1975 - The French Education System in the Age of Reform

When Charles de Gaulle, the first president of the Fifth Republic (1959-1969), took office, he promised to turn France into a modern society with an economy powered by industry and the service sector, a development to which it would be essential to raise the educational level of broad sections of society. A more educated population would meet businesses’ increased demand for qualified workers as well as corresponding to young people’s own desire for better education, fuelled by the country’s demographic boom.
At the same time, the constitution of the Fifth Republic created favourable conditions for the achievement of these aims by increasing the powers of the executive in relation to parliament and making it possible to introduce school reforms without the approval of parliament by passing by-laws.
In 1959 the government raised the school leaving age to sixteen and in 1963 introduced a new type of school, the collèges d’enseignement secondaire, which represented an important step towards the creation of a comprehensive secondary school system. This reform, eventually achieved in 1975 by the education minister René Haby, reduced the duration of standard grammar schools to the tenth to twelfth years of schooling, and introduced the collège unique, a comprehensive middle school, which was compulsory for all pupils from years six to nine. The collège unique, following the practice of British and German comprehensive schools, did not stream pupils according to their performance in different subjects; education policymakers of the Fifth Republic considered that distinctions between pupils according to performance at an early age amounted to a form of selection, which contradicted the principle of comprehensive education for all pupils. Once pupils had completed four years of secondary schooling at a collège, they could progress to the second stage of secondary education, choosing between taking a general final examination or one focusing on applied science and technology. Those pupils who decided not to continue their schooling until the university entrance qualification were awarded a vocational qualification, the brevet d’études professionnelles (BEP).
During this period, the French government under de Gaulle set up a legal framework for the resolution of the issues around privately funded faith schools which had overshadowed debates over education policy since the time of the Third Republic. The legislation was a response to a change of mood in the population as shown by the fact that, ten years after the end of the Second World War, half of all French people were in favour of state funding for private schools. The Gaullist education minister Michel Debré introduced a reform which ensured that private schools would receive state support. In return, these schools had to prove that there was public demand for a private educational institution, and comply with state control on the basis of a contract of association (contrat associatif). The majority of private schools agreed to this measure. As an alternative to the contract of association, private schools were given the option of cooperating with the state on the basis of a contrat simple, which came with a lower level of funding attached than did the contract of association, but enabled schools to retain greater freedoms. During the 1970s, this legislation evolved to increase the level of state funding for private schools while granting them greater autonomy. This policy won considerable support among the French public, 77 per cent of whom were in favour of state funding for private schools.
The reforms of the 1970s were designed to establish a connection between structural modernisation and the renewal of curricula and teaching methods; their intent was to prepare the French education system for the challenges of academic, economic and cultural globalisation. To this end, education minister René Haby proposed that social and scientific subjects taught in schools should be combined in subject groups which would enable pupils in the first stage of secondary education to receive a problem-oriented introduction to experimental sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) and social sciences (history, geography, social studies). However, the attempt to integrate humanities and social science subjects after the example of the subject “social studies” taught in English-speaking countries was thwarted by history and geography teachers intent on defending the independence of their subjects and the civic education centred around the French “republican catechism” (catéchisme républicain) against the liberal reformers.
The coalition of socialists and communists which took office in 1981 promised to implement the legal principle of equality and to continue the modernisation of secondary schooling commenced by the Haby reforms of 1975 in such a way as to ensure that the desired increase in social mobility and overcoming of social barriers in education could realistically be attained. This promise was a response to the realisation that the comprehensive structure of education which had been ushered in by the collège unique was not sufficient alone to improve educational opportunity for all. Drawing inspiration from the model of positive discrimination applied in English-speaking countries, the coalition set up regional priority education zones or zones d’éducation prioritaires (ZEP), which became effective from 1981 onwards and were designed to create regional points of focus on funding and support for education in areas of social deprivation. The regional priority education zones were part of a policy of decentralisation which gave regional or département authorities greater decision-making powers in education policymaking.
At the same time, education policymakers in the left-wing coalition made schools more autonomous, encouraging them to develop distinctive profiles via projects known as projets d’établissement and communicate them to the public.
Education policymakers called for more extensive training for teachers in teaching methodology, which they argued would enable them to realise the new educational objectives and make use of their increased scope for shaping their practice in schools. From 1990/91 onwards, academic training of teachers in teaching methods was carried out at teacher training colleges (Instituts Universitaires de Formation de Maîtres, I.U.F.M.). The introduction of academic training for primary school teachers and the provision of professorships in education studies and teaching methodology at teacher training colleges boosted the professionalism in evidence in the teaching practice of teachers in all types of schools. The reform of teacher training for primary school teachers, which made it more academic in nature, gave rise to a new occupational title for this group of teachers, professeurs des écoles, which put an end to the old division between primary school teachers or instituteurs and secondary school teachers or professeurs.
These measures marked the end of a process of change in the self-image of teachers which had begun in the 1950s. Political debate around the values considered to form the foundations of the French republican polity was increasingly replaced by the teaching of knowledge which could find application in a modern service- and industry-driven economy. The fundamental transformation in the way in which French teachers regarded themselves, which had begun in the 1970s, became particularly apparent from the 1980s onwards in the shape of a decline in the traditionally widespread involvement in socialist politics and union affiliation among teachers in France.
Education policymakers in the left-wing coalition became particularly strikingly aware of this change in ideas on education where it found expression in the form of the resistance offered by proponents of private education to plans to reduce the financial and administrative autonomy of private schools and to integrate them more closely into the state school system. Parents who, in 1984, had succeeded in opposing the reform of the socialist education minister Alain Savary and by defending their right to choose the school which their children should attend, approved of private schools not least because they offered a ‘second chance’ to children who had failed to achieve success in the state education system.
Alain Savary’s successor as education minister was Jean-Pierre Chèvenement, who reacted to the new idea of education by re-emphasising it as primarily the imparting of knowledge and turning away from the educational innovations which had found their way into education policy in the wake of the unrest of 1968 and which had also left their mark on history teaching. In contrast to the curriculum reforms of the 1950s and 1970s, those of the 1980s led to a greater emphasis on the traditional canon of subjects and an approach to history centred on the French nation.
Chèvenement nonetheless succeeded in introducing a new advanced secondary level examination which pupils could take in conjunction with vocational training (baccalauréat professionnel). He also promised to enable 80 per cent of each age group to take advanced secondary examinations by the year 2000, and to take a new approach to education by giving it a positive image in the eyes of the French population.
A further indication of this change of perspective was the increasing internationalisation of school education. In 1981, selected primary and secondary schools were equipped with ‘international sections’, which gave French pupils, alongside classmates from other European countries, a bilingual education delivered by international teaching staff. The internationalisation of schooling for the elite contrasted with the increasing segregation of pupils in the ‘priority education zones’. The French public became particularly aware of this social and cultural segregation when the so-called ‘Islamic veil affair’ entered the headlines in 1989. The ensuing debate around the relationship between the religious freedom of the individual and the ideological neutrality of schools offered, following the final decision of the Conseil d’Étate, an opportunity to adopt a more tolerant approach to religious convictions in schools.

Steffen Sammler
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