Main features

The above brief historical retrospective facilitates understanding of the process of change taking place in the French education system. Faced with an increased demand for education and a requirement for a higher skill level for young people, it has changed fairly radically. The youngsters who attend the collèges, lycées and universities, and the courses they follow, no longer have much in common with those of the Third and Fourth Republics. Nevertheless, a number of educational principles which have underpinned French education since the nineteenth century are still present and ensure a certain permanence in the face of the changes in the French education system.

General organization
Primary education
Single collège
Lycées pluriels
Higher education
For new sectors of society...
...new ambitions
Continuing vocational training

General organization

Overall, the current structure of the education system is fairly simple. At the bottom there is primary education, including both nursery and primary schools. This reflects the desire to establish a continuity between nursery and primary school by starting on the basics with the little ones before they move up to primary school. Young children can begin nursery school at the age of two; this is a French particularity which is a great boon for working women. 35.5% of two-year-olds attend nursery school and virtually 100% of three-year-olds. School is compulsory from the age of six. After five years of primary school, children go on to secondary education, which is divided into two cycles. The first cycle takes place in the single collège (even though there remain some cases where exceptional arrangements are made) which for the great majority of pupils leads on to the second cycle, taking place in vocational, general and technological lycées. The lycées now take over 60% of each age cohort to the baccalauréat. All the bacs, however, do not offer the same career prospects, and in reality the second cycle of secondary education, like higher education takes very different forms. Everyone with a bac is entitled to go to university, but some students have more possibilities than others because of the type of bac they possess. Most students go to universities, with the universities themselves and the departments within them often reputedly differing in quality. A minority of students pursue their studies in what are known as CPGEs, i.e. preparatory classes in the most prestigious lycées which prepare pupils for the entrance examinations of the grandes écoles [prestigious higher education institutes with competitive-entrance examinations]. There are also special sections for higher-level technical students with a fairly selective recruitment process, taking those with the best technological bacs.

Organization of the teaching

Higher education	Universities	STS-IUT (section de techniciens supérieurs - institut universitaire de technologie) (technological education)	CPGE (Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles) - grandes écoles
Secondary education	Second cycle, 15-18 years First cycle, 11-15 years	General and technological lycée Single collège	Vocational lycée
Primary education	Elementary education (primary schools), 6-11 years Pre-elementary education (nursery schools), 2-6 years

Primary education

Primary education has remained largely unaffected by the rising pupil numbers, since all children were already benefiting from compulsory schooling free of charge. The schools have, however, not been immune from changes in curricula content and the conception of the job of primary-school teacher.

The primary school is the institution responsible for teaching children the basic skills and citizenship. The job of primary-school teachers, who since 1990 have had the same status as other school teachers (professeur des écoles), has changed a great deal. The 1960s saw the end of the primary school as a closed entity, with it becoming a sort of preparation for entry into secondary education.

The possibility of children leaving primary school without the basic skills has become unacceptable and the fight against failure at school and illiteracy have become national issues. The idea that the “Republican” school can fail is becoming even more intolerable since the primary school is only a first stage, leading on to the collège. To take these problems on board, the initial teaching of the basic skills has been reorganized with a number of reforms to the methods of teaching French and mathematics, fewer children now repeating classes, and the establishment of ZEPs (4).

From the primary-school teacher of the Third and Fourth Republics (1870-1958) to the professeur des écoles school teacher of the third millennium, the job has changed and diversified, but, paradoxically, the recognition obtained through the title of professeur des écoles has been accompanied by a feeling that the sacred aura which had hitherto surrounded the profession has now been lost and even that the job has been devalued.

Single collège

The single collège, today a subject of lively discussion, is one of the major responses to the fact that all children now reach this level. In principle, after the end of primary school, all children attend a single collège, i.e. with the same education offered in all of them. There are no longer different courses, although there are what are known as SEGPA (7) sections, today attended by over 100,000 children. The aim of the single collège is to reduce inequalities between pupils. To remedy the socio-cultural difficulties which can occur, experts have come up with numerous solutions: positive discrimination with the ZEPs, modernization of teaching methods, the collèges given the autonomy to establish different types of courses (advanced for some, special ones for pupils with the greatest learning difficulties) etc. The successes are undeniable, but there are still inequalities at school. The educational idea behind the single collège is that it does not follow on from primary school, but precedes the lycée. Neither the curricula nor the teachers have always been prepared for the new children arriving in the collèges, and reforms are continuing in order to satisfy demands for the acquisition of knowledge and take account of the diversity of the pupils and difficulties some of them are encountering.

Lycées pluriels

Until the 1980s, on finishing collège, some pupils went on to a short vocational training course or an apprenticeship, while others entered the second form of a general lycée. The former attended a collège d’enseignement technique (CET), renamed lycée d’enseignement professionnel (LEP) [vocational education lycée] in 1976, for a short period of training leading directly into working life. The latter attended a general lycée, or technological lycée to prepare for the baccalauréat.

Little by little, the short vocational education was reduced, and with the creation of the vocational baccalauréat the great majority of pupils now go from collège to a lycée. The target of 80% reaching bac level has made the lycée preparing for the bac the norm, the other routes (CAP, BEP (3) and even more so the centres de formation d’apprentis - CFA [apprenticeship training centres]) often regarded as second class and signs of educational failure.

The lycées offer a great variety of courses. General courses continue to be the benchmark, but are not taken by a majority of pupils, and over 50% prepare either for bacs techniques or bacs professionnels. The new status of the lycées professionnels has encouraged an increase in the number of bacheliers in France, but the idea that the only path to success is through the general bacs remains deep-rooted in people’s minds, greatly underestimating the important potential of technical, and above all vocational training.

Higher education

The democratization of higher education is a fact, but there are still serious disparities among the three types of higher education offered to bacheliers. All new bacheliers are entitled to go to university, and the great majority of students (over 60%) do so; but the absence of a clear vocational goal, like signing up for courses with limited employment prospects, in part explains the failure of some students in the early years of university. A minority continue to enter preparatory classes [in certain large lycées] to prepare for the competitive-entrance examinations to the grandes écoles. While the number of places has tended to increase, selection has become tougher since the percentage of pupils in preparatory classes and grandes écoles which was about 6.8% in 1960 had fallen to only about 3.6% in 2000. It is true that the grandes écoles are increasingly reserving a number of places for parallel admission - 24% at the écoles d’ingénieurs and 32% at the écoles de commerce in 2002 - for students with qualifications in other university subjects. The sections de techniciens supérieurs (8) and the IUT are a second option for those not wishing to go to university.

The French university landscape is increasingly characterized by the growing self-confidence of universities, which are both better governed and more innovative, demanding their autonomy. A teaching body more concerned with teaching methods and the more efficient management of universities has encouraged change. The kinds of education and training offered are becoming more diverse, with the availability of a growing number of courses leading to specific careers, modernized curricula, and some daring innovations in teaching methods. The harmonization of degree qualifications in Europe is the most recent stage of this modernization, with the transition to university programmes organized on the LMD model (6). Transnational cooperation between universities is being encouraged in order to strengthen the European dimension of higher education with, for example, programmes like Erasmus. The complex conditions in which the reform is taking place are making it harder to discern the issues involved in setting up a Europe-wide educational area, and causing some professionals to worry about the long-term future of higher education as a national public service.

Social origin of new bacheliers going on to higher education in 2001-2002 (%)

Occupational category	University All	Health	IUT	STS (*)	CPGE (*)
Farmers	2,2	2,0	3,3	2,6	7,9
Self-employed non-professionals (e.g. carpenter, plumber, driving instructor, etc.), shopkeepers, company directors	7,3	6,8	8,1	8,6	7,4
Professional occupations, senior executives	30,5	43,2	25,8	14,0	52,1
Intermediate occupations	18,4	16,9	21,0	16,9	14,7
Non-manual workers	15,6	10,9	16,0	16,9	8,8
Manual workers	14,6	9,8	17,4	25,1	5,3
Retired, inactive	8,2	5,8	6,3	11,5	7,2
Unspecified	3,1	4,6	2,1	4,2	2,7

Source: MEN-DPD Champ: Metropolitan France (*) : information available for CPGE and STS under the authority of the Ministry of National Education i.e. all State-school pupils, 66% of private STS pupils, and 88% of private CPGE pupils.

New educational ambitions for new sectors of society

Once reserved for the affluent classes and a few deserving students, secondary and higher education now cater for population groups further removed from the traditional school culture. The way the school system has to adapt to this mass influx is giving rise, in France as in every other country, to impassioned debates about the place of schooling in the transmission of knowledge, both in teacher training and in the classroom and lecture hall, about the autonomy of teachers in relation to the demands of society, about the role of the private sector in the educational system, about the decentralization of national education, about the openness of educational establishments to the environment, and even the international scene, etc. What is at stake in these debates is the capacity of the education system to cope with the new categories of students now attending schools and universities, update educational practices, devise new ways of organizing knowledge, design modernized educational institutions, and so on.

For new sectors of society...

From collège to university, new categories of students with very different attitudes to learning from those of the pupils and students who attended lycées and universities before the 1960s have thus been pouring into the educational system. Democratization is undeniable, the educational level of successive generations went on rising until the mid-1990s, since when it has tended to stabilize at a high level. Certain inequalities vis-à-vis the school system still exist, but provision has been made to support struggling pupils so as to ensure genuine equality of opportunity as concerns access to education and a successful school career.

The old “Republican” school system, where teachers and pupils had similar values and behavioural attitudes vis-à-vis school considered a separate institution protected from the outside, has given way to a system catering for the masses which has modified the selection process and the status of institutions and the qualifications they award. There is no selection by elimination or rejection from the institution; but choice of course determined by failure, the sharper hierarchical distinction between different educational paths, and cultural inequalities are all obstacles to equality of opportunity.

Moreover - and perhaps most importantly, from the point of view of teachers - the day-to-day reality of life in the universities, lycées and above all collèges is no longer what it was. The relationship between teacher and pupil is no longer self-evident, and the teaching profession has changed. The relationship between educational establishments and the outside world has become more complex. That world is both too much present when the demands of society call into question the teacher’s autonomy in his/her class, and too little present when parents are unable to back the school’s efforts. Yet solutions do exist, notably through the training of teachers to develop their effectiveness and a continued requirement to demand high standards from all pupils, even the weakest.

...new ambitions

The single collège, like the bac for 80% of one age cohort, raises questions as to the educational level. What is the cost of this mass approach? Declining standards and a mismatch between training and jobs are two familiar refrains. The results are more satisfactory than is sometimes thought, in collèges and general lycées as well as in vocational-training establishments. Nevertheless, the knowledge crisis is real. Education for all and qualifications achieved through training do not have the same meaning in an urban, tertiary, high-tech society as they did in the France of the Trente Glorieuses, the years of rapid growth which followed the end of the Second World War. The solution is not, of course, to lower the requirements, which would lead to the award of cut-price diplomas and degrees, but to raise and adapt the type of requirements for those who until recently were excluded from a more advanced education, and to rethink the relationship between training and employment.

Neither collège, nor lycée, nor university have totally completed their transformation. The collège, called upon to equip everyone with a minimum of knowledge and the rules of life in society, is evolving in order to meet these objectives, and questions about the concept of the single collège and the reintroduction of courses periodically resurface.

Recurrent campaigns in favour of vocational and technical training testify to the unease that surrounds this kind of training in France. Nobody disputes the importance of such training, but general courses continue to be perceived as the royal road, to the detriment of vocational courses. By contrast with Germany, where there are several routes to success, the French find it difficult to give vocational education the same recognition as general education. Raising the profile of vocational courses is a constant concern of the authorities. Yet the grandes écoles are vocational, and a majority of children receive technical or vocational training without ending up in a dead-end job as often as is commonly supposed. The 7% of young people who leave collège or lycée every year without any sort of qualification present the major challenge facing French education policy.

While the existence of problems cannot be denied, there are also factors which may facilitate progress. The creation of the IUFM (5), almost 15 years ago now, testified to a realization that education cannot be reduced to the accumulation of knowledge to be transmitted, but is also a profession or trade which can be learned. The arrival of new bacheliers, particularly those with vocational or technical bacs, in the universities has extended the issue of new categories of student to the whole education system, which is undeniably fostering a less ideological and more pragmatic approach to educational issues. The development of courses leading to a vocational qualification, and the concern that training should lead to jobs, may perhaps present the opportunity for a change of attitudes. But in education it is precisely the prevailing attitudes, even more than the practices and institutions, which are difficult to change. Yet it should not be imagined that in this regard the educational system has all the answers to the problems facing it. The crisis in education is also an expression of the crisis in society. The education system cannot on its own provide the solution to the problems of housing, the family, urban segregation, etc. On the other hand, it can be a powerful tool for helping to reduce any social inequalities faced by children when they enter the education system, which probably means adapting a certain idea of the “Republican” school.

Continuing vocational training

In France, individuals have life-long access to education and training, at school or university in the case of pupils and students, and in the form of continuing vocational training for anyone already in work.

Instituted in its present form in the early 1970s, continuing vocational training involves the State, as well as businesses, local authorities, public establishments, State and private educational establishments, and professional, trade-union and family organizations. Continuing vocational training has an original structure, leaving an important place for collective negotiation, and providing procedures for differential access to training depending on personal status. The provisions relating to continuing vocational training are the result of initiatives taken by the social partners in collective agreements, and by the State through legislation and decrees.

Depending on their status and the specific training problems individuals may encounter, the two sides of industry and the State have created and set up a variety of options, including an “orientation contract” [designed to help a young person to find a suitable vocational career path, allowing him or her to have a first experience of working life], a “qualification contract” [designed to facilitate recruitment of a young person by allowing him or her to obtain an educational qualification in the course of his or her employment] and an “adaptation contract” [a work contract providing for training during working hours either in or outside the business]; training leave, retraining agreements, etc.

Continuing vocational training is an important economic sector accounting for 1.7% of French GDP.

The Act of 4 May 2004 on lifelong vocational training introduced an individual right to training for everyone in employment, transferable from one company to another under certain conditions (redundancy, business closure or restructuring). The right will be exercised at the initiative of the employee, in consultation with the employer.

Source of information: Centre Info.

Notes

(1) French education is divided into educational stages known as cycles.

(2) technical baccalauréat, often referred to as the “bac”, an examination prepared for the second, first and terminale forms of lycées (French forms are numbered from 12 (youngest children) to 1, followed by terminale). The bac crowns the successful completion of secondary education and providing a passport for entry into higher education.

(3) the BEP sanctions the completion of adequate training within a range of technical skills required in a particular trade, industrial, commercial, administrative or social field. The CAP sanctions training in a specific vocational skill.

(4) education action zones where a disadvantaged social and cultural environment makes educating the pupils especially difficult.

(5) university-level schools of education training both primary and secondary-school teachers.

(6) LMD - three-tier model of higher education, with the bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate.

(7) SEGPA - adapted general and vocational education sections designed particularly for children and adolescents having difficulty at school because of psychological, emotional or behavioural problems, and for slow learners.

(8) two-year course in certain large lycées, preparing for the brevet de technicien supérieur (BTS - Advanced Technical Diploma) which covers a wide range of specialized subjects.