.


Steffen Sammler
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