2023-05-11 05:32:31
The OECD’s Pisa surveys, conducted every three years, show that France is one of the countries where the social origin of students weighs the most on their academic success. Faced with this observation, the Minister of National Education will announce this Thursday measures to strengthen social and academic diversity at school. This arsenal, expected for months, will only concern public education at this stage.
Pap Ndiaye has already mentioned several levers that he intends to mobilize: the creation of “sections of excellence”, such as international sections, in disadvantaged areas, the creation of pairs of colleges “geographically close but very contrasting socially”, or even the participation of private education under contract in this effort. The protocol with Catholic education, which aims to increase the proportion of scholarship holders in its establishments, 75% funded by the State, should also be signed a few days later.
Improvements expected “from the start of the 2023 school year”
This Thursday morning, the minister will bring together the rectors and the academic directors of the national education services (Dasen) to whom he will “assign objectives to improve diversity from the start of the 2023 school year”, we underline at the ministry. Pap Ndiaye has erected the subject of school and social diversity, little mentioned by his predecessor Jean-Michel Blanquer, as a priority for his action. Announcements have been expected on this subject since November. They have been postponed several times, in particular because of social protest over the pension reform.
Several initiatives have already been carried out to improve social and academic diversity at school, in particular in 2016 under the impetus of the Socialist Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem: around twenty experiments had then been launched, involving public colleges in partnership with local communities.
This is the case in Toulouse or Paris, where three bi-college sectors have been created, by merging the sectorization of establishments with contrasting sociology, in the 18th and 19th arrondissements. Also in the capital, a reform of the assignment procedure for high schools (Afflenet) was launched in 2021 to improve gender diversity.
The Ministry of Education had also been forced in mid-October by a court decision to publish the Social Position Indices (IPS) of colleges and elementary schools, indicators measuring the social situation of students. He then broadcast those of high schools in January. These indices had shown strong differences between public establishments on the one hand, and between public and private establishments on the other.
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