A Proposed Education Reform Program for France

Abraham Collier (contributors: Elisa Soyer, Lukas Meeth, Trish Suresh)

The education system in France is one of the oldest and most admired in the world, with strong performance on PISA and other international standardized tests. However, those same PISA scores indicate a central weakness in France’s primary and secondary systems: inequality based on social background. Smart students from less wealthy families simply don’t have the same opportunities that they do in an average OECD country, and students from rural families are less likely to graduate from upper secondary than their urban counterparts.

Potential Drivers of Inequality

To understand possible drivers of this inequality, a team of master level students from the Paris School of International Affairs recently undertook an examination of the French system relative to other OECD peers. Their research yielded the following areas of divergence:

1.     Resource allocation between schools and students needs to be reconsidered. Overall French public investment in education is above the OECD average of 4.5%. However, funding for upper secondary schools, with a disproportionate number of students from wealthy families, is higher than OECD average, indicating disproportionate investment in wealthy students.

2.     Teacher training—in terms of continuing education—is below average in France. French teachers report attending about 50% less teacher training and participating in about 50% fewer mentoring programs, when compared to other TALIS countries.

3.     Teacher status and pay are relatively low in France. As recorded in the figure below, teachers in France feel among the least valued in any OECD country. Their salaries are also lower than EU average, indicating a lower societal value for teachers.

4.     Teacher allocation to disadvantaged schools is a potential weakness. Research indicates that teachers in France who work at disadvantaged schools tend to switch jobs more often, and financial incentives (e.g. from “Zones d’education prioritaire”) are not sufficient to retain teachers in disadvantaged schools.

5.     Parental engagement in France is lower than average; for example, 25% fewer French parents discussed a child’s progress with a teacher, compared to the average in the 2015 PISA results. Research indicates that higher parental engagement can lead to better student performance for families with a lower socioeconomic background (Doo et al. 2005).

6.     Vocational education and training (VET) is an important tool for addressing inequalities between students of all abilities and backgrounds (Imdorf et al. 2017). Yet France has the lowest social perception of VET in the European Union according to a 2017 European Commission study.

Proposed Reforms to Address Inequality

The following table demonstrates how the drivers of inequality led the team from the Paris School of International Affairs to propose three areas of reform which could help address inequality:

Drivers of Inequality	Proposed Reforms
1. Resource allocation for students	A. Ensure that students have equal access to resources
2. Teacher training	B. Ensure that teacher quality is consistent for all students
3. Teacher status and pay
4. Teacher allocation to disadvantaged schools
5. Parental engagement	C. Enable students from diverse backgrounds to succeed by strengthening holistic system
6. Vocational education and training (VET)

A. Ensure that Students Have Equal Access to Resources

There is a need to organize student learning in a manner conducive to the specificities of the school environment and teacher competencies. A tailored approach would give more autonomy to the school level in terms of resource utilization as well as monitoring. This would include bringing French spending on primary and secondary schools more in line with OECD averages.

B. Ensure that Teacher Quality is Consistent for All Students

The team recommended four concrete policy actions to increase teacher quality. First, the ​improvement of initial and continuous education emphasizing particularly professional skills​. Second, the ​improvement of teacher cooperation and mentoring through active teacher learning communities. Third, the ​allocation of quality teachers to disadvantaged schools through enhanced school autonomy and teacher mobility​. Fourth, the relevance of ​attracting talented students for the teaching profession​. The Korean education system provides a good example of this practice in action; socio-economically disadvantaged students are at least as likely as advantaged students to be taught by high-quality teachers.

C. Enable Students from Diverse Backgrounds to Succeed by Strengthening Holistic System

To achieve a holistic education system which enables students from diverse backgrounds to succeed, the team recommended three policy actions. First, the ​development of a framework for schools to facilitate school-family partnerships to enhance parental engagement in education. A best practice is the innovative and international HIPPY (Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters) project which aims at supporting socially disadvantaged families by facilitating parental engagement beyond the school. Second, the team recommended that France continue with ongoing ​reforms of the VET system by setting incentives for employers to offer training opportunities and employ young vocational graduates to counteract the mismatch between graduates and positions offered. Third, information campaigns at collèges to lift the awareness about increased quality and job prospects of vocational training. Ultimately, the aim is to build a VET track as a high-quality complementary part to the academic track in a holistic education system.