Education in France: Continuity and Change in the Mitterand Years, 1981-1995 (International Developments in School Reform)

Education in France

In common with many other countries France has undertaken an ambitious programme of educational reform through the 1980s and 1990s. This book, concentrating on school reform, explores the ideas that have inspired the changes and considers how these represent continuity within French cultural life and some important breaks with tradition. The book is important in bringing together, often in translated form, a full range of contemporary French texts that analyse the political, social, and economic forces influencing reform. The specific forms and styles of change at classroom, school, regional, and national level are also critically examined. The book will be a vital reference text for all those interested in the issues of educational reform in an international and European context. Anne Corbett is a journalist and a long-time contributor to the Times Educational Supplement on education in France and the education policy of the European Union. Bob Moon is Professor of Education at the Open University and has written extensively on schooling, teaching and curriculum in Europe.

International developments in school reform Series editor: Bob Moon

Other titles in this series include: Educational Reform in Democratic Spain Edited by Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Pamela O’Malley Education in Germany: Tradition and Reform in Historical Context Edited by David Phillips

Education in France Continuity and Change in the Mitterrand years, 1981–1995

Edited by Anne Corbett and Bob Moon

London and New York

First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Selection and editorial matter © 1996 Anne Corbett and Bob Moon; the individual contributions © 1996 their authors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Education in France: continuity and change in the Mitterand years. 1981–1995/ edited by Anne Corbett and Bob Moon. p. cm— (International developments in school reform) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Education and state—France. 2. Educational change—France. 3. France— Politics and government—1981– I. Corbett, Anne. II. Moon, Bob. III. Series. LC93.F8E374 1995 379.1’54’0944–dc20 95–25981 CIP ISBN 0-415-11238-9 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-03568-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20451-4 (Glassbook Format)

Contents

List of contributors Series introduction Preface Sources Acknowledgements

ix xi xiii xv xviii

Part I Context

1

2

Introduction

3

Secular, free and compulsory: republican values in French education Anne Corbett

5

Education and training in Europe for the year 2010 René Mabit

22

Part II Aims Introduction

45

3

The ‘loi Jospin’: The Education Framework Act 1989

49

4

Work, worth, talent Jean-Pierre Chevènement

56

Now or never Lionel Jospin

61

Avoiding the break-up of the French education system François Bayrou

81

5 6

vi

Contents

Part III Actors

7

8

9

10 11 12

Introduction

89

Constraints on policy innovation in education: Thatcher’s Britain and Mitterrand’s France John S.Ambler

93

Policy implementation in the French public bureaucracy: the case of education Roger Duclaud-Williams

119

Challenging the idea of centralized control: the reform of the French curriculum in a European context Bob Moon

142

Decentralizing the education system: A test for the regions Hélène Hatzfeld

164

The regions in the educational race Christine Garin

183

A changing focus of power: from the all-powerful state to the user-customer Robert Ballion

189

Part IV Structures

13

14

15

16

17

Introduction

199

Nursery education for the two-year-old: social and educational effects Jean-Pierre Jarousse, Alain Mingat and Marc Richard

203

Educational homogeneity in French primary education: a double case study Keith Sharpe

216

A lesson in progress? Primary classrooms observed in England and France Marilyn Osborn and Patricia Broadfoot

238

Lower secondary education in France: from uniformity to institutional autonomy Jean-Louis Derouet

253

The educational renovation of the lycée: continuity or change? André Legrand and Georges Solaux

270

Contents

18 19 20

vii

A sociology of the lycée student François Dubet, Olivier Cousin and Jean-Philippe Guillemet

285

Special education in France Felicity Armstrong

300

From the schoolteacher to the expert: the IUFM and the evolution of training institutions Raymond Bourdoncle

309

Part V Values

21 22 23 24 25

26 27

Introduction

323

Principles for reflecting on the curriculum Pierre Bourdieu

327

A pair of boots is as good as Shakespeare Alain Finkielkraut

335

The educational maelstrom Antoine Prost

349

Is differentiated teaching out of date? Philippe Meirieu

359

Academic failure, social failure: teaching in the lost suburbs Maurice Lemoine

369

Scarves, schools and segregation: the foulard affair David Beriss

377

The child, a citizen at school Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux

388

Appendix 1 The French education system

399

Glossary

400

Index

402

Contributors

John S.Ambler is professor of political sciences at Rice University, Houston. Felicity Armstrong is lecturer in education at the University of Sheffield. Robert Ballion is director of research, CNRS. François Bayrou has been minister of education since 1993. He is a former teacher, and the leader of Force Démocrate, until November 1995, at the Centre de démocrates sociaux. David Beriss is in the department of political science, New York University. Pierre Bourdieu is a sociologist, and professor at the Collège de France. Raymond Bourdoncle is professor at the University of Lille. Patricia Broadfoot is professor of education at the University of Bristol. Jean-Pierre Chevènement was minister of education 1984–6, is the deputy of the Parti socialiste and Mayor of Belfort. Anne Corbett is an education journalist and a research student in the department of government at the London School of Economics. Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux is a jurist and sociologist and director of research at Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique/Centre d’Etudes de la Vie Politique en France (CNRS/CEVIPOF). Olivier Cousin is at the Université de Bordeaux. Jean-Louis Derouet is professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Pédagogique (INRP), Paris, and director of research in sociology. François Dubet is a sociologist, professor at the Université de Bourdeaux and a researcher at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales/Centre d’Analyse et d’Intervention Sociologique (EHESS/CADIS), Paris. Roger Duclaud-Williams is at the University of Warwick.

x

Contributers

Alain Finkielkraut is a philosopher and directeur of Le Messager Européen. Christine Garin is a staff journalist on Le Monde, Paris. Jean-Philippe Guillemet is at the Université de Bordeaux. Hélène Hatzfeld is at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris. Jean-Pierre Jarousse is a professor at the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon. Lionel Jospin was minister of education 1988–92, is leader of the Parti socialiste, and was the candidate of the left in the presidential elections of 1995. He is a former teacher in higher education. André Legrand is professor of public law at the University of Paris X, Nanterre, former rector, and former director of schools divisions in the French Ministry of Education. Maurice Lemoine is a journalist and a contributor to Le Monde Diplomatique. René Mabit is Commissariat Général du Plan, rapporteur for education and training commission, Les Choix de la Réussite, Paris Documentation Française/ La Découverte 1993. Philippe Meirieu is a professor at the Université de Lyons and director of Les Cahiers Pédagogiques. Alain Mingat is at the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon. Bob Moon is professor of education at the Open University. Marilyn Osborne is at the University of Bristol. Antoine Prost is a historian and professor at the University of Paris I, and was formerly adviser to prime minister Michel Rocard. Marc Richard is at the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon and at CNRS and Institut de Recherche sure l’Economic de l’Education (IREDU), Dijon. Keith Sharpe is senior lecturer in the department of education, Christ Church College, Canterbury. Georges Solaux is at the Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, CNRS/IREDU, and was a former chargé de mission at the Ministère de l’Education Nationale.

Series introduction

In nearly all parts of the world there is an interest in and fascination with the way other national systems of education are organized and worked. Demographic change, economic transformation, technological innovation and the explosion of knowledge have created a veritable maelstrom of ideas within which schooling and education generally are centrally situated. The important shifts in political and ideological structures over the last decade have contributed a further dimension to this complex interplay of ideas. How others educate their children, young people and, increasingly, the population as a whole, is now the subject of intense intellectual curiosity amongst the media, politicians and the increasingly aware generation of parents. On these issues there is also a vast array of expertise working in the fields of comparative, development and international education. Strong academic bases exist for these interrelated fields through institutions of higher education and within national and trans-global agencies. Journals and other publications, as well as the new technological means of accessing data and information, provide a forum for theoretical and methodological debate. This present series of books seeks to provide a range of sources to inform both the policy-making and political community as well, it is hoped, as contributing to debates among specialists in the field. The word source is important. The series, and the individual selections made by editors, does not seek to provide a comprehensive account of the structure of any particular education system. A number of educational encyclopaedias and guides, as well as international publications, now serve that purpose. Rather the series seeks to give readers an inside view of the issues and arguments that characterize contemporary debate. For that reason a strong emphasis has been placed on the translation of key texts, where the normal language of debate is other than English, or alternatively the selection of contributors who, whilst writing in English, either work within the system or have a detailed working understanding of the context. Translation, of course, poses problems in its own right, as indeed does a series framework based on nations or regions, but giving access to the ways of understanding, habits of thought and

xii

Series introduction

assumptions from within a specific cultural context is an important aim of the series. And in that respect it is hoped to remedy the imbalance in the exchange of ideas that global access to the English-speaking medium can bring. Editors who are specialists in the area have made their own choices about the organization of the different volumes and the selection of contributors. Many of the authors go beyond specificaly educational concerns to touch on the social, political and economic influences that are intertwined with the process of change and reform. In this sense the series provides a source to stimulate curiosity, examine wider social and cultural issues and provide a starting point for further study and exploration. Bob Moon, Professor of Education The Open University England

Preface

It might seem perverse to attach François Mitterrand’s name to a book on change and continuity in French education. The president’s recorded remarks and actions on education are few. But in a book which aims to open a window on the debate on French schooling in recent years, the early 1980s and 1990s have a contextual unity which comes from a presidential system. An era is personalized by universal suffrage. Just as there was a France of General de Gaulle, of Georges Pompidou and of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, so there has been a France of François Mitterrand. Mitterrand’s time in office has been almost as long as that of a child in the French education system. There is a Mitterrand generation: those pupils, students and teachers who will define themselves as having been part of the system from 1981 to 1995. During the period the issues which topped the public and professional agenda at the beginning of the period have changed. Not least the floodgates of euphoria which burst open in the wake of Mitterrand’s first victory have long been closed. But as Robert Frost said with a poet’s economy: ‘Most of the change we think we see in life/Is due to truths being in and out of favour’. This is why, in a book designed for a non-French reading public on education in contemporary France we have placed emphasis on continuity as well as change. We see the dialogue between the two as essential to understanding something of the essence of the French system, in its multiple and contradictory facets. Our aim has been to provide an insight into les mentalités to give readers a source of ideas rather than a normative description. The reader will thus find many references to the same events. But they are refracted from different angles. In the process we hope to reveal why the French system has been such a source of fascination for foreign observers. There is much that contributes to this fascination: the fidelity to republican values of equality and secularity, the imperialist and monarchical attachment to the Grand Design epitomized

xiv

Preface

by Louis XIV and Napoleon, the inheritance of the Enlightenment which gives primacy to the development of intellect. Above all, there is the evidence that the French care about a national system of education. From the huge demonstrations for and against Alain Savary’s reform proposals in the early 1980s to the nationwide outbursts against underfunding and overcrowding in the ever-expanding secondary and university sectors in the mid-1990s, the education debate has been both impassioned and popular. At the same time we hope to reveal why problems which are thought specifically French, starting with the attachment of the French themselves to l’exception française, will almost all be familiar to those who reflect how advanced education systems might develop to meet the challenge of the new millennium. Our method has been to bring together a diverse range of texts. The majority come from French sources. They also reflect the views of those who have participated in or observed the debate from very different perspectives: the practitioner as well as the academic, the senior civil servant as well as the historian, the political scientist as well as the philosopher, the sociologist as well as the journalist. The book takes the reader through the French system by way of the context, its aims, the ‘actors’, its structures and its values.

Sources

The following chapters were previously printed by the publishers shown; the editors and publishers are grateful for permission to reprint them in the present volume: I CONTEXT 2 Mabit, R. (1992) ‘Education and training in Europe for the year 2010’ [‘Education et formation dans l’Europe de l’an 2010’], Savoir 4(3), JulySeptember: 513–35. This study is the result of an analysis intended to contribute to a work commissioned from the Commissariat général du Plan by the European Commission forecasting committee on the theme ‘Europe 2010’. II AIMS 3 The Education Framework Act 1989, Official Journal of the French Republic 163, 14 July 1989:8864–5. 4 Chevènement, J.-P. (1985) ‘Work, worth, talent’, an interview with Catherine Arditti and Robert Sole, Le Monde—30 January [‘C’est le moment ou jamais’]. 5 Jospin, L. (1991) ‘Now or never’, Le Débat 64, April. 6 Bayrou, F. (1994) ‘Retaining the unity of the French education system’ [‘François Bayrou dénonce le danger d’un “morcellement” du système éducatif’], an interview with Jean-Michel Dumay and Christine Garin, Le Monde, 5 February. III ACTORS 7 Ambler, J.S. (1987) ‘Constraints on policy innovation in education: Thatcher’s Britain and Mitterrand’s France’, Comparative Politics, October: 85–105. 8 Duclaud-Williams, R. (1988) ‘Policy implementation in the French public bureaucracy: the case of education’, West European Politics 11(1):81–101.

xvi

Sources

9 Moon, B. (1990) ‘Challenging the idea of centralized control: the reform of the French curriculum in a European context’, British Journal of Sociology 41(3):423–44. 10 Hatzfeld, H. (1991) ‘Decentralising the education system’, [‘La décentralisation du système éducatif, les régions à l’épreuve’], Politiques et Management Public 9(4) December: 23–49. 11 Garin, C. (1993) ‘The regions in the educational race’, Le Monde 14 January. 12 Ballion, R. (1990) ‘A changing focus of power: from the all-powerful state to the user-customer’, [‘De l’Etat tout puissant à l’usager client’], Projet 223, Autumn: 2001 L’Horizon de l’Ecole. IV STRUCTURES 13 Jarousse, J.-R, Mingat, A. and Richard, M. (1992) ‘Nursery education for the two-year-old: social and educational effects’, [‘La scolarisation maternelle à deux ans: analyse des effets pédagogiques et sociaux’], Education+Formations 31. 14 Sharpe, K. (1992) ‘Educational homogeneity in French primary educa tion: a double case study’, British Journal of Sociology of Education 13(3):329–47. 15 Osborn, M. and Broadfoot, P. (1992) ‘A lesson in progress? Primary classrooms observed in England and France’, Oxford Review of Education 18(1):3–15. 16 Derouet, J.-L. (1991) ‘Lower secondary education in France: from uniformity to institutional autonomy’, European Journal of Education 26(2):119–32. 17 Legrand, A. and Solaux, G. (1992) ‘The educational renovation of the lycée: continuity or change?’ [‘Rénovation pédagogique des lycées: continuité ou rupture?’], L’Orientation Scolaire et Professionnelle 21(2):135–48. 18 Dubet, F., Cousin, O. and Guillemet, J.-P. (1991) ‘A sociology of the lycée student’ [‘Sociologie de l’expérience lycéenne’], Revue Française de Pedagogie 94:5–12. 20 Bourdoncle, R. (1990) ‘From the schoolteacher to the expert: the IUFM and the evolution of training institutions’, in T.R.Bone and J.McCall Teacher Education in Europe: The Challenges Ahead, Jordanhill College of Education. V VALUES 21 Bourdieu, P. (1990) ‘Principles for reflecting on the curriculum’, The Curriculum Journal 1(3):307–14. 22 Finkielkraut, A. (1988) ‘A pair of boots is as good as Shakespeare’ from The Undoing of Thought by the same author [first published as La Défaite de la pensée], trans. J.O’Keefe, London: The Claridge Press.

Sources

xvii

23 Prost, A. (1987) ‘The educational maelstrom’, in G.Ross, S.Hoffmann and S.Malzacher (eds) The Mitterrand Experiment: Continuity and Change in Modern France, Oxford: Polity Press/Basil Blackwell. 24 Meirieu, P. (1990) ‘Is differentiated teaching out of date?’ [‘La pédagogie differenciée, est-elle depassée?’], Cahiers Pédagogiques 286, September. [First published as the afterword to the fifth edition of L’Ecole Mode d’Emploi ESF reprinted in Cahiers Pédagogiques, September, Paris: E.S.F.] 25 Lemoine, M, (1992) ‘Academic failure, social failure: teaching in the lost suburbs’, [‘Enseigner dans les banlieues perdues; échec scolaire, échec social’], Le Monde Diplomatique, April: 20–1. 26 Beriss, D. (1990) ‘Scarves, schools and segregation: the foulard affair’, French Politics and Society 8(1):1–13. 27 Costa-Lascoux, J. (1992) ‘The child, a citizen at school’, [‘L’Enfant, citoyen à l’école’], Revue Française de Pédagogie 101, October-November. APPENDIX AND GLOSSARY ‘The French education system’ from Repères et Références Statistiques 15, Ministère de l’Education Nationale, The French Education System, background report to OECD (1994).

Acknowledgements

We owe a debt to a range of people who have provided ideas and inspiration during the production of this book, not least our translators, thanks to whom we have been able to introduce readers to many previously unavailable French texts. The resourcing of books such as this do not admit of large translation budgets! We have, therefore, relied on family and friends to help with much of the translation. Jillian Greenwood co-ordinated this with particular skill, as well as translating a number of chapters herself. She was helped by Alison Lord, Martine Moon and Justin Tilstone. Sally Marthaler, the professional translator in the team, produced an excellent series of translations (Chapters 3, 12, 26, 27, 29 and 30) and in a very short period of time. We also wish to thank the ever helpful staff of four libraries: those of the Institut National de la Recherche Pédagogique (INRP) and the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris, and of the London University Institute of Education and the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics in London. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Norberto Bottani and André Legrand, who read the first draft of Anne Corbett’s chapter. Julie Herbert provided the secretarial organizational role, including in its final stages exploiting the fax facilities of the new Eurostar London-Paris trains. Finally, Helen Fairlie and Samantha Larkham at Routledge have been the most supportive and patient of editors.

Part I Context

1 Introduction

At a time when François Mitterrand was already the obvious challenger to Valéry Giscard d’Estaing for the French presidency, they had a great battle on the importance of history in the school curriculum. Giscard, passionately committed to modernizing France, had backed a plan to diminish the place of history. Mitterrand memorably proclaimed that ‘a nation which forgets its history forgets itself.’ The period, as later sections show, is clearly marked by the president’s recognition that he was above party but not necessarily above a highly personal reaction. When it came to the plan to reform the public system of education by taking over control of the Catholic sector, Mitterrand listened to the French as a whole (Favier and Martin-Rolland 1991). Mitterrand was not an obvious enthusiast for the Rocard government’s priority for education in 1988. But the educational intervention to which Mitterrand, as president, gave great significance was his welcome for a report on the crucial nature of history teaching (Corbett 1987). Mitterrand might have been the leader of a party with reformist—if not revolutionary—roots. He was also, and more importantly, a president with a profound historical culture, able to underline that the French do not regard change as necessarily a good thing when the defence of values is at stake. But no nation is an island, least of all France, so conscious of its place at one of the great crossroads of European geography and history. Anne Corbett’s chapter reflects on a personal experience in the public sector which provided many of the benefits outsiders think accrue to the French system while knowing that the experts were worrying about internationally common problems: a significant degree of failure, made all the more serious since, in general, standards were rising—the deficiencies of vocational education, the inflation of diplomas, the recruitment and training of teachers, the lack of lifelong learning, and problems of management and the share-out of responsibilities between central government, intermediary body and school (Durand-Prinborgne 1991). René Mabit looks forward to the year 2010. Whether France and other European nations wish it or not, the period is bound to see Europe impinging

4

Introduction

more and more on schools. When ‘even the simplest calculation will show that education and training policies only begin to bear fruit after one or two decades and that they then influence economic and social directions for nearly half a century’ (Lesourne 1988), the European nations which are members of the European Union have a choice. They can accept what comes to them. Or they can develop a strategy for making the most of the new context. With the cultural commitment to the long view which marks the French nation, it is not surprising that there is always some commission developing strategies. The French Commissariat du Plan, where Mabit works, may no longer have the force it had under the Fourth Republic. But with an input from all those the French call ‘the social partners’ its think-tank function remains important.

References Corbett, A. (1987) ‘Why history can never be debunked’, in A.Corbett and P. Gruson (eds) ‘The French national curriculum’, Times Educational Supplement, 6 March. Durand-Prinborgne, C. (1991) ‘Le Système éducatif’, Cahiers français 249 (La Documentation française). Favier, P. and Martin-Rolland, M. (1991) La Décennie Mitterrand, Vol. 2, Les Epreuves, Paris: Editions du Seuil, pp. 96–151. Lesourne, J. (1988) ‘Education et société, les défis de l’an 2000’, La Découverte/Le Monde.

1 Secular, free and compulsory Republican values in French education Anne Corbett

THE REPUBLICAN IDEAL Everyone knows the story of the French Minister of Education looking at his watch at three o’clock on a Monday afternoon and saying to a visitor: ‘At this moment pupils in year five in every French school will be studying Racine’. This story, or something like it, is generally told by outsiders to illustrate the appalling rigidity of the French system. But there is another interpretation. Whether or not the story is true it represents a certain ideal: that of a system which was uniform because governments of the time thought that was the route to equal opportunity by way of a meritocracy. From this perspective the minister who expected an identical national curriculum to be taught to every child throughout France, regardless of social class and geography, can be seen as part and parcel of the French Republican tradition which even today puts education as the first of national priorities, with a crucial role not only in transmitting knowledge but in giving a sense of being French. In the chapters that follow, the achievements and the challenges of the French education system are examined in detail and from very different perspectives. The challenges are numerous. To quote one well-known guide,1 they include school failure—the more evident in a system in which more and more succeed—the problems of mass education, the problems of directing pupils along the most appropriate educational path, the difficulty of getting them on to the job market, the deficiencies of vocational education, the inflation of diplomas, the recruitment and training of teachers, decentralization and a new share-out of responsibilities, the lack of education and training for adults and the nature of the secular system, all in a new Europe in which there are strong pressures for convergence. There is no denying the pertinence of these issues. Most are familiar elsewhere. But out of context the French resonance is lost. So I have accepted the challenge of Bob Moon to use the mirror of personal and professional experience to reflect the underlying cultural continuities in France in order to see how the French system has fared over the last two decades under such pressures as recession, a now multi-cultural society, new technology and

6

Anne Corbett

changed production methods. French education by tradition is both élitist and Utopian: has it changed? has it conserved its ideals? ‘[Education] contributes to the equality of opportunity’, says the first article of the 1989 Act which governs the system. Its fundamental mission is the transmission of knowledge and the upbringing of future workers, says the Act’s explanatory note, as well as bringing up its future citizens.2 Rare is the French minister who does not go on record to say that school is the place in which national ideals of citizenship are laid down which go beyond the rights of the individual. ‘The nation…is a community with a shared destiny…the school is a place of education and of integration in which those within it learn to live together in mutual respect.’3 In other words, school in France is still seen as the instrument by which, above all, the State guarantees respect for the basic principles of equality and secularity. In the nineteenth century, the State’s strong role was justified by the philosopher Lamennais: ‘Between the strong and the weak it is liberty which oppresses, the law which liberates’, the logic of which is a concept of the State as representing ‘Us’ rather than ‘Them’. It follows that the State should define a national curriculum, manage a national exam, approve university diplomas on a national base, train and pay a national teaching force in the name of all its citizens. But things are changing. In 1994 when the French government agreed to submit its education system to the OECD for examination, it did maintain that a combination of ‘accelerating technological progress …economic and social change…the better understanding that in an inegalitarian society uniform standards merely reproduce social, cultural and academic inequalities…decentralization and deconcentration …changes in mentalities at the grassroots…’ all mean that classic patterns of administrative action aiming at uniformity are ‘seriously compromised’.4 The ministry believed that the crucial question for those with responsibility for education has become how to ‘ensure coherence in a situation of greater individual autonomy’. Thus a system based on ‘formal equality of standards of measurement consistent with the principle of equal opportunity’ had to evolve.5 The legacy of Jules Ferry It looked as if the French government—though not necessarily teachers and pupils—had crossed a conceptual barrier in favour of diversity during these Mitterrand years. But both Bob Moon and I can testify, on the basis of very different professional and personal experiences, that the philosophy of unity and equality has continued to have a real impact on daily lives. He has seen French education refracted over quarter of a century by marriage into a French family and continuous experience of one French village. The boy with whom he played boules has turned into a powerful vigneron. The Algerian labourer has three daughters who have done the baccalauréat

Secular, free and compulsory

7

exam, the passport to higher education. It is no empty phrase that a mass education system exists to 18 or 20, or that it is a democratic right. The vast majority of the young believe in education as an essential stepping stone to a place in society. They not only know first-hand that if they leave school at 16 and unqualified, they are marginalized. They believe in becoming educationally competent. This is country France. Here are shades of a structure which, in Eugen Weber’s memorable phrase, turned ‘peasants into Frenchmen’.6 The provinces still live with the inheritance of the Ecole des Garçons and the Ecole des Filles in each village, those elementary schools built with pride by each commune at the end of the nineteenth century, and associated with the name of Jules Ferry. Ferry’s name is attached to a series of Acts of 1879–86 which made education laïque, gratuite et obligatoire—secular, compulsory and free. The elementary school, designed to provide a complete education for the peuple,7 was amazingly successful in instilling both skills and values. The village teacher, the instituteur, l’instit, goes down in French tradition as the representative of enlightenment and democracy. In some cases he or she was to be set against the sworn enemy, the curé, as told in Clochemerle,8 that 1923 classic of France’s most anti-clerical years. But regardless of the Church-State battles, it is clear that national respect for education has been intrinsically bound to rural France’s admiration and affection for its instituteurs and institutrices. But there is another educational tradition in France, that of the Napoleonic lycées. It is a tradition that I have lived intensely, if vicariously, through friends of my generation, and also as a parent d’élève over the period covered by this book. Being at one point a chargée de cours (a part-time university teacher) has added to the experience. The lycées were set up in Paris and the big cities during the nineteenth century to prepare their pupils for higher education and provide the State with its élite. As with the elementary schools they provided a complete education for their chosen pupils. In the case of the lycées the youngest pupils started in a petite or preparatory section; others were taken in en route. I feel I know these lycées since in the 1950s and early 1960s they have educated some of my closest French friends. This group did not get to the lycée as part of the bourgeoisie but because they were clever. I think, in particular, of a refugee from Nasser’s Cairo, another whose parents fled the Armenian genocide, and a third-generation Russian, as typifying what it is to be French: taking a meritocratic route to integration. (France has traditionally been a country of immigration. One-quarter of all French citizens have a foreignborn parent or grandparent.) When these élite girls did badly their teachers threw their exercise books on the floor and cried La pauvre France! When they did well they got national glory. Their name was in Le Monde at the time of a national prize-giving— one of my friends scooped both the English and the French awards of her year. As they tell the story of their lives in their single-sex Paris schools,

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nonconformity was gently predictable. They would try to bluff their way through clothes inspections designed to detect non-regulation-length skirts. The height of daring was to drink a diabolo menthe (a mint-flavoured soft drink) with a boy in a Quartier Latin café. But work had the priority. At a time when the multi-subject bac was open to a mere 10 per cent of the age group, the destiny traced out for these girls took baccalauréat success for granted. They would then go through the first stage of grooming for academic teaching posts in the highly competitive postbaccalauréat classes préparatories designed to get them into the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles at Fontenay-sur-Roses, or the famous Normale Sup’ of the rue d’Ulm in the footsteps of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Alternatively there was the university, where they would race through diplomas up to master’s level in order to work for the agrégation, the topmost academic award in a competitive exam designed to select the most brilliant of their generation to be the future university professors and the upper school-teachers worthy to teach the upcoming élites. The male equivalents of these clever girls were also trying for the Normale Sup’ of the rue d’Ulm or St Cloud, or for the science-and engineering-based grandes écoles headed by the Ecole Polytechnique, which was originally created to train an engineering and military élite before becoming the passport to civil engineering in state and private sectors. Political science and public administration beckoned for some through Sciences Po and ENA—the Ecole Nationale d’Administration— from which the cleverest would go into the grands corps d’Etat, notably those of the inspection des finances and the Conseil d’Etat, the body which advises and rules on questions associated with administrative law. To most French eyes this extraordinarily selective system was meritocratic, the most egalitarian way to select an élite, far preferable to the selective mechanisms of birth and money prevalent elsewhere. There is no doubt that the system did open gates to a (small) number of the brilliant but disadvantaged in the manner of the great British direct-grant grammar schools. Indeed the historian Antoine Prost looking back at that phase thinks it highly democratic.9 But the system was highly selective all the same. It was no accident that just before and after the ‘events’ of 1968 two books by Bourdieu and Passeron with the self-explanatory titles Les Héritiers and La Reproduction10 became bestsellers. They chimed with the mood of the day. AFTER THE REVOLUTION The schooling of my children took place in the 1980s at one of those great urban lycées. Compared with the schooling of their classmates’ parents they were in the new age. Their education was taking place after Les Héritiers. It was also after the Europe-wide revolution in favour of secondary education for all, a change which had come with urbanization —particularly marked in France—and post-war economic prosperity.

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The change, typically coherent on paper, produced a universal three-tier structure—école, collège, lycée—to succeed the nineteenth-century structures which had developed with universal suffrage and industrialization. It was by reforms in 1959, 1963 and 1975 (Haby) that France raised the school-leaving age, created a second tier of secondary schools below the lycées across the board, gave a boost to technological studies in creating a technological baccalauréat and then, with a parliamentary vote on the Haby reform, introduced universal comprehensive schooling overnight with unstreamed classes throughout the lower secondary school. If it was not always quite like that on the ground it was true that the elementary and the grammar structures which had separated most children at birth were replaced within a very short period and almost universally by five years of common primary schooling. For many this was preceded by voluntary nursery education, and almost all followed four years of common secondary education in the collège unique. Lycées of a general and technological character became upper secondary schools, offering a threeyear course culminating in the baccalauréat, for around 25 per cent of the age group. As in an earlier generation an élite went through to the classes préparatoires. Structural change Looked at with hindsight, it was not so much the comprehensive reform as the astonishing two-year period between 1962–63 and 1964–65 which marked the first significant change in the traditional structure. Responding to public demand for secondary schooling, the government’s first action was to kill off Jules Ferry’s elementary school—the mixed-age, single-sex structure which provided a form of schooling judged effective at preparing pupils for the adult world.11 The first five years of obligatory schooling— i.e. from the age of six—became simply the first phase. The upper years of the elementary schools provided the core of new secondary schools developed on a non-lycée base. The comprehensive lower secondary structure, the collège unique, created little more than a decade later, was treated in good French fashion as a single model. But the fact that it was formed from two very different traditions of schooling and very different traditions of teaching was to explain many of its later problems.12 The French Ministry of Education looks back on this period13 as marked by two big movements. One was the gradual development of an integrated education system. The other was the reform of the management of the system incorporating decentralization and the growth in autonomy of schools. For us changes in education seemed to consist of endless statutory change. These reforms most famously included the 1975 Haby reform, Savary’s 1984 law overhauling the first cycle of higher education (plus his ill-fated bill, also of 1984, to strengthen the State hold on private education).14 In 1985 came the law to create a vocational baccalauréat (the bac pro), the brainchild of

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the Minister of National Education, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, whose other claim to fame was to have invented and driven a policy to get 80 per cent of the age group, to bac level by the year 2000. In 1989 there was the loi Jospin, which gave statutory form to the idea of 100 per cent of the age group, to a level at least equal to the CAP or BEP.15 We knew it was supposed to mark a crucial stage in the goverment conversion to the view that the system needed to be more responsive to the needs of individual pupils—without being certain that it did. In between came decentralization: laws of 1983 operational in 1986. Though the ministry and the teachers’ unions were opposed to the principle, decentralization could be seen as a clever way of getting new resources into the system. In France there is much local pride. On the model of the 36,000 communes’ competence for primary education (54,600 establishments in the public sector in 1993–94) the 96 départements16 became responsible for the collèges (4,900), the 22 régions became responsible for the lycées (around 1,400 general and technological establishments, just over 1,000 vocational ones). The one full reponsibility the State retained in law was for higher education. But for many regions a hand in higher education was a prize for which they would willingly pay. It was interesting to see that the decentralization to elected bodies was matched by what the French call déconcentration—greater authority was given to its local services, based on the 26 académies.17 This was a measure designed to ensure that what the State gave away with one hand to elected local bodies, was initially matched by a firm grasp from the other hand. During the 1980s the académies were given a boost in the form of increased authority for teacher recruitment. At the same time school directors were given an often undesired measure of autonomy. Proviseurs I met used to chorus, ‘What is the good of the power unless you are given the money to go with it?’ In fact many learnt how to enjoy dealing with both collectivité and académie. Demographic change The demographic pressures were obvious. The change can be summed up in two dramatic figures. Whereas in 1982–83 a pupil in France expected to spend on average 16.7 years in education, exactly ten years later the average length of education had risen to an astonishing 18.5 years. Wasn’t this the ‘learning society’ in action? We marvelled that in 1993–94 almost every child between the age of 3 and 5 was enrolled in nursery education. So were one-third of the 2-yearolds. Nursery schools in the public sector had increased from 6,000 to 18,700. Though numbers of public sector primary schools in contrast had fallen from 74,000 to 36,000—and the reduction was much steeper in the public that the private sector18 —the numbers remain high by British standards, a measure of local political support.

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As for the increase in pupils in the upper secondary school, these too showed the ‘learning society’. In 1960–61 there were under 500,000 pupils in the upper secondary classes of the general and technological lycées. In 1980–81 there were over one million. In 1992–93 the figure was 1.5 million. The bac figures ran in parallel. Just over 40 per cent of the generation born in the memorable year 1968 reached a class preparing the bac (even if only 25 per cent got it). For the generation born in 1974 the figure was over 60 per cent (55 per cent successful in 1993). In 1980 just over 80 per cent of the school population had a level CAP/BEP. In 1990 it was almost 93 per cent. Those leaving the system without a diploma numbered 80,000 or 9.4 per cent of all school leavers. This was low as a national figure. Demography has touched teachers too. ‘Our’ generation, recruited in the 1960s, is now coming near to retirement and a 50 per cent turnover in the profession is inevitable in the next few years. The French, we noted, were planning to expand and improve teacher education in what seemed a logical way via university based institutes, known as IUFM.19 School achievement How does the French system score? The public grumbles, in France as elsewhere, that standards are falling and that the young can no longer spell. In terms of international comparisons, the French system as a whole performs well in maths and mother-tongue studies and relatively well in science.20 In terms of the ministry’s own tests, the average performance of pupils entering secondary school has improved significantly in maths in the period 1980– 93 and has remained at the same level in French.21 Tests of national servicemen show recent levels of improvement which are higher than in the 1980s when even so there was improvement from year to year. In quantitative terms, seven out of ten on entering secondary schooling read entirely satisfactorily or well, two read only with difficulty. However, one in ten cannot cope at all. In maths two out of ten have not mastered a minimum understanding of numbers or decimals, four have mastered the rules, the rest know how to make use of them.22 The OECD educational indicators23 and France’s own work on added value show that in terms of equality of opportunity, as measured by the differences in performance between schools, France also scores well. The results cluster around a norm, suggesting that teachers have a clear view of their role as transmitters of knowledge.24 In marked contrast, in Britain and the United States there is a distribution suggesting a vast tail of schools which perform below the mean. In France disparities as measured by social class and geography have actually been reduced,25 against what might have been expected from decentralization. The signs are that regions hitherto considered backward —like the north, where school leavers used to go early into industry—

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are catching up those regions like the Midi, where lack of jobs has always pushed young people into long studies. HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE At ground level the trends and some of the politics passed us by. But as mother to a Haby child, one of the pioneer 1977 intake, I could not but live the comprehensive reform intensely. My son was initially another unwelcome boy in a great girls’ lycée. Most of the teachers bewailed their fate in la pauvre France! terms. The exception was an inspirational lycée teacher taking the petites classes, the first years (since separated off into the collèges). Since her aim was to get all her pupils to read for pleasure, contact with her made school life a lot better. Thank you Mme B! Living French school day to day it was that Frenchness which dominates in memory rather than the political calendar. What I think of first is the sense of the cultural heritage, not, as I might have done in Britain, classing education as primarily a consumer good. The rentrée I still get a cold sweat at the rentrée when I see the queues of mothers and primary-age children in the stationers’ shops—haggling, bullying, quarrelling, pushing, crying—all with their list of material to be brought within the following 24 hours, or, otherwise, dread punishment: ‘There will be note to your parents in your carnet de correspondance’. There were exercise books to be bought variously with lines a defined number of millimetres apart, with grands carreaux and petits carreaux, and drawing paper. There were the numerous and expensive textbooks— generally beautifully produced, since the concept which dominates French educational publishing is that the textbook should be something to keep. Under the rentrée pressure they were, however, objects of stress, needing to be covered in hard-to-manage plastic film. If by then you had survived your small child’s pressure to get the calculator designed for universitylevel maths, you were into the arguments as to whether a new cartable was necessary this year—or was it a sac-à-dos? No one in authority seemed to worry about eight-year-old backs being weighed down by 10 or so kilos. It was deep in the privacy of our non-French home that we fretted that one child was no longer writing poetry or those stories inspired by English primary teachers, like why the milkman should have to deliver cows, and what happened to the man who lost his sense of humour and imagination. And we wondered how to cope with the other son behaving like an uncaged lion after hours of sitting still at school. Were we mad to put our children through the French system?

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The early years In the early years it seemed that we all spent a lot of time learning to survive, and not much benefiting from the duty laid upon teachers to transmit knowledge to our children and turn them into reliable citizens. We would live dramas of alleged teacher injustice. We would rage that parents were held responsible for the inadequacies: ‘The trouble with your son is that he can’t sit still/spell/hasn’t done his homework’ (aged six or eight).26 I can still hear the cries when they got to the secondary school and I momentarily assumed the thankless task of being a parent representative for the class: ‘Oh, Madame Corbett, how can you think like that?’ I see the threatening remarks on reports which in their gentler forms included, ‘He comes to my lessons as a tourist’, or ‘will certainly be orienté next year’ (i.e. thrown out). The baccalauréat But by the time we faced the ritual of the bac our attitudes had changed significantly. Small children had survived adolescence and emerged into mature young people taking it for granted that they should have a broadbased curriculum which bridged the arts and the sciences, made modern history compulsory and taught them not religion but philosophy (‘Goodness you are deep’, said an English cousin to the son who dropped Nietzsche into conversation). We too had understood that we were the beneficiaries of French history. The storms of the last century over the rights of the State, the Church and the family make for a distinctive settlement, very different from what we had known previously in England. The chief feature was that the Republican concept of education being obligatory, secular and free gave the public sector a force we had not known hitherto. Its role was to set a pattern, not fill in the gaps left by the Church and the private sector. I even revised my view about teachers’ criticisms of parents, coming to see these as part of the French tradition which kept separate the role of the family and the school, finding its apogee in the efforts to harmonize two concepts: that of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that the individual has freedom of belief, and that of the Constitution that school should remain firmly secular, which I feel must be the way for European citizens to find a satisfactory solution with the newest religious phenomenon: the Muslim girls who insist on wearing a headscarf at school. The bac itself was another example of why the education system is such a force for integration in France. We were part of a shared social experience which crosses the generations. The day of the philosophy bac, ministers and famous figures would go on radio or television to explain how they would tackle such themes as ‘Can revolution be justified?’ and remember word for word what they had written 30 or 40 years before.

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We were aware of the bac crossing a significant social divide too. I date the awareness that it had become a mass affair to when the métro and bus drivers dropped the industrial action which had occurred each year on the first day of the exam on the grounds that they might be hurting des gosses but those affected were the gosses des riches.27 As for the demoratization of higher education, it became a reality the day journalists stopped writing sympathetic stories suggesting policemen were caught up in a tragedy worthy of Corneille on days of demonstrations: were their offspring students (to be beaten) or children (to be protected)? Sometime in the 1980s it was taken for granted that parents in almost all walks of life would have children in higher education. Le système D In between we also learnt quite a lot about how to play a system which in name was highly egalitarian but in practice could be the opposite. When zoning was strict it was surprising how many well-to-do families were giving addresses which turned out to be chambres de bonne.28 Or they were ringing up their contacts in public life. I have more than once had an interview with a mayor or MP interrupted by an instruction to a henchman to contact the Académic de Paris because the child of X in Y’s cabinet29 needed to be got into a prestige school. The French call this the Système D, for débrouillardise (getting round the system, managing). In general they approve such initiatives, as a victory of citizen Robin Hood against the Leviathan state. The phenomenon is particularly marked in France and political scientists say, that is with reason. Yves Mény, author of a major book about institutional corruption in France,30 traces the Système D origins back to the ancien régime. An absolutist government, suspicious of its subjects, tried to tie them up in rules, but produced so many that the rules were contradictory. Creating exceptions, getting round the rules, became the way to survive. The great nineteenthcentury commentator Alexis de Tocqueville summed up this characteristic in the phrase ‘La règle est rigide, la pratique est molle’.31 We have frequently seen the signs live on in education. Take the way parents choose a modern language for a child on entering secondary school. The issue goes beyond the simple choice of a language because it is the basis on which the non-streamed classes are formed. Ambitious parents avoid English because taken by the mass. German or Russian, if on offer, are attractive, a code for classes which are selective in fact if not in name. The choice of bac offers another form of hidden selection. In my children’s day it was the maths-dominated Bac C which opened every door. To be set against that in their view was the fact that the classes were the most conformist. They and many of their friends found other bacs more motivating.

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Practical work It was clear by then that at least one of the sons had spent more time in the smoky café opposite the lycée than in the quiet and pleasant school library. This too can be defined as a French educational ritual, pupils’ long hours over a single cup of coffee suggesting that French education is not entirely abstract. Throughout the 1980s, the café I am thinking of, forbidden territory to parents, was a crucial rendezvous point on the day of student demonstrations. These were consistently channelled past the school. In 1984 it was the scene for earnest discussion on how to be pro-demo while anti-private schooling. During another failed reform—Devaquet’s university project in 1986—it was the backcloth for a television report on a son, by then at university in London. A journalist intrigued by a banner saying ‘LSE contre Devaquet’ —and by his French—turned him into a face for history in the television archives. At random I think of several other formative issues which prepared children for the future. Obeying the 1968 injunction ‘Faut pas mourir idiot’, they read the press and television critically and took philosophy dead seriously. Was it wrong for pupils to lean out of a lycée window to spit on a passing priest given that the school was secular? Would an officious management be depriving France of great literature by booting out a distinguished novelist lurking in the café in the hope of finding a lycéenne Lolita given that nymphets inspired his work? Was one any less anti-racist for taking off an SOS-Racisme badge after being cornered by National Front toughs whom the café was also prepared to tolerate? Clearly there were many more key issues which never reached a mother’s ears. Decentralization By that stage I also was caught up in some travaux pratiques. In a civically English way I had offered to be a class parent representative. This taught me how tough it was to be part of a mediating body in a situation in which suspicion was the order of the day. But I lived some historic moments. When decentralization took effect in 1986–87 we found that the ‘greatest’ reform of François Mitterrand’s first presidency was double-edged. Our school might get long-needed repairs to roof and wiring. But the region had a quid pro quo—it wanted a bit of the lycée’s park—a rare commodity in Paris—for a supplementary office block for councillors. We actually got the region to back down from an operation that we considered indigne du service public. Needless to say, the tactics that we developed were digne (worthy) of the ancien régime. We went straight to the centre. Influential former pupils, ministers (often the same), politicians of all parties and journalists equipped us with enoughammunition to rattle various ministries and get serious media attention drawn to the uncaring State. Helped by the prospect of a presidential

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election, we added the Elysée’s letterhead to our bulging files. We appeared in Le Monde and on television. We won. PREPARING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY A personal calendar undoubtedly acquired some lustre thanks to a political calendar. When I think of my children’s schooling I place it as contemporary with the rise and fall of François Mitterrand. Though their education began under the right-wing minister Christian Beullac in 1977, it was a period in which the left’s ideas were beginning to dominate. There was a build up in teacher circles in favour of curriculum reform, in making a reality of the collège and in favour of special help for the disadvantaged, which would emerge under Alain Savary (1981) in the form of curricular commissions,32 an important series of reports and the ZEP policy.33 The ill-fated case for squeezing the Catholic schools was on the agenda too. The nationalistically inclined Jean-Pierre Chevènement, in 1984, and the ambitious Lionel Jospin, 1988, both emerged as reformers—of very different kinds—and as such attracted a well-entrenched hostility on the part of the teaching profession in the style of ‘Oh, no, not another reform’.34 But Jospin also goes down in history for having been the minister who had to respond to the rights of Muslim girls to wear the hidjab (scarf), one of the defining questions of the period. René Monory (and his university junior Alain Devaquet), representatives of the right during the period of cohabitation, were cordially detested by teachers and students alike, Monory being the only minister in the 1980s to challenge the power of the teachers’ unions. The socialist Jack Lang (1992) was obviously simply holding the ring until the elections of 1993, when he was succeeded by the right-wing François Bayrou, and in any event he was clearly more interested in his Minister of Culture portfolio. That said, Lang did a deal with the Catholic education establishment which upset the left but provided a base on which Bayrou thought he could build.35 This was all the stuff of politics, and to be argued over. The most practical change which stays in memory—and one which drove every parent mad—was every minister’s determination to change the school calendar. Yet over these years it is clear that the traditional structure and attitudes associated with French education were being challenged at the margins by social and economic factors which threatened to change the system out of all recognition,36 by creating an underclass of schools. Recession and a degree of poverty unknown during the post-war period, crumbling family structures, which in the opinion of those close to the ground are often attributed to immigration but are indubitably the product of the perverse effects of longterm unemployment and the substitution of a drug culture and physical isolation,37 have put an appalling burden on perhaps 10 per cent of French schools.38

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Looked at in an economic and social perspective the greatest challenges for the French education system on the eve of the year 2000 will already be familiar to foreign readers. They are the product of general trends. Managing a system There are at least three major educational issues which currently worry governments in all the EU countries and indeed in the countries which belong to the OECD, which so assiduously documents trends:39 (1) how do they avoid a minority being excluded by under-achievement? (2) how do they ensure the quality and consistency of education in a system characterized by increasing diversity? (3) how do they provide a better fit between education and employment? The challenge in these terms, as seen by OECD, is how to keep a balance within a large, expensive and very complex system which is buffeted by economic pressures and political demands, by parental and employers’ expectations, by changing technology, and by its own internal tensions. In OECD countries the proportion of those directly involved in an education system at any one time as student, teacher or other employee is likely to be a quarter of the population. When parents are included, the figure is around half. This makes an education system a critical economic factor in its own right if not a major political issue. Typically in an OECD country education absorbs around 6 per cent of GDP and 10–12 per cent of total public expenditure. It tends to employ around 5 per cent of the labour force. Though a significant number of those entering the job market since the 1960s complain about being overqualified, the fact is that most are more highly trained than the previous generation and they hold more high level jobs. In this sense, education is a fashioner of employment structures and not simply a supplier. The OECD report In 1994 the French government took a step which most big countries have preferred to avoid. It allowed the OECD to examine its education system, a courageous move given that on a previous examination written in the wake of 1968, the OECD found fundamental contradictions in the French education system resting ‘on the ideal of equality but in which failure is the lot of most people, which teaches fraternity but stresses competition and which celebrates liberty but offers most individuals only limited options’ and which is ‘a source of chronic social tension and hostility’.40 So, those interested in the modern French education system have two unusual and up-to-date reports, one the product of a government aware of a cultural tradition and anxious to put national achievement in context, the other the demonstration of contemporary international wisdom in terms of what is seen to work.41

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In its version, the French government confirms that the challenges are indeed to have a schools policy ‘which is both fair and effective’; to organize closer links between schools and the business community ‘in response to increasingly complex problems’; and ‘steering’ the education system. But the OECD, with experience of what functions internationally, is strong on normative judgements. It proclaims that in studying France it is studying a general case, so it is tough on many of the élite aspects of education which derive from French history and which—of course— account for the prestige of education in French life. As in 1971, the OECD concentrates on aspects which breed failure. It does not forget that in France’s favour are its achievements in making nursery education universal, its long tradition of social promotion and integration by way of the education system, and recent efforts with Zones d’Education Prioritaires (ZEPs, or educational priority areas). But, says the OECD—and here it atypically aligns with the French Communist Party—the system favours exclusion. It attacks the ‘abstract nature’ of French education and the ‘notorious lack of individualization’ in teaching. It sees dangers for an excluded minority in the policy of 80 per cent to the bac. It also criticizes the persistence of status divisions within the teaching profession. It would even like to see the end of one of the institutions which explains the prestige of education in France. Its recommendation is to abolish the famous agrégation as a qualifying examination for teaching and convert it into an in-service qualification. In contrast, it sees the IUFM as a positive development to the extent that it imposes a universal pattern of graduate recruitment and elements of training in common. The French penchant for general studies and the lukewarm attitude of employers towards training is another subject of criticism, though there has, in fact, been a major switch in French thinking in favour of reviving apprenticeship and thinking again about vocational education for the under-16s who resent or refuse the collège programmes—one of the strands of the five-year programme for employment and training adopted in 1994. It does indeed appear to be particularly difficult to get the young into employment in France, though the scale is not necessarily as bleak as the conventional unemployment rate figures—and OECD—suggest. Of the under 25s, 25 per cent of those actually looking for a job fail to get one, one of the highest figures in the EU. But higher education has proved a shock absorber for both individuals and society. Of the age group as a whole, 8 per cent are unemployed. This is one of the lower figures in the EU—and makes France one of the better-educated societies. The OECD also underlines that there is too much concern with initial qualifications—particularly for an élite—and too little with formation permanente. Finally it critizes the way the system is steered. Despite decentralization and deconcentration and the measures designed to give greater autonomy to schools, the OECD sees the system as still inherently centralized. It lacks adaptability. It is vulnerable to conflict, say the experts. They believe that

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France has an interest in launching ‘a national debate’ and reinforcing the openness of the system. They also believe that both the local ‘actors’ and the researchers need to be more involved. CONCLUSIONS I have to say that I find these reports something of a dialogue of the deaf. Living the system, I see a debate on education as constant and institutionalized. The sense of a common social experience to be argued over is strong. A sense of the traditional aspirations of education permeates teachers’ sense of their mission even in the most unpromising circumstances. The mass of French teachers overtly cling to a view of school as a national institution, not a local one. Their mission: to uphold a system which is national and secular.42 Reporting in one of those multi-racial suburbs in which the only public service is the school, I was struck by the fact that the first teacher I interviewed was teaching Latin, the second was elated that one of his pupils that day had suddenly understood a maths concept.43 The public grumbles—until you ask about personal experience. And now more is known about other systems there are fewer books with titles like the The Defeat of Thought44 or Your Children Are Being Brought Up To Be Idiots45 and more around in the style of forecasting and evaluation and league tables: reports from the Commissariat au Plan and from the ministry’s own planning division, designed to inform public debate,46 and aligned to a development in critical coverage (viz. the evolution of Le Monde de l’Education). Now, as I perceive with mixed feelings, the French see themselves as at least being better off than the English. Some changes are the order of the day. There is no doubt about the difficulties which face a modern education system, increasingly vulnerable as it is to dispersion and social division, at one level, greater convergence at another. The sophisticated technology available for individualized learning, a knowledge industry which teachers no longer control, an increasingly heterogeneous school population which makes parents in privileged positions flee the public schools—these are all potentially destabilizing factors.47 But alongside this greater diversity is Europe, an increasingly important frame. So France may be at a crossroads. But it must be helped by a new European climate which places a very high value on education and training —as defined in the Delors report—and its own long-term view. However, what one can never forget is that it is ultimately the electors who decide. As the postMitterrand era opened with the presidential campaign it was clear that French potential heads of state gave huge importance to the concept of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité continuing to be chiselled into French consciousness, even if it is no longer chiselled in stone, and alongside it the immortal words laïque, gratuite et obligatoire. March 1995

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NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Durand-Prinborgne, Claude (directeur) ‘Le système éducatif’. Cahiers français 249, Paris, La Documentation française 1991. Loi d’orientation 1989. Circular, Ministère de l’éducation nationale (MEN), see Le Monde 21.09.94. Ministère de l’éducation nationale (1994) MEN, ‘The French education system’, background report to OECD. p. 109. ibid. p. 110. Weber, E. (1977) Peasants into Frenchmen, London: Chatto and Windus. Laïque, gratuite et obligatoire. Clochemerle. Prost, Antoine (1992) ‘Quand l’école de Jules Ferry est-elle morte?’, in Education, société et politique, une histoire de l’enseignement de 1945 à nos jours, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.C. (1964) Les Héritiers, Paris: Editions de Minuit; (1970) La Reproduction, Paris: Editions de Minuit. Prost, op. cit. These problems are illuminatingly examined from different perspectives in Bayrou, François (1990) 1990–2000, La Décennie des mal-appris, Paris: Flammarion; Derouet, J.-L. (1992) Ecole et Justice, Paris: Métaillé; Legrand, A. (1994) Le Système E, Paris: Denöel. MEN (1994), op. cit. Ambler, see Chapter 7 this volume. See glossary. In metropolitan France. These match regional boundaries except in the Paris area. This explains much of the tension whenever there is a proposal to aid private (Catholic) schools—in a number of villages now the only school. Bourdoncle, see Chapter 20 this volume. L’Etat de l’école, MEN 1993. MEN/Direction de l’Evaluation et de la Prospective (DEP) (1994) L’Etat de l’Ecole, no. 4. MEN (1994) Repères et réferences statistiques, tableau 5. OECD (1993) Education at a Glance, OECD indicators, Paris: Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. See Broadfoot, Sharpe, Chapter 15 this volume. L’Etat de l’école 1994, tableau 20 p. 51. Corbett, A. (1989) ‘A French lesson in learning’, The Independent 27 July. spoilt rich brats. maid’s rooms. minister’s private office. Mény, Y. (1993) La Corruption de la République, Paris (Fayard). Rules are rigid, practice is not. Bourdieu, see Chapter 21. See Ambler, Chapter 7, this volume. Legrand, André (1994) Le Système E, Paris: Denöel. See Bayrou, Chapter 6. Lesourne, Jacques (1988) ‘Education et société, les défis de l’an 2000’, La Découverte/Le Monde. Aubry, Martine (1993) Le Choix d’Agir, Paris (Albin Michel). In 1992–3 the ZEP classification covered 11.8 per cent of pupils in primary schools and 14.8 per cent in collèges, 8 per cent in lycées (MEN/DEP Répères, op. cit, table 3.9). These were not necessarily failing schools nor do they necessarily reflect

Secular, free and compulsory

39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

21

all the schools in difficulties. See Lemoine, Chapter 25, this volume. ZEP is zone d’éducation prioritaire. OECD (1994) Education 1960–1990: The OECD perspective, Paris: OECD. OECD (1971) Reviews of National Policies for Education: France, Paris: OECD. OECD (1994) Reviews of National Policies for Education: France, Paris: OECD. Charlot, B., Bautier, E. and Rochex, J.-Y. (1992) Ecole et Savoir dans les banlieues…et ailleurs, Paris: Armand Colin. This remarkable study of the practices of teachers and the attitudes of families and pupils in a ZEP school challenges the fatalism in the theories of ‘reproduction’ and suggests why a significant number of pupils succeed even in the most unpromising circumstances. Corbett, Anne (1993) TES, 25 June. See Finkielkraut, Chapter 22. Maschino, Maurice (1983) ‘Vos Enfants ne m’intéressent plus’, Paris, Hachette, and Romilly, Jacqueline (1984) ‘L’Enseignement en Détresse’, Paris, Guillard were best sellers. MEN DEP examples: L’Etat de l’école (annual), La Géographie de l’école (1994), Deux Scénarios pour L’An 2003 (1994). Ravitch, Diane (1993) ‘When School Comes to You: The coming transformation of education and its underside’, in The Future Surveyed, special supplement of the Economist to celebrate its first 150 years, 11 September.

2 Education and training in Europe for the year 2010 René Mabit

Faced with worldwide disparities, which are themselves changing, between men and women, town and country, young and old, and above all between developed and developing countries, scientific and technical development, the globalization of trade, demographic trends, the obsolescence of knowledge, illiteracy, methods of training and value systems constitute just as many factors of change. With the trends towards disintegration on the one hand and towards homogenization on the other, what education scenario can be drawn for Europe? This chapter looks to the future and sets out the conditions for a possible scenario, proceeding from the recognition of the right to training, the lengthening of initial training, the complex regulation of systems and a redefined role for the state. Four areas in particular need to be examined from a French point of view: the content of education, ways of learning, academic assessment and vocational training. Finally, the control of systems of education and training introduces a dimension which is absolutely strategic to improving the social effectiveness of the whole. It is impossible to envisage the development of Europe over the next twenty years without carefully considering future education and training policies. This work is urgent for, to repeat the words of Jacques Lesourne, ‘even the simplest calculation will show that education and training policies only begin to bear fruit after one or two decades and that they then influence economic and social directions for nearly half a century.’1 Indeed the young people who, in 2010, will be working for their country and for Europe are already in the classroom; today the average age at which graduates from higher education start their working life is 23 in the United Kingdom and over 27 in Germany and Italy. In France today a child of six who starts primary school has an ‘educational life expectancy’ of 14.6 years compared with 13.5 seven years ago.2 The reduction in the length of working life together with the stagnation or drop in fertility will present the European Community with some difficult choices. Systems of education and training are central to what is at stake, namely, ensuring the

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qualifications of the greatest possible number of young people, who are set to become more ‘scarce’, and developing as highly as possible the abilities of all the available working population. Without this, it will be impossible for the European Union to reach its two primary objectives as they are expressed in the Treaty signed at Maastricht on 7 February 1992: ‘to promote stable and lasting economic and social progress’ and ‘to assert its identity on the international scene’. Education and training policies must also respond to more and more highly differentiated individual demands, to more and more varied family situations (single-parent families, the growing participation of women in economic activity) and to ethnic and cultural intermixing. The majority of European countries, adhering strongly to ideals of democracy and equity, are trying to satisfy both the need for a more efficient use of resources and for a guaranteed right to training. In this way, Europe differs from countries such as the United States or Japan in recognizing a right which confers on education its whole importance and which, in order that this right can be exercised, leads to the development of a partnership and the search for new forms of relationship between national and local authorities but which, at the same time, justifies the construction of a mechanism for assessment, intervention by central government and the positioning of educational policies at the point of economic, social and cultural convergence. While bearing in mind that the future results from a combination of underlying trends, factors of change, unexpected events, as well as the will of all those who have some ability to shape the future, we will attempt to sketch out some possible courses connecting today’s reality with tomorrow’s potential. From among the multiplicity of facts and the complexity of relationships, we have tried to identify those which seem to offer the greatest potential for change and have chosen to organize them on three themes: 1

2 3

Global contrasts and factors of international development which characterize, at the world level, the realities of education and training. The development of scenarios for Europe as a whole and the trends which make it possible to envisage a specific European project. Strategic elements which, from the French perspective, could structure such a project by the year 2010.

THE SITUATION OF EDUCATION IN THE WORLD: CONTRASTS AND FACTORS OF DEVELOPMENT In January 1988, the President of the French Republic invited more than seventy Nobel prize-winners to discuss the problems which they judged to be the most crucial for the future of humanity. One of their conclusions was that ‘education must become the absolute priority of all

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budgets and help to enhance the value of all aspects of human creativity’. One in five inhabitants of the planet is currently in training but the rate of illiteracy is even higher at 25 per cent. Admittedly, this represents considerable progress, since the rate in 1950 was 44 per cent, but however spectacular it may have been, this advance conceals a world situation which is a long way from the optimal valuing of human capabilities. More than one hundred million children of school age do not attend school and tens of millions do not complete primary school. According to UNESCO data, in 2010 the adult population as of the year 2000 will be entirely literate but effort and vigilance must not be relaxed because the situation masks large disparities and contrasts and conceals significant factors of change. Disparities and contrasts The first disparity There is a difference between the sexes: in the developed countries, where the rate of literacy approaches 100 per cent, there were 32 million illiterates in 1990, of whom 20 million were women, but this gap is narrowing. On the other hand, in the developing countries, particularly in Africa and southern Asia, the gap is widening. The second disparity This exists between urban areas and rural areas; thus in Pakistan, 80 per cent of illiterates live in a rural environment and represent four-fifths of the adult population. The third disparity There is an intergenerational disparity which will increase in all societies: in 2010, there will be more than two thousand million adolescents on the planet; communications networks will be directed at them and are no doubt likely to unify them around common ‘standards’ of lifestyle, music and perhaps similar concerns and shared values. The fourth disparity This is undoubtedly the strongest and is a question of the contrast separating industrialized countries and the least developed countries. In the older industrial or post-industrial countries, the provision of education is virtually total at primary and secondary level and a growing proportion of young people have access to higher education, with marked

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variations, from 4 per cent in Italy to 31 per cent in the United States, according to the OECD’s most recent figures. A high percentage of gross domestic product is spent on education: in 1988, 5.8 per cent in France, 6.2 per cent in Germany, 6.6 per cent in the Netherlands;3 the average proportion of public expenditure in relation to GDP is 4.8 per cent for OECD countries. The demand for education is constantly growing and the level of education constantly rising. However these countries are questioning the efficiency of the system and the suitability of content and methods to economic and social developments. This is the case in Japan, for example, where business and other leaders, whilst asserting that ‘since the reign of Emperor Meiji Tenno (1867–1912), the success of their country has rested on education’, 4 question the suitability of their education system to what will be at stake in the future: the training of researchers, people who are creative as well as productive (according to an AST survey quoted in CPE-Aditech 1989, 62 per cent of Japanese managers complain about the quality and quantity of researchers available). In many other countries, according to the ‘Institut international de planification’ (International Institute for Planning), ‘the absence of any simple solution to the economic recession, given the consequences that this has for employment and public finance, has generated a vast number of experiments and innovative initiatives relating to human resources development and education financing, which do not yet, however, appear to be under control’.5 The newly industrialized countries of Asia and Latin America have successfully developed their education systems6 and have been able to train a skilled workforce which can meet the needs of their economic and industrial policy, but just as in the older industrialized countries, they need to adapt teaching content and methods, to improve the links between research, higher education and production, and to set up innovative systems of basic education and adult training in order to combat the exclusion of disadvantaged sections of the population. The least developed countries, particularly those in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, are in a very difficult situation. The income per capita is growing only very slightly (0.4 per cent annually between 1980 and 1986). The demographic trend adds to the need for education especially in the southern Mediterranean.7 What these countries have to do is find new ways of extending primary education, reduce inequalities between the sexes, revalue the role of teachers, train those men and women who are essential to the development of rural and urban areas, draw up a finance plan and monitor administration. Factors of development Beyond the diversity of national situations it is possible to identify global factors of change on a world scale:

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Scientific and technical development This affects the content, structures and methods of education everywhere; it is both a product and a factor of world economic growth. The globalization of trade Added to this is the process of economic globalization and the internationalization of trade, which bring with them a new division of labour and intense competition. As a result, education is often seen by managers as a preparation for productive employment; the theory of regulation by the market is gaining ground while state intervention shows a decline since the implementation of social justice is no longer considered a priority. Demographic trends Their contrasting nature brings risks of socio-political divisions. In the countries of the South, which are in need of development, demography will, because of its sharp growth, strongly influence all education policy. This sharp demographic growth will further add to the political consequences of structural adjustment, to the increase in public debt servicing, to the fall in revenue from taxes, to the poor use of budgetary credits and to the increase in the number of unemployed graduates, further reducing the effectiveness of education systems. Nevertheless, the development of education, especially for women, has a known effect on the rate of demographic growth. In the older industrialized countries, and particularly within the European Community, there will also be demographic hazards, in this case because of falling populations, the reduction in the potential of the skilled workforce, ageing, which is unfavourable to innovation and future projects, and a shortage of creative people and perhaps teachers. The obsolescence of knowledge As a result of the development of science and technology, part of the knowledge and know-how acquired by an individual becomes obsolete more and more rapidly. In 1991 this was estimated to be about 7 per cent a year so that the ‘half-life’ of knowledge, by analogy with that of radioactive substances, is less than ten years. In other words, intellectual capital will depreciate more and more rapidly, and firms will have to adapt more and more quickly to new methods of production and distribution. Information and training will have to circulate with greater and greater speed to the largest possible number of individuals.

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Functional illiteracy, a new brake Having first appeared in the 1980s, functional illiteracy was revealed by ‘technological changes, the decline in the number of unskilled jobs and social developments requiring greater and greater adaptability and mobility’. 8 Functional illiteracy is understood to be an inadequate mastery of the basic knowledge which makes it possible to carry out simple work in a complex society. This phenomenon affects western and North American countries enormously.9 Assessments made in France by the GPLI10 of young people studied in national service selection centres show that nearly 9 per cent of individuals ‘are incapable of going beyond a simple sentence’. This rate reaches 53 per cent for young people leaving the education system after two or three years of secondary education. So even after compulsory schooling, a person can within a few years become functionally illiterate, that is to say, unable to take his or her place and ‘function’ in society if school has not given him or her sound initial training able to guarantee a degree of irreversibility and if he or she does not have the possibility of carrying on with or resuming a process of knowledge and skills acquisition. Changes in time and pace of training Ageing post-industrial societies will see their education system faced with numerous constraints particularly a quantitative shortage of manpower and a qualitative maladjustment; they will only be able to offset this by asking more of the system; in these countries, there will be an increasing return to concepts developed some years ago, continuing education, ‘lifelong learning’, future-oriented company training programmes. More generally, there is a gradual erosion of the patterns which used to mark individual social life where the three phases of education, working life and rest followed one another. This change is accompanied by a trend towards initial training which centres more on the development of personal and social aptitudes such as the ‘ability to analyse complex situations’, ‘sense of responsibility’, ‘inventiveness’, the ‘ability to work in a team’, what AngloSaxons call ‘key qualifications’. This kind of education policy tends to connect and modify the objectives of initial training and continuous training and to consider that there is complementarity or even continuity between the two. It also aims to extend training to sections of population previously excluded from access to skills training. For this reason, social and cultural dimensions strongly re-emerge. If the theory of regulation by the market remains the rule, there will be reports of deficiencies in the education system like those made in the United States.11 Effectiveness declines less in a country where there is voluntary state intervention in the content, structures and also the cultural foundations of the education system as, for example, in Japan.12

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Development of value systems In the case of industrialized or post-industrialized countries, some observations seem to reveal more subtle trends which could be the emergence or the return of cultural values, some linked to the ‘group’ in its many senses (profession, community, association, set) and others to work taken not in the sense of productive employment or status as a permanent employee but in the broad sense of creation, realization of a project, collective work or individual masterpiece, service or achievement, even extending to the work of the collective imagination. Here again traditional social patterns blur and aspirations blend personal growth, membership of a community, quality of life. As a counterpoint to this trend, a ‘world culture’ is emerging based on shared ‘markers’ which convey ‘standards’ of consumption and attitude often using ‘basic’ English as a medium and giving extreme power to the mass media such as television and to those whom the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘opinion-technicians-who-think-they-are-scientists’. The two main trends: disintegration and homogenization From the facts and factors identified it seems to us possible to distinguish two main concurrent trends. The trend towards disintegration This trend, which is very threatening if it exists alone, leads as it were to ‘disintegration’ based on a highly differentiated valuing of human resources. Some countries, the poorest in the South, would at the same time continue to lag behind internationally, to develop a graduate élite participating in power or contesting this power, to be unable to find the financial resources needed to develop the education system and thus incapable of enhancing the value of the ‘human resources’, which they have in abundance, through a plan for economic and social development. Other industrializing or industrialized countries would capitalize on their domestic demographic dynamism, their opening up to the outside world and their economic development and, through voluntary public policy, would diversify the content, methods and structures of education and training so as to incorporate new knowledge, make powerful use of this knowledge, increase philosophical thought and scientific research, thus strengthening their cultural dynamism and their public programme. Others, with a sophisticated system of education and training, would cover a wide range of fields of knowledge but, for lack of available ‘human resources’ and sufficient public investment or through falling back on an ossified national culture, would pass from the status of

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‘winner’ to that of ‘loser’ in the worldwide socio-economic and cultural game and would accumulate internal difficulties: a rise in functional illiteracy, the exclusion of the youngest and oldest, graduate unemployment, impoverishment of intellectual activity. The trend towards homogenization This homogenization would express on the one hand a globalization of ‘culture’, that is to say one where the élite moves wherever the market dictates, which is created within the senior management of the multinationals, at international seminars, in airports and main centres of tourism. The education and vocational training system, itself subject to uncertainty, would thus supply standard ‘products’ in a varying range depending on the international division of labour. Company ‘networks’ would be set up on an international scale. Objectives, content and methods would be very closely linked in this case to ‘systems of reference’ established by employers. Training would be given in institutions with considerable powers in pedagogic matters, or even total autonomy. On the other hand, adjustments would be made either by a socio-ideological community, a socio-professional body or a local organization close to the institution. This trend corresponds in a way to homogenization by the dominant system of economics. Considering the influence of historical, cultural, political and social factors on defining education policies and training systems, it is probable that the future of education will lie somewhere between these two trends and in their interaction across a fairly wide range of policies, particularly in Europe. WHICH EDUCATION SCENARIO FOR EUROPE? Today virtually all countries, particularly those in western Europe, are questioning their systems of education and training, and as is shown for example by OECD reports on surveys of national education policies, they are looking for new policies. European countries will, depending on the choices they make, experience one scenario or the other. The education policy chosen in this or that country is not connected in a one-to-one way with universal educational principles. Its deciphering, or even its evaluation, requires a reading grid. A reading grid for education policies: from the simplicity of principles to the complexity of reality Starting from the acknowledgement that education has an important relation to economic matters on the one hand and social matters on the other. we propose a diagram consisting of two orthogonal axes (Figure

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Figure 2.1 A reading grid for education policies

2.1). The first is a vertical axis representing the intensity of the relation of education policy to the economy. On this axis, education policy which has a very strong relation to productive work, both in cultural values and in the concern for the economic effectiveness of training, has a positive ordinate. The more the implementation of education policy favours methods and structures which emphasize the learning of individual knowledge or knowhow, structured subjects and content suited to training or jobs within the established social order, the further to the left the point moves. This left-hand section corresponds to the education paradigm that can be called the simplicity paradigm, which, to use the sociologist Edgar Morin’s phrase, ‘gives order to the universe and drives out disorder’.13 At the educational level it is the type of training programme based on separate fields of subject knowledge. It is also in this area of the ‘simplicity’ paradigm that we find the differentiation of subject combinations and types of institution, the search for the pertinent basic unit (class, institution), the hierarchy of qualifications, the explicit or implicit appropriateness of training to work, the dividing up of education and training skills into separate blocks, and so on. The horizontal axis makes it possible to locate the intensity of the relationship between education policy and traditional social order.14 Developed countries are subject to different factors of development which we have referred to above and so to complex or even contradictory trends. Today the simplicity paradigm is ineffective given the level of debate, crisis and questioning in the majority of European countries and it should be replaced. The new education paradigm is the complexity paradigm; the interrelationship between the education system, the production system and social organization must be examined in both the most precise and the most comprehensive way possible. The new paradigm accepts and manages differences and contradictions; it attempts to reconcile the autonomy of the subject with the subject’s bonds with the

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group(s) to which it belongs and with its social, cultural and economic environment; it stresses strategy and not prediction, curricula and not programmes; it sets up processes (and not structures) differentiated according to the target user; it favours adaptability rather than adaptation, movement rather than stability, multipartnership and networks rather than all-powerful centralized institutions. Finally, another aspect of the increasing complexity of the system is the growing conviction that education is the business of the whole of society with the balance which that assumes between the responsibilities the state could not shirk and the effective participation of partners at all levels and in all sectors.15 In this perspective, where do the EU’s European education policies lie? The countries concerned take pride in their democracy and, in the education and training sectors as in other sectors, strategic lines will be drawn and decisions will be taken after open debate; at times of economic difficulty emphasis is placed on the relation to the needs of the employment market; the rate of youth unemployment, when it is high, influences the education system; from analyses of the pace of technological change, of new representations of the employment market and of the mobility which structural change entails, new strategies for technical and vocational training, both initial and continuing, are implemented. But the sociocultural dimension of education policy is for all that undiminished and the concern for equity is present in each of the member countries, in competition or complementarity with the necessary relation to economics. The disintegration scenario In a first scenario, where differentiations would become increasingly pronounced, western Europe would be affected by the decline in human resources and all the social, economic and cultural consequences of this demographic ageing; the shortage of certain qualifications for certain sectors of activity would be a real one, difficulties being in inverse proportion to the size of companies; the breaking up of the Triad countries (the EEC, USA, Japan) into more dynamic areas and areas in crisis would force companies, in order to meet the costs of research and development, marketing and product-related services, to have a worldwide scale of operation and to make optimum use of their experience and internal capacities in terms of training and promotional mobility so as to overcome the problems connected with the need for economic growth; ensuing from that would be both the need for a considerable increase in outlay on continuous skills training and a steep rise in the number of graduates from higher education and thus of resources to be brought into play to enable the countries of the present European Economic Community to offset these shortages. Resulting from this there would be mobility of graduates and

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skills in the service of the Community linked to the employment market. Almost all employment forecasts, such as those of the British Institute for Employment Research or the German IAB-Prognos show, even if their predictive value for the year 2010 is weak, a growing demand for highly qualified managers, technicians and workers, in both the industrial and service sectors, in scientific and technical fields but also in the economic and social sphere. An inadequate level of qualifications and too low an outlay on training would lead to the decline of the Community as a whole in a vicious circle where innovation, the pursuit of quality and added value would be at a low level, and therefore where economic results would deteriorate and consequently resources allocated to training and education would become scarce. The homogenization scenario In a second scenario, homogenization or integration, which is as conceivable in a hypothesis of persistent economic crisis as in the emergence from a crisis, an international division of labour and broad opening up of borders would lead to the concentration in certain countries of research and development activities and market opportunities for high value added production. The training of an international élite of managers would strongly influence the structure of the education system; advanced level training courses would be organized among schools and universities in the developed countries so as to make maximum use of the ‘centres of excellence’ which exist in the different countries as prefigured by the current dividing up of specialists in postgraduate training: ‘Anglo-Saxon business, German-Scandinavian engineering, Japanese techno-commercial;16 some people are already demanding a ‘European market in junior executives, international campus managers’. The profile of this ‘Euromanager’ has already been drawn: an advanced sense of communication, command of English and two other languages, rapid understanding of different commercial practices, determination, sound business sense and good knowledge of the universal language of mathematics and computing; these are the qualities set out in September 1991 by the ERT (European Round Table) bringing together the heads of major European companies. The training itself is outlined: varied courses consisting of ‘long and short periods on both general and specialized subjects’, a co-sponsorship between universities and industry, financed by training vouchers and validated by a European management diploma, the EBQ, similar to the American MBA but whose co-ordinated educational objectives would be worked out within the framework of inter-university co-operation. In this way a Euro-élite of a high international standard would emerge, but at what cost? If the requirements of the market are always referred to, they are hardly specified; there is a strong likelihood that the demand for ‘Euromanagers’

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will remain limited. Moreover, such a scenario in no way questions the fact that the success of some might well bring with it the failure of others and so compromise the objective of social cohesion and involve significant cost. A ‘European’ scenario is possible In either of the preceding scenarios, Europe will have to accept all the economic, social and cultural consequences of internal and external imbalances caused by the main trends described above. There are specific dynamics within Europe for French observers which, if they are put into synergy, can become unifying trends and make it possible to envisage a European scenario. These trends seem to us to be as follows: 1 2

3

4

A syncretism leading towards the recognition of the right to training. A trend towards the lengthening of initial training; between 1983 and 1989 the proportion of 14–18 year olds continuing their initial training increased in all the member states of the EEC, by 2 to 3 points in Italy and the UK, by 7 points in France and Ireland, by more than 9 points in Greece, Luxembourg and Portugal. A complex regulation of systems operating at several levels: institution, region, state. After successive phases of centralization and decentralization, there seems to be a recognition of the need for ‘independent institutions and administration which are determined to be non-interventionist with a mature approach to relationships’ and a shared acknowledgement that ‘if the influence of interest groups is too great, it can be detrimental to the smooth running of school policy’.17 A redefined role for the state giving local and intermediate levels of government greater and greater responsibility for adapting programmes and deciding on education structures but more and more concerned with evaluating results, correcting inequalities and ‘championing’ social justice.18

This draft European scenario can thus draw its dynamics from its objectives of equity and regulation. It would be characterized by the enhanced valuing of diversity, the taking into account of complexity, the increased fluidity of courses and training time, the confrontation of educational effectiveness with economic and social demands. At an internal level stress would be placed on social equity and the pursuit of creativity, on the hypothesis that the higher the standard of education and training and the better it is shared out among all sections of the population, the more the population will have the capability and adaptability necessary not only for learning the techniques required by economic development at a high level of competitiveness, but also for taking account of worldwide socio-cultural changes and for control of the future.

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With respect to the outside world, stress will be placed on the affirmation of the richness of diversity and the consistency of the education plan with an ambition for lasting social and economic development. In this regard, the plan could have two aspects which are not mutually exclusive; on the one hand, there would be a contribution towards the educational policies of countries in difficulty, possibly extending to financial aid at least in the case of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean; on the other hand, within each system there would be a change of content and methods so as to integrate foreign populations better and to guarantee for all, native-born and immigrants, young and adult, a level of general education able to guarantee the irreversibility without which the damaging effects of functional illiteracy and exclusion will strongly emerge. ELEMENTS OF STRATEGIC ORIENTATION FOR THE EUROPEAN PROJECT Of the elements which are likely, from the point of view of a French observer, to structure the European scenario, we have focused on four areas:

• • • •

content of education ways of learning academic assessment vocational training

at some points placing emphasis on cases of inflexibility which are more specifically French. Content The first area which affects the aims and the actual foundations of the school system is that of content. The choice comes down to a simple alternative: either to construct a supra-national European cultural identity or to favour increased understanding of Europe’s cultural diversity and to promote common values. Even if respect for cultural, national and regional diversity and for differences in the content and organization of education systems is unambiguously set out in the Maastricht Treaty, the fact remains that, in future, every decision taken in this domain, at a Community or national level, will have to be analysed in terms of expected or unexpected psychological effects, debated at the national and Community level and explained clearly to public opinion since this is a very sensitive issue, the school system being very closely linked to national identity. Strategy in this area of content can move in two directions either giving prominence to common cultural heritage, both externally by helping to position Europe on the world stage and internally by developing or

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reinforcing in all Europeans the awareness that they share common values; or defining cultural enrichment deriving from diversity and exchange. As far as content is concerned, the official recommendations mainly emphasize ‘the European dimension in education’ often illustrated by language learning in member states or by ‘intercultural education’. This approach is rather limiting and the facts often contradict these ambitions. So the debate on the teaching of modern languages appears to us to be far from over. For languages are not simply tools of communication, they are a means of cultural expression, the realization of thought. It seems inconceivable that a single language should progressively be used within Europe: which language should be chosen? A Euro-jargon or a new Esperanto? Although Community authorities have recommended that two modern languages should be taught during compulsory schooling and that language studies should be diversified, ‘comparative study of European education systems indicates that it is rare for the teaching of a second language to be provided even as an option’ and ‘when there is a choice, it is generally only from two or three languages’, with France remaining the country where the range of choice is widest.19 Given the concern to take account of the globalization of trade, would it not be advisable to provide for the training of high-quality teachers for those languages which are least taught today when they concern large sections of the world population with whom our relations will probably increase in the next few decades: Spanish and Portuguese but also Russian, Japanese, Arabic and Chinese? In the face of a certain apathy in France and in order to improve the ‘effectiveness’ of communication coupled with the discovery of foreign ways of life and thought, there seems to be a need to look for ways of developing the ‘immersion’ method for academic, professional or tourist purposes in the form of periods of stay which could even extend to a sabbatical year or a ‘sandwich year’ as part of training courses for apprentices or employees. Without seeking a unification or even a harmonization of programmes, which is neither necessary nor desirable, it is conceivable that in the reform work which the majority of European countries have undertaken in primary and secondary education, convergences will arise from the opening up to foreign cultures, to the realization of the complexity of the contemporary world and to the reality of socio-economic life.20 Since it is also possible to envisage scenarios for the enlargement of the present European Community, the recomposition of this area or new international relations, it seems more judicious to place emphasis in national education programmes on the comparative and historical study of the main cultural trends and civilizations, on history, particularly of national and European institutions and on art teaching and practice which is at present very limited. Finally, in our post-industrial societies, the relation to life itself assumes greater and greater importance (health,

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ecology, genetic engineering, bioethics, information theory, artificial intelligence, biochemistry). It seems useful, among other reasons for the better management of complexity and uncertainty, to envisage a multidisciplinary approach to life sciences. Action to set this in motion must, certainly in France, extend to asserting quite voluntary objectives such as ‘100 per cent of an age-group successfully completing basic schooling and ready to enter social and professional life’; ‘consensus’ is virtually guaranteed but the credibility of such a policy will only be ensured if it is accompanied by a broad vision of ‘the economics of education’ and ‘pedagogic determination’ making this success possible. This poses the problem of didactics and, it seems, essentially of its diversification according to individuals; many countries refer to the need for this diversification in terms of subject combinations or institutions; one may wonder, as Dutch managers do, ‘whether it is a good thing to confine large numbers of pupils in badly thought-out categories, taking them into separate structures and institutions instead of trying to adapt the programmes and teaching methods of ordinary schools’. Equally one can examine closely which factors correlate positively with academic success and try to influence them.21 Time devoted to reading for pleasure and time for private study (with all subjects mixed together) are among these factors. There must be food for thought here on concerted strategies for a policy on books, access to libraries and educational and cultural resource centres, the organization of private study, the organization of the school day, the enhanced valuing of the desire for knowledge which is in every young child. Success at school creates the vitality which is so essential for Europe and which could surely be fostered, as was the case several decades ago in particle physics, through a programme, meetings and European research on systems of education and training. There are innovations in each of the European education systems but what can be done so that they are known, validated and extended?22 Meetings and exchanges between teachers should make it possible to move forward on several points: the role of heads of schools and training teams, the adoption by teachers of modern work and organizational tools, the recognition of the plurality of types of knowledge and of their equal formative value, of ‘scientific and technical education’ but also ‘civics’ and ‘work culture’. This contact between knowledge, subjects and activities is without doubt the determining change23 for the future of higher education, particularly in France, where a compartmentalized and academic system of organization was the rule for a long time and where the existence of the grandes écoles has often obscured the problems of the universities.

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Academic assessment All the countries of the West have increased their efforts to combat academic failure, adopting very different courses of action. Many studies have shown the negative effects of academic assessment; on the one hand this is because schools find it difficult to play a mediation role between subjective perceptions which are often fixed by the media and the dictates of selection procedures which raise the status of some and exclude others24; there is also the problem of the exclusion of too large a number of young people, generally from the most disadvantaged social categories which have poorly supported ‘formal learning’ and approaches which are too theoretical25; and, surfacing in parents, young people and employers, there is a complex feeling towards school, a mixture of anxiety, aggressiveness and hope. Often the accepted mode of intervention is ‘remedial’ but the recognition of the plurality of forms of success has not really been established; this often leads trainers to refer to standard models of ‘excellence’ in their teaching and assessment practices. Here again, exchange of experience and broader co-operation between neighbouring countries become essential if we are to move beyond the existing mechanisms. For France this means quite large changes: the relaxation of the present inflexibility, the multiplication of ‘pathways’ from one route to another and the disappearance of compartmentalization and hierarchy between subject groups (general, technical, professional) and institutions. This also means a comprehensive system of guidance which also aims not at exclusion (‘I was guided’ many of those excluded from the school system say) but at a ‘continuum’ linking family upbringing, targeted information26, counselling, advice, professional and social experience, without being limited, as is so often the case at present, to one of these strands. Informal education and free access to educational resource centres at any age in life are avenues to be explored and re-discovered. Systems of guidance will gradually have to take on a European dimension and any programme connected with young people moving from the education system into professional life will take into account the concept and tools of guidance as recommended by the 1987 report on school and careers guidance services for 14–25 year olds in member states of the European Community by A.Watts, C.Dartois, P.Plant. Guidance, particularly in France, remains too strongly influenced, as are structures and future-oriented training schemes, by short-term, partial perspectives and not by a long-term, comprehensive vision of the future. For a short time now in France a special effort, and one which must be increased, has been made in the training of young people with manual qualifications but it can only fully bear fruit if in addition the function of the worker is fully valued in the business world.

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One other powerful trend in France, and one which will consequently take a long time to correct, is indissolubly linked to the previous one; it is a question of the tendency to regard academic qualifications as sacred without questioning the relationships between qualifications and aptitude or between qualifications, organization of work and pay. Qualifications play a decisive role in fixing the salary at the start of a career and neither experience nor individual suitability ever manage to cancel the ‘qualifications’ effect.27 As a paymaster, the state wants to see selective redistribution and initial sifting by qualifications which, in France more than in neighbouring countries, continues to have an influence, well beyond its initial legitimate aim, on the actual appraisal of work accomplished throughout a career. It is clear that consideration given to skills which are often considerable and genuinely effective, acquired through practical social and professional experience, is very inadequate in France. Should we not establish, alongside training for ‘paper’ qualifications, which should also be made more understandable, recognition for developmental training for people in the course of work or after reaching a particular level of achievement? And should validation be by the capitalization of units of training —a weighty management process—or by a return to the timehonoured French belief in diplomas as the best base for equivalence? Would not the logical way, consistent with economic and social organization, be that of re-negotiated employment sector agreements or re-thought collective bargaining agreements? Vocational training Two points seem to be decisive for the future and as such have been taken up by the Commission of the European Communities in a memorandum dated December 1991. The first point is that ‘the boundaries’ between education and training tend to blur: the skills offered by training systems or required by professionals make greater and greater reference to educational values linked in particular ‘to behavioural and relational knowledge’ whereas education systems tend to be ‘occupation-centred’. The logical consequence is that, in future, the authorities will be responsible for seeing that education policy and youth and adult training policies are devised as a whole and debated according to the continuum of socio-vocational learning throughout life. In France, this should logically mean the disappearance of archaic structural compartments and a renewal of social debate. Public expenditure on education and training should thus become more understandable and efficient since the cost of ‘integration’ and ‘guidance’ activities and training for unqualified young people would gradually be reduced. This would probably lead training institutions to organize themselves into networks so as to provide initial as well as continuing

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training (which will increase their resources) and gradually become integrated in the socio-economic development of their area following the example set by French agricultural training since the 1984 reform laws. The second point is that continuing training is a strategic activity for companies, linked to their overall economic strategy and designed to accompany structural changes. From this point of view training should be thought of as linked to qualifications in the way research is linked to development. This is an important question for national and European development policy. Businesses should be showing greater initiative in implementing and financing training strategies—just as the EU Structural Fund has a strategy designed to ensure that rural areas in particular and vulnerable sections of the population in general do not remain outside the public development plan. The management of these funds could be partly in the form of mutual funds at a regional level with equalization formulae. In parallel with and linked to the possibility of the movement of people in Europe, work on employment-related information should be developed: the state of the employment market, future career prospects, the correspondence of qualifications within Europe, employment supply and demand, work and living conditions, level of salaries and cost of living, contractual right to work and social legislation in each of the countries where occupational mobility might be effective. Piloting the education and training system The final area which we want to identify as strategic is that of piloting the education and training systems.28 Today every country wishes to improve its performance by responding to national and international demands while guaranteeing ‘learners’, young and adult, a service more in keeping with their aptitudes and interests. The ‘consensus’ which is thus expressed around the decisive nature and priority status of education and training from now on sanctions the application of economics to this public service both at the macro-economic and at the micro-economic level. It is necessary to move ahead, at the European level, with the definition of the social and economic efficiency of education, with the effectiveness of redistribution and equity, with the deployment of indicators, with the conditions of use for international comparisons and with the ‘profiles of efficiency’ which could be linked to a method of organization or training management. The debate in progress in France suggests that this strongly implies arbitration on the finance side between the clear need to finance companies and investment in public bodies or households. This also supposes a choice of keys to change both at the social and the economic level and thus a redistribution of skills in the public service, choice of the pertinent area, taking into account differences in demographic density and giving a higher profile to public service initiatives. Decentralization and above all the increased

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autonomy of institutions constitute factors which are favourable to adaptation and innovation as are the existence of soundly structured networks and central impetus. The cohesion of society necessitates state intervention—the state in its role as regulator rather than in its guise as the welfare state—but there is a further argument: public expenditure would be better controlled, according to the OECD, in systems which maintained control ‘at a distance’. Beyond regulation and organization, there are the issues of a strong and lasting support system for education policy and of the effective participation of the partners concerned (families, unions, business people, local representatives) which guarantee a degree of unity without uniformity. Control ‘at a distance’ and procedures for evaluating state education and training policies seem to be ways of strengthening social and economic effectiveness and possible methods of securing an education policy in keeping with European democratic ideals. In conclusion and to broaden the perspective, it seems to us necessary to take into account here and now the fact that more and more demands will be placed on European education systems at an international level so that they take their place in wider policies such as environmental policy, ethics, information networks, international co-operation, North-South or East-West. The European scenario which we have attempted to outline seems to us able to respond well to international impetuses or demands. Indeed this scenario represents the recognition by each specific national education system of strong signals sent or disturbances felt at the supra-national level. Each reacts with its own identity and the dynamics created, national and supra-national, reinforce each other so as to give an innovative boost to the whole while retaining the diversity which constitutes its own unique character.

NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Lesourne Jacques, Futuribles européens, in Futuribles, December 1991. L’état de l’école, 30 indicateurs sur le système éducatif, Ministère de l’éducation nationale, Paris, January 1992. Education at a Glance—OECD (CERI), 1992. Le Bihan Fanny, Les nouveaux défis du nouveau Japon, in Sciences et technologies, Paris, March 1991. Institut international de planification de l’éducation (IIPE). Cinquième plan à moyen terme (1990–1995), UNESCO, Paris, 1989. It is thus the case that, for example, in Argentina, Korea and Singapore, more than 30 per cent of young people aged 19 are in higher education. According to the CEPII (‘Economic mondiale 1990–2000: l’impératif de la croissance’, Economica, Paris, 1992) in less than 10 years, the population of Africa and the Middle East will be more than 1,000 million with an increase of more than 186 million for black Africa.

Education and training for the year 2010

8 9

10 11

12

13 14

15 16 17 18 19

20

21

41

CREDOC (Centre de recherche pour l’étude et l’observation des conditions de vie) Histoires individuelles et situations d’illettrisme, Paris, 1991. According to the National Science Foundation, the rate of functional illiteracy will reach 20 per cent among the United States workforce, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress reveals that at least 17 per cent of 17-yearolds are functionally illiterate. GPLI (groupe permanent de lutte contre l’illettrisme). Approche de l’illettrisme en France, January 1992. While 15 to 20 per cent of young people are very well prepared for the increasing ‘cephalization’ of working life and for the context of a ‘high value global economy’, others receive virtually no training and the performance of the average student, according to the Americans themselves, puts them far behind their Canadian, British, Japanese or Swedish counterparts. The performance of Japanese secondary school pupils or students is very creditable and above all shows little dispersion around the mean. See Plantier Joëlle, Technique et Société au Japon, Histoire sociale de l’enseignement, INRP, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989. Morin Edgar, Introduction à la pensée complexe, ESF, Paris, 1991. So, for example, an education system of the ‘Japanese’ type has a very strong relationship with the economy and, in addition, concern for social and cultural cohesion is very apparent. Individual competition is established in educational principles but also well supported by the family environment and the national community, teaching methods emphasize the accumulation of scientific and technological knowledge as well as the preparation for competitive examinations to which the state entrusts the function of ‘objectively’ making the social sift. Despite good ‘performance’ in terms of the cohesion of the socio-productive system, limitations appear: insufficient account taken of risks and interrelationships, dissolution of the individual in the group at the same time as the relinquishment of common values in favour of individualism, confusion between information transmission and knowledge building. Leclerq Jean-Michel, Rault Christine, ‘Les systèmes éducatifs en Europe’, Notes et études documentaires, La Documentation française, Paris, 1989. Cf. Centre de prospective et d’évaluation. Une vision prospective du monde et cartes du GIP RECLUS. Evaluation report by the Dutch Minister of Education and Science: ‘Wealth of unfinished work: Dutch education and the challenges it must meet’. Fagerlind, Ingemar, Östedt, S.J. Education planning and administration in Europe; the trends and the stakes, in Perspectives, UNESCO, Vol XXI, No. 1, 1991. In French schools in 1990–91, 93 per cent of secondary school pupils learned English either as a first or second modern language; in 1980–81, the figure was only 82 per cent: 26 per cent learn Spanish, 25 per cent German, 3.2 per cent Italian and only 0.26 per cent Portuguese (less than 15,000 pupils); 68 per cent of secondary school pupils learn two languages but this percentage falls in the second stage of secondary technical education. Taking account of the development in scientific and technical knowledge, the extension of schooling to 18 or even longer, there is a need during compulsory schooling not to overload programmes with encyclopaedic knowledge but to stress the mastery of basic languages and elementary techniques, the ability to work in a team and to use contemporary tools (including, of course, computing whose value at this level is in its application and not as an academic discipline) and on the faculty of ‘nuanced thought’ as the Swiss put it so well. In March 1991, France along with nineteen other countries took part in an international assessment of educational progress looking at the success of

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23

24 25 26 27

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pupils in mathematics and science; the report shows that ‘if socio-economic factors seem, in the majority of countries, to be linked to the success in mathematics of 13 year olds, this also applies to extra-curricular activities’. If, as Francine Best wrote in the 1988 prospective analysis (Internationalisation et decentralisation de l’enseignement, HCEE-Paris), ‘linking innovation to research has potential for the future of education’, then is it not up to the authorities responsible to provoke, encourage and make systematic use of the ideas and work of the researchers and trainers involved? The change needed is multi-faceted: recognition of subject intersections, recognition of areas of uncertainty, of collective expertise, of ‘strategic capacity’ combined with ‘operational capacity’ (ERT report, 1991), setting up training for the ‘management of the future’, building skills which result from ‘the exchange of ideas’, that is to say working in teams which—in the words of P.Lagadee— ‘are not put off by the fragmentary nature of knowledge and which take it for granted, that they will reflect a diversity of cultures’. Dubet, François Les Lycéens, Paris, Editions Seuil, 1991, and author of La Galère: jeunes en survie, Paris, Fayard, 1987. Schwartz Bertrand, Rapport sur l’insertion sociale et professionnelle des jeunes, La Documentation française, Paris, 1981. The Dutch programme ‘Kies exact’, or ‘choose sciences’, evaluated in 1988, effectively encouraged girls to opt in greater numbers for science subjects. After 20 years’ professional experience, graduates of the grandes écoles received higher salaries, on average 20 per cent more than those of university postgraduates. C.Baudelot, M.Glaude, Économié et Statistique, No. 225, October 1989. ‘Piloting’ or ‘steering’ the system is the vogue vocabulary to underline that central government says it is abandoning old-style control by direct management to concentrate instead on ‘steering’, ‘animating’ and ‘evaluating’ the system—i.e. exercising control from a distance. See OECD’s comments on the French education system quoted in Chapter 1.

Part II Aims

Introduction

The tendency to personalize politics is universal. In France the history of education is often charted in the name of reforming ministers. The lois Ferry (1879–86) mark the start of compulsory education in France: ‘obligatory, secular and free’. The loi Haby (1975) introduced comprehensive education. In the period covered by this book, the loi Savary (1984) outlawed university selection and the loi Jospin (1989) set out to define a framework for the system for the beginning of the twentyfirst century. Even though the education ministry is often seen in France as the graveyard of political ambition—a service impossible to reform—it is still attractive to the ambitious. The six ministers who held the education portfolio during the two Mitterrand presidencies were all senior political figures. They were the socialists Alain Savary, a co-founder of the modern party (1981–4), Jean-Pierre Chevènement (1984–6), Lionel Jospin (1988– 92) and Jack Lang (1992–3), who was concurrently Minister of Culture. During the periods of ‘cohabitation’ with the right, the office was occupied by two figures from the centrist right, the UDF, René Monory (1986–8), later president of the French Senate, and François Bayrou (from 1993), sometimes talked of as a future prime minister. Part II starts with an extract from the historically important loi Jospin, more properly the Education Framework Act 1989, which is known for the novelty (in France) of its declaration that ‘at the centre of the education process is the child’ and for its definition of the state’s commitment to education ‘as the first of the national priorities’. The Act gives statutory form to the ambitious French policy that the entire age group should leave the education system with a qualification of at least BEP/CAP level (see glossary) and that 80 per cent should reach bac level. It reforms the teacher training system with the creation of university-linked IUFMs, which have been much admired in a crosscultural study (Judge et al. 1994). It introduces the concept of contracts between the state and educational priority areas. It makes it obligatory for lycées to establish pupil councils and it confirms important changes on the curriculum and evaluation front. With the setting up of a national

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curriculum council, the national inspectorate lost their powerful position as curriculum makers. The extract on ‘the mission of the education system fixed by the Nation’ and the concept of the ‘school at the service of pupils and students’ is taken from the explanatory note attached to the Act. The section is completed by interviews with three ministers, all in the question-and-answer format beloved of the French press. Chevènement is being questioned by Le Monde in the aftermath of the settlement he engineered with private, basically Catholic schools. His formulation of ‘republican élitism’ is explored, an attempt to show that concern about standards does not have to be a monopoly of the right. His claim that ‘France needs more élites’ prefigures the announcement of the ‘80 per cent’ policy, which is widely seen as the most significant change in policy over the whole decade. Chevènement can take credit for having identified earlier than many politicians in Europe the need to expand the base of skills and knowledge for all young people that he had picked up from Japan. But his achievement was to convince the French of the validity of the objective. This he did by presenting it as an issue of equity as well as a national economic necessity. Jospin is interviewed by a heavyweight intellectual review clearly more sympathetic to the ‘standards’ line of Chevènement than the attempt by Jospin to incorporate into educational thinking the pedagogical experience of classroom teachers. Jospin’s argument is that ‘mass is a condition of quality’ as well as essential in the name of equality. The passage on the role of teachers and his action on the first of the Muslim scarf ‘affairs’ gives a good idea of a minister for whom consistency of values is important but who prides himself on his ingenuity in reaching his goals. He presents himself as the ‘mechanic’ of the system. He was also able to emerge with credit from the lycée demonstrations of 1990. At the time of this interview, and thanks to the support of Prime Minister Michel Rocard, Jospin controlled a record budget. The interview with Bayrou was conducted when the French education system was in turmoil due to his attempt to change the base on which private (Catholic) schools were financed. The proposal was to abolish a clause of the 1850 Falloux law, the effect of which would have been to give local authorities who so wished the right to favour private over public sector schools. Ranged against Bayrou at the time was the constitutional council which gutted his legislation, and the bulk of the country’s pro-secular forces. Bayrou was, however, to show significant political skill in getting the backing of Prime Minister Edouard Balladur to open a ‘great debate’. This culminated in the summer of 1994 with 158 propositions for a new contract for schools—the notion of contract clearly crosses national boundaries—and a promise, which looked like fading with time, of a pluri-annual law for education and more resources.

Introduction

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Monory had a very different personal background from the other ministers. Much mocked by the French press for not having the baccalauréat —he came from a modest family in a generation when the bac was reserved for an élite—he started life as the proprietor of a garage. But he is a good example of the territorial baron. It was he who conceived the idea of Futuroscope in Poitiers. He enjoys great influence as the president of the Senate. And his obsession when minister was to break the power of the French teacher unions. In the end personality counts. Too much, in the view of one civil servant who occupied senior posts, and on returning to the university gave his account (Legrand 1994). With a strong commitment to ‘republican values’, he argued—earlier than most during the 1980s—that the common core curriculum was a limiting factor for that 10 per cent of pupils who reject school and who end without any qualifications, having caused havoc on the way. As one whose job it was to analyse policy requirements and implement what the government approved, he is a fierce critic of stop-go policies determined more by a minister’s view of his career than the needs of pupils. One senses a nostalgia for the Fourth Republic when French top civil servants guaranteed continuity while governments gave themselves the luxury of changing week by week. With a degree of verbal violence, which is common enough in France but makes the British tremble, he despaired that Alain Savary’s successors were behaving like absolute monarchs, ‘from the time of Chevènement, who was strongly hostile to anything which suggested opening up the school to the outside world, to that of Bayrou, who was so ill at ease with ideology that his approach seemed an expression of his subconscious, the French school system has had to put up with the selfsatisified utilitarianism of Monory, the anxiety and hesitation of Jospin and a condescension from Lang which bordered on indifference—these ministers who have had no other mandate than that dictated by their instincts, no form of control except the resistance, or rebellion, of their subjects’. Nevertheless there is a consistency of themes taken up by ministers which show the belief in the link between a healthy education system and a healthy French nation. The assumption at ministerial levels that the system should be nationally organized still crossed party lines in this period. The belief in an equitable system similarly. No single wing of the political spectrum had a monopoly of either word. In this context the interview with Bayrou is significant. He is, it should be added, a pure product of the traditional system, rising from a modest background to agrégé de lettres. At the same time, all the ministers knew that more autonomy for regions and for institutions was bound to come and Jospin and Bayrou, in their different ways, spent a good deal of energy on how such developments should be controlled. Ministers are just possibly monarchical. But ultimately they too have to recognize trends.

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REFERENCES Bayrou, François (1990) 1990–2000, La Décennie des mal-appris, Paris: Flammarion. Chevènement, Jean-Pierre (1985) Le Pari sur l’intelligence, entretiens avec Hervé Hamon et Patrick Rotman, Paris: Flammarion. Jospin, Lionel (1991) L’Invention du possible, Paris: Flammarion. Judge, H., Lemosse, M., Paine, L. and Sedlak, M. (1994) ‘The university and the teachers’, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, vol. 4, 1/2. Legrand, A. (1994) Le Système E, Paris: Denöel. Prost, A. (1992) ‘Les Mutations des lycées 1985–1990’, in Education, Société et politique, une histoire de l’enseignement de 1945 à nos jours, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Savary, Alain (1985) En toute liberté, Paris: Hachette.

3 The ‘loi Jospin’ The Education Framework Act 1989 (extracts)

MISSIONS AND OBJECTIVES SET BY THE NATION Missions of the education system The right to education and training is assured in France. Respecting the fundamental principles of equality, liberty and secularism, the State guarantees the exercizing of this right to all children and young people living on national territory whatever their social, cultural or geographical origin. The fundamental role of schools is to pass on knowledge. The aim of schools is to educate, giving consideration to and adapting their pedagogic objectives, the mean and women of tomorrow, men and women who will be in a position to lead their personal, civic and professional lives responsibly and capable of adaptation, creativity and solidarity. That is why education must develop in young people a liking for creativity, for involvement in cultural and artistic activities, and for taking part in civic life. The education system must both ensure physical and sports training for all young people and help in the development of school sports associations in accordance with the Act of 16 July 1984. While schools alone cannot do away with the inequalities which affect the living conditions of children and young people, they must contribute to equality of opportunity. They enable everyone to gain a recognized level of qualifications thanks to which they will be able to demonstrate their abilities and enter working life. It is also the role of schools to participate in the continuing adaptation of men and women to social, technological and professional developments in our society. The education system contributes to the creation of learning, to the diffusion of knowledge and to technological and economic progress. This is one of the fundamental missions of higher education and research in particular. Education which comes within the remit of the Ministry of Agriculture is affected by this Act and works towards the objectives defined by the Act under the authority of its own officials.

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OBJECTIVES TO BE REACHED These missions lead to the following objectives being set:

• • • • •

each young person progressively develops his or her own course plan; all young people reach a recognized level of training (at least CAP [Certificat d’aptitude professionnelle] or BEP [Brevet d’études professionnelles]); four out of five pupils reach baccalauréat level; all those passing the baccalauréat (or holders of a recognized equivalent qualification or an exemption) who want to will be allowed to go on to higher education; education opens itself up more, through its methods and content, to international co-operation and European construction;

From this standpoint, intermediate targets are defined for the coming five years:

• • •

to halve the number of young people leaving the school system without a qualification; to take 65 per cent of pupils up to baccalauréat level; to reduce by at least half the number of course guidance decisions which are not accepted by pupils and families.

Every level of education is involved in the achievement of these objectives:

•

•

•

nursery school enables young children to develop the use of language and to open up their growing personalities through creative activities, awareness of the body, skills acquisition and learning to get on with other people. It is also involved in screening for sensory, motor or intellectual difficulties and facilitates their early treatment; the fundamental objective of primary school is the learning of the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. It enables children to increase their awareness of time, space, objects in the modern world, and their own bodies. The introduction to a foreign language contributes to the child’s opening up to the world; the collège [lower secondary school] takes in the entire age group: all pupils must reach the final year of lower secondary education [Year 10] by different routes. Its mission is to go more deeply into what has been learnt in primary school and to perfect mastery of language in all its forms using teaching approaches which match the pupils’ diversity. Here pupils learn reasoning and observation across different subjects, practise a foreign language in its everyday usage and begin to study a second language.

In order to achieve this result, education encompasses the acquisition of learning and practical knowledge, methods of working and of assimilating knowledge, the forming of the critical mind and the

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development of sensitivity and curiosity. Pupils put together their first course plan. All of these various requirements give the collège its specific nature. The lycée ‘upper secondary school’ enables each young person to achieve his or her own plan. By offering pupils a variety of routes, it guarantees them a sound general training which enables them to continue their studies later on and gives them access to a high-quality professional and social life. It cultivates the capacity for private study, reasoning, judgement, communication, teamwork and accepting responsibilities. In order to promote the success of the greatest number and lead on to professional life or continuing in higher education, the lycée is organized into a variety of general, technological or vocational training programmes linked to each other by ‘pathways’. Higher education, whose missions are defined in Act No. 84–52 of 26 January 1984 on higher education, is the place where learning is created and diffused, where tomorrow’s managers, researchers and teachers are trained. Adaptability, creativity, the rapid development of educational content, the balance between occupation-centred and general knowledge must be standard practice here. The post-baccalauréat training given in the lycées, together with that of the universities, contributes to the development of higher education. That is why it is included in the plans for the development of post-baccalauréat training programmes worked out by Chief Education Officers in consultation with their regional partners. Through continuing training, state education promotes the raising of the general level of training and qualifications among the population. It is involved in the allocation of training grants and assists local, regional and national economic development. A SCHOOL SYSTEM SERVING PUPILS AND STUDENTS

Successfully managing intake Nursery school represents a fundamental stage in a child’s schooling. The particularly beneficial influence of early schooling on the subsequent success of children, particularly in primary school, is unanimously recognized today. Nursery school plays an obvious role for the less advantaged children as far as access to learning is concerned. The reception of these children into nursery school from the age of two and of all children from the age of three thus represents an objective of education policy and everything necessary must be done to reach it. In primary and secondary education, the pursuit of equality in terms of training and professional and social integration in all regions hinges on the forward-looking and systematic improvement in the number of pupils who

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are accepted, the allocation of jobs and of the material conditions for the intake. In the lycées, 180,000 more pupils are anticipated by 1992 with a further 270,000 pupils by the year 2000 (including Départements et Territoires Outre-Mer, state and private schools). The intake of these young people will lead to an intense, steady and co-ordinated effort by the state on the one hand and local communities on the other in terms of staff recruitment, building and fitting out of premises as well as equipment. A prime objective is not to have any class of more than thirty-five pupils remaining in the lycées by 1993. Its implementation will begin in 1990. Priority will be given to schools whose population comes from disadvantaged backgrounds. In higher education, falling behind in the area of capacity and conditions for intake in the course of the preceding decades means that a medium- and long-term effort is necessary for the creation of posts and university building: teaching and research premises, libraries, sports facilities, student accommodation and cafeterias. Fighting exclusion from schools Schools cannot neglect any pupil. Taking 80 per cent of an age group up to baccalauréat (level IV) does not exempt schools from giving satisfactory education and qualifications to the 20 per cent of pupils who will be unable to reach this level. The designation of priority education zones (ZEP) has met the desire to avert situations of under-performance by giving school populations from disadvantaged social categories special educational attention. In these priority zones, schooling of children from the age of two is favoured. The steps taken in the priority education zones must be extended. The causes of pupils’ under-performance will be analysed and all measures will be taken to remedy them, particularly through reading practice. These measures will also include the involvement of families. A contract between the school or educational institution and the academic authority lasting several years will be signed. It will lead to the nomination of a co-ordinator, the allocation of additional resources, specialized teacher training and measures to encourage stable teaching teams. Among the partners whose efforts must be combined within an overall education plan to fight exclusion, there will first of all be the parents who sometimes have to be reconciled with the school and welcomed and informed if they feel that this is necessary for them to follow their children’s progress better. Local communities, services coming within the remit of other ministries and certain extra-curricular associations will also play a part.

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Reducing inequalities of geographical origin There are still strong local, departmental or regional disparities in academic results, in resources for staffing and premises and in the network of training courses. These inequalities are especially great between the overseas departments and territories and mainland France. Inequalities of geographical origin are combated by making training opportunities over the whole national territory equal and in particular through the development of schooling for all three-year-olds. Furthermore, a policy of schooling in areas with a scattered population will be defined within the framework of national and regional development. It consists in studying the existing situation and, with various partners (other ministerial departments, local communities, associations), trying to find a better use of schools so as to provide them with a variety of activities guaranteeing their development (for example, programmes answerable to the Ministry of Agriculture, cultural centres answerable to the Ministry of Culture, adult training programmes). Agreements setting objectives and the means of achieving them are signed by the different partners. The schools concerned will be given priority as regards audio-visual equipment. Promoting medico-social action and health education Inequality will also be combated through screening for handicaps. Such screening from nursery school onwards is an essential obligation. The school health service, in liaison with mother-and-child welfare services, plays a central role in this along with the entire educational team, family doctors, the social services concerned and all those who are in a position to make a contribution. Educating pupils in the area of life sciences, health education and education to prevent stress and the use of harmful substances must also be an area of concern for parents, the educational team and the school health service. The school plan can provide a framework for their action. Priority in the allocation of resources will be given to schools in the more disadvantaged areas. Local and departmental initiatives will be encouraged. Furthermore, the training of teaching staff will take account of health and social aspects of education. Academic and social integration of handicapped children and adolescents The intake of handicapped children and adolescents meets a demand being expressed more and more strongly. Its priority status was affirmed by the Education Act of 30 June 1975 for handicapped people. The principles and

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methods of implementing the policy of school integration following from this were defined in the 1982 and 1983 circulars, which are still valid. The academic integration of children and adolescents is of fundamental importance in the process of social and professional integration of handicapped people. That is why a large amount of information must be ensured and new relationships must be established between schools and the families of handicapped children. The academic institution approached by the parents must carry out a careful examination of their child’s educational potential or offer them all the information necessary to consider, if need be, another arrangement. Different steps must be taken so as to respond better to the diversity of situations: management by the academic authorities has to take into account the special needs resulting from plans for integration and action necessary for the intake of handicapped pupils. Moreover, the contribution of teaching staff must be improved by reorganization of initial and continuing training with a view to bringing teaching practices into line with situations of integration. The rights and duties of young people in education

Towards an education contract Pupils, as beneficiaries of the state education system, have rights and duties. The exercizing of these rights and these duties represents a training in citizenship. Pupils must become aware of the connections between the educational objectives which teachers ask them to reach and the achievement of their course plan. Teachers therefore have to set these objectives in a realistic way, explain them to the pupils and carry out regular appraisals with them. In this way pupils will know where to place themselves in relation to the objectives assigned to them and on which points to focus their efforts. Thus it is a question of establishing a real teaching contract within the education programme. Setting up of pupil representative councils in the lycées A pupil representative council, meeting under the chairmanship of the headteacher and made up of representatives from every class, is consulted on questions relating to school life (internal regulation, school planning, socio-educational action) and on school work (timetabling, methods of remedial support, course guidance). Convened at least once a term by the headteacher or at an extraordinary meeting at the request of three-

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quarters of the representatives, it defines, in collaboration with the educational advisers educational needs and methods which fall within the representatives’ area of responsibility. The representative council is involved in the running of the community centre. It considers all measures necessary for informing pupils about and preparing them for access to higher education.

4 Work, worth, talent Jean-Pierre Chevènement

REPUBLICAN ÉLITISM ACCORDING TO M.CHEVÈNEMENT In an interview with Le Monde, 30 January 1985, M.Jean-Pierre Chevènement promises that the local authorities will be consulted on the matter of the financing of private schools. The Minister of Education considers that ‘France needs more élites’ and defines ‘the conditions of a truly Republican élitism’. He justifies the reintroduction of the brevet and defends exams in general, but would like to see maths playing a less significant role in the entry selection procedure to university. Since your appointment, you have been somewhat of a ‘hit’ in conservative circles and you have disappointed a certain number of people on the left. Is there not some kind of misunderstanding? Without wishing to be rude to those who are ill-informed, the people whom I seem to have disappointed are primarily those belonging to various cliques and ‘in groups’; perhaps also a certain number of people on the left who feel that this is where their allegiance lies and yet that their outlook is right-wing, since they think that quality, hard work and high standards belong to the right. With a definition such as this, we would be left seeming irresponsible and careless and however much we dress it up, our cause would be lost! As far as I am concerned, I do not hesitate to admit that I consider myself to be a different kind of left-wing. Isn’t it obvious that a solid and well-structured education system can give underprivileged children the knowledge they need that they will find nowhere else? If a child from a privileged background does not learn English at school, he or she is sent to Brighton or California for the holidays. If another doesn’t do very well with grammar or spelling, the parents are able to correct any spoken faults. But if the child comes from an immigrant family or is, as they say, a ‘welfare case’, then who will take them in hand and will correct them? In consequence, a solid and well-structured education system gives everyone an opportunity, especially the most underprivileged children. As you can see, I feel sure enough of my principles to remain undaunted by all that I hear said. The left must not become alarmed because

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it is in the majority. The reason I concentrate on success rather than failure is because all children must feel that success is within their grasp. State schooling must respond to the expectations of the majority of parents. In this way it will unite the country and convince it of the need for sustained effort in the educational sphere. Some local authorities are refusing to finance private schools. In your decentralization law, you give them the freedom to decide which contracts they will renew. Now the Constitutional Council has just declared itself opposed to this. Is there not a risk that the education quarrel will be reopened? As far as this problem of financing by the local authorities goes, I had envisaged a practical and straightforward solution. I thought I had found a solution which made allowance for the undertakings which had already been entered into, and the new rights given to local councillors in the decentralization laws. This solution, moreover, took into account the mentality of the various people involved. It allowed passions time to cool. It is not up to me to comment on the decision which the Constitutional Council took, all I can say is that it entrusted the State alone with the task of winding up contracts which will involve the local authorities in financial commitments but did not forbid it to suggest ways in which these contracts could be brought to an end. How do you think it should be done? An ordinary circular should do: the local authorities will need to be consulted in any case. So I will concentrate on setting out fair guidelines. We must not start the schools war all over again, the country has better things to be getting on with. But peace in the educational arena must be founded on clear principles. The main conclusion which I have come to from these events is that the public confidence must be restored once again in state education, for, let me just point out, it is still the best there is. In general, the parents who send their children to private schools do so less out of a concern that they receive a religious education than to find an alternative. Therefore state schools need to respond better to families’ main expectations, and provide their own alternatives. That is why I am doing my best to make sure that state schools are synonymous with quality. Do you feel that your law has been altered beyond recognition by the Constitutional Council? In the area of the financing of private schools by the local authorities, from now on they will be able to pay off their debts in kind now that the Guermeur law which dealt with this matter has been repealed. As for some localities, they will only finance the private schools which they choose to accept. But it

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is true that the decision of the Constitutional Council means that localities cannot exercise their veto in future contracts; they will, however, be able to give their opinion since they will be consulted. With regard to the problem of the financing of the authorities themselves, the text containing straightforward and practical arrangements has been chipped away at, but not significantly modified, and the other points have remained the same: the measures will reassure those who doubted that secular and church schools could ‘co-exist’. You say that families are often looking for an alternative in private schools. How can state schools provide the same alternative? State education has first of all to provide all French children with a good basic education and then to allow each person to achieve as much as their abilities will allow. State schooling should not be, as is so often the case, a structure which excludes people, on the basis of social rather than intellectual criteria. The most important thing is to emphasize the quality of state schools, which, as I said, belong to everybody. As I see it, there is no contradiction between quality and quantity, between democracy and knowledge. The Republic needs enlightened citizens. Can you imagine an obscurantist democracy? Moreover, France needs larger élites, transformed in depth, if she is to meet the modern world head on, and keep up. If we are going to emerge victorious from this crisis we need more scientists, more engineers, more industrialists, more technicians and more skilled workers. You speak of élitism, but the Republic has always been synonymous with equality. Is this not a contradiction in terms? Democracy does not consist of making everyone the same but of giving everyone a good basic education which strengthens social cohesion, and of giving everyone the opportunity to make the most of their own abilities. Nothing is more in keeping with socialism and with the spirit of the Republic than to ensure that the élite defines itself in relation to its work, its worth and its talent, instead of by the place it comes from, the privileges it has received and the money it has. The present system is not good enough: too often it is a system which excludes people on the basis of essentially social criteria. So that France can transform its élites, we must ensure that everyone is given a chance at the outset, and that the Republic gives a chance to those who otherwise would not have had one. We need more students in our universities, and consequently, more pupils in our secondary schools. It is imperative, and that is what we are trying to do with the present policies—to provide 80 per cent with a basic nucleus of knowledge which meets the requirements of this day and age. The brevet will not be an obstacle preventing people from continuing their studies, but rather from 1986 it will serve as a yardstick for pupils and teachers. In the same way as once upon a time a good teacher was

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one who could get 80 per cent of his or pupils through the primary school leaving certificate, it is necessary that within any given establishment the proportion of children who have obtained the brevet is known. One good little exam will be more effective than 50 circulars which no-one will read. Revising the role of maths What will be your priorities in the next few months? I think the most important thing is the publication of new programmes of study which will be straightforward, clear, accessible and modern, first of all for primary schools, then for the collèges and for the lycées. And of course the introduction of new subjects, such as technology, and the acceleration, which the prime minister announced, of the introduction of IT into schools. The main point of government policy is to expand the curriculum. Mathematical disciplines are rigorous and develop logical thought. Too often, however, they have become the sole instrument of selection and the supposed key to all success. Today, even if you wish to head for a career in business, the bac C is necessary! This doesn’t make sense. No doubt we should be increasing the emphasis on applied maths and linking it more with the other scientific disciplines. But rather than launching ourselves into an attack on maths, which is one of the mainstays of our educational system, and one of the glories of French science, I would prefer us to think along the lines of restructuring the lycées so that the options and programmes within the bac are more balanced and therefore more attractive to students. An improved classical or even scientific and technological education would also meet the needs of the country. Perhaps we could also emphasize literary disciplines as necessary for those who wish to take up a career in administration, or look once again at the selection procedure for preparatory classes for the grandes écoles and the university streams, better to take into account all the knowledge which has been acquired during a long secondary education. ‘Worldly obscurantism’ Do you not fear that the spirit of competition will be taken too far? I do not think there is anything wrong with taking into account the actual levels attained by young people, for this is a powerful factor in motivating them. Why should not that which is true in the economic world—the acknowledged importance of the role of the workers in innovation and creation—also be true in the educational system? But of course we need to find alternative routes or we will end up with ‘lifelong students’. In-service training should allow the whole gamut of our knowledge to be opened up and questioned.

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In all of this, what is left of May 1968? We must acknowledge that May 1968 was a cry for help and that inevitably it is being repeated. After all, in political terms the May movement has never amounted to much. In my eyes, May 1968 was necessary, even if it focused too much on the schools.

5 Now or Never Lionel Jospin

Le Débat: This seems to be a very unusual time in the chaotic history of state education. On the one hand, this is because of the great upsurge in demand for education which has led the government to make your ministry a national priority. But it is also, on the other hand, because of the types of action that you have taken. Unlike your predecessors, who generally favoured this or that line of attack, you are tackling everything at once. It is the nature of the ‘Jospin plan’ that we would like to ask you to clarify. You have focused on all fronts, provoking reactions everywhere and at the same time revealing the contradictions at the heart of the system. What is your guiding line in this overall policy? Lionel Jospin: I came to the ministry knowing the education world quite well, both through my family connections and through my professional experience since I was myself a teacher in higher education for ten years or so. At the same time, I came without any preconceived ideas or ideological prejudice and even without having systematically worked on educational issues in recent times. My first concern was to assemble around me a team of men and women who had both a good technical knowledge of the field and ideas about what should be done. In my view a collective style of working is essential. I don’t know if there is a ‘Jospin approach’ but what I do know is that, if there is, it isn’t just an individual one, it’s the approach of a team that I am leading. I really want to emphasize that. The fact that we in the Ministry of Education have been given priority is both an advantage and a disadvantage. It gives me resources. It puts me in a good position to impress upon those people in the government that I am in dialogue with needs which have been tremendously underestimated. But it also creates in the education community, among teachers, pupils and students or parents, a tremendous feeling of expectation and the awareness of a right to get results which weighs heavily on us and is at the same time a spur to action. In view of this situation, my concern since taking up my post has been to identify what, in the system taken as a whole, was not working and needed

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to be modified. I didn’t want people to be constantly asking themselves whether I was a ‘pedagogist’, as people said of A.Savary, or a ‘republicanist’ like J.P.Chevènement, because I was—and I still am— convinced that the issues could not be given these simplistic labels and that a different approach was needed. In this sense, one could speak of a ‘mechanical’ approach. My first task was to carry out diagnoses in all areas from nursery school to university: problems of recruitment and teacher training, problems of under-performing at school, problems of the content of studies at the lycée et cetera. The constraint being that the machine has to keep running while the malfunction of one or other of its parts is being put right. That’s all there is to say about the spirit of the approach: I didn’t want to place the emphasis on a return to discipline or advances in pedagogy. My view is that the approach to the education system must be both comprehensive and selective. There are problems at all levels and it is true that our policy goes in all directions at once. It’s a question of defining the problems and dealing with them one by one, ‘changing the parts’ while ensuring the smooth running of the whole. MASS AND QUALITY Le Débat: The most obvious of these problems is the one created by the influx of large numbers of new pupils and students into the lycées and universities. In their turn, the lycées and the universities are entering the age of mass education. In this respect one cannot but be a little surprised by the authorities’ lack of foresight. Your predecessors held up mass education as an objective—the much-vaunted 80 per cent of a generation reaching baccalauréat level—and it’s as if the government were surprised that people took them at their word. L.J.: Mass education to secondary and higher level is no longer an objective, it’s a fact. My predecessors—and myself for that matter—are simply holding up a standard, the ‘80 per cent’ standard, at the head of an army which is in every way reaching it. The problem is, unfortunately, that people have become aware of the reality of this phenomenon too late. The process began at lycée level in 1984–85. The number of people going to the lycée after the collège suddenly increased then, and it has continued to grow ever since. Hence the tremendous tension that prevails in the lycées. Hence the new flood of students arriving in the universities. To put this phenomenon into proportion, there are already more lycée teachers than there were pupils when I myself was studying. There is an overall explanation for this phenomenon which is the new attitude of parents and young people in the face of unemployment and the new economic context: carrying on with one’s studies and getting higher and higher qualifications is perceived as a condition of success. Added to this there are economic and cultural developments in some regions where there was under-schooling, such as the North, East and West of France. Traditionally, working-class children

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in these regions tended to go down the mines or into factories rather than to the lycée, unlike in the South, the Midi-Pyrénées region, for example, where, because of the lack of industrialization, the path to getting work was through competitive examinations and thus through education. The industrial cataclysm that the regions in the North and East have been through has changed behaviour. They are making up for lost schooling time. It isn’t a matter of an irrational upsurge which would put us in a difficult position. What parents and young people are choosing is in line with the country’s needs. We know that raising the level of qualifications is a decisive asset in the economic and industrial fight. As such, this mass influx, whose speed and scale have indeed come as a surprise and which nobody, including the government, has yet got the measure of, becomes a political objective. That’s why I have insisted that it should be included in the Education Act which establishes the main objectives of our education system and defines the means of achieving them in the years to come. Le Débat: Very well. But what can be done to see that these expectations are not disappointed in that the conversion to mass education is not translated into a decline in quality? L.J.: That is indeed the whole problem. But I would like to begin by observing that mass education produces its own quality. The wider recruitment is, the greater the problems of training are, no doubt, but the more immense too is the potential talent. Mass is a condition of quality. That is the reason why I challenge élitism. Although it’s hackneyed, the example of sports disciplines is none the less eloquent: it underscores the connection that more often than not exists between the number of people doing sports and the quality of the athletes at the top level. So not only is there no conflict in principle between mass education and élite education, but mass education is a condition of delivering an even finer élite. Le Débat: Having conceded this principle to you, and it’s a fundamental one, the practical methods of actually releasing this potential talent still have to be defined. Because it could remain potential. L.J.: We have to start with the intake. It’s a trite thing to say, but increasing the physical capacity of an education system is no small matter. By virtue of the decentralization laws, it’s up to the departments, in the case of the collèges, and the regions, in the case of the lycées, to carry out this work in terms of building; and besides, this has allowed them to increase it substantially. It falls to the ministry to create a sufficient number of teaching posts. The necessary financial outlay by the local communities and by the state is considerable. The second problem is that of teacher training. We need both more teachers and better-trained teachers. This is what we are in the process of setting up

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with the university institutes of teacher training, the IUFM [Instituts universitaires de formation des maîtres], intended for primary and secondary school teachers. This is what we have begun in higher education. For the first time, there will be real training for higher education. Until now, teachers trained themselves, as it were, on the job. With the introductory training for higher education which we have just set up, young researchers selected by the universities from those doing their doctorates will be able to get an introduction to university teaching. In return for an allowance equivalent to what a student at ENA [Ecole nationale de l’administration, one of the grandes écoles] receives, that is, about 9,200 F. a month, they carry out their first teaching timetable under the supervision of a university lecturer other than their postgraduate supervisor. I think that some new elements need to be introduced into teacher training. Along with academic training, there must be professional training. A teacher cannot just be someone who is passionately fond of a subject, he or she must be an education professional. It will be the IUFM’s mission to develop this sense of profession. One of the essential things to give teachers today is a knowledge of today’s pupils and students. Secondary school teachers are not only overwhelmed by the surge in numbers, many of them, particularly the older ones, are also surprised and disorientated by the pupils that they are dealing with. The lycées or the universities used to be places where people met others from the same background. The situation has overwhelmingly changed. Teachers have to be better prepared for their pupils’ and students’ new social, cultural, and even community backgrounds, when one thinks of immigrants. And then there is a lot to do as regards teaching methods and content. That is the task of the committees led by P.Bourdieu and F.Gros. Le Débat: You know that for a significant section of the teaching world this talk of adapting to new types of pupils and this emphasis on pedagogy— although you haven’t actually uttered the word—are a way of dressing up the abdication of the true object of education, which is learning. L.J.: Let me be perfectly clear. I do not know of any pure pedagogy. There is no pedagogy without learning, any more than there is a diffusion of learning without a minimum of pedagogy. I refuse to get into this sort of debate. School is not the place for dogmatic assertions, but the place to try and find balance. Consequently I am not siding with one camp or the other. Le Débat: Nevertheless you have been able to gauge from the strength of the reactions provoked by your statements about the severity of the board of examiners for the CAPES teaching certificate in Spanish, that this is an area of profound concern for teachers. L.J.: I understand that. I have just had the results of a survey on first-year lycée classes [Year 11] carried out in about fifty lycées in fifteen regional

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education authorities with teachers, headteachers, pupils and parents. The first year at the lycée is certainly one of the places where inconsistencies and dissatisfaction are greatest. The biggest sense of pessimism is found neither in the pupils, who have a relatively high level of confidence in their teachers, nor in the parents, who are relatively satisfied with the system. It is characteristically the teachers themselves who are uncomfortable with their situation. The problem which they have to face is typical of the general dilemma which you raise: ‘Do I have to lower my demands to take account of the whole class or, in order to implement the programmes, should I neglect part of the class and just work with the better ones?’ Faced with this very real problem, a minority of teachers begin to ask us to bring back selection for the lycées. That is something we cannot do. We have to be very conscious of the fact that it will not be possible to reintroduce selection. From now on, classes will have to be taken as they are. What we have to do is help teachers to master this situation by taking account of all the aspects of this diversity. To my mind this calls for different ways of working. It is a question of giving teachers a clear awareness of the conditions in which they will practise their profession, and, firstly, of their pupils; in this way they will be prepared, from their training onwards, for situations which might otherwise pose serious problems for them. The reasoning is the same on the issue of the teaching certificate, which is why I made this digression. Unless we argue from the hypothesis of a massive reduction in pupil numbers in the lycées, we cannot refuse to fill all the posts because the candidates are not up to standard. That is to lose sight of the fact that in any case someone will take these posts. And who will they be filled by? If not tenured teachers who have passed competitive examinations, it will be assistant teachers who are even more badly trained. I understand that the competitive examinations are still highly demanding. I only want to avoid the ridiculous situation where, in the name of abstractly safeguarding the standard, posts are filled by people who are a priori below the level of those who were at least eligible for the teaching certificate. Bearing in mind the point that we’ve reached, let’s try to recruit the best possible teachers, or if not the absolute best, then, through a determined effort of pre-recruitment and training, to raise their level further. Le Débat: What is at least the spirit of the methods which you are thinking of and which would seem to you likely to remedy the teachers’ state of confusion? L.J.: In primary schools, we want to stress basic learning. This was translated at the start of the school year into assessment in arithmetic and reading for all second-year elementary classes [Year 4] and first-year secondary classes [Year 7]. It seems that an inadequate mastery of the French language is one of the causes of under-performance. In this area, as you see, I am not being ‘pedagogic’. I am putting the emphasis on basic skills.

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One of our principal lines of work is the introduction of cycles which would make it possible, on top of the annual class changes, to take greater account of the child’s development. That will involve freeing a certain number of hours to allow teachers to consult. That will also lead to the introduction of streaming. I believe that the implementation of all these techniques, assessment, support and consultation, will contribute to schools being better adapted to their pupils. As for secondary school, the deliberations which are being carried out in various quarters—topic-based committees, academic symposia, the Bourdieu-Gros group—seem to me to be leading towards two particular paths. The first idea to emerge is that, if we want to take into account developments in subject areas, and in particular those which change the most quickly, the exact sciences, we have to give up some knowledge valued in the past in return for the introduction of new knowledge into the programmes. Otherwise we will sink into encyclopaedism. It is possible, without systematically and on principle trimming the programmes, to see that they correspond better to the current state of knowledge. On the other hand, it seems essential to develop the pupils’ methods of knowledge acquisition. Of course, learning has to begin with one piece of knowledge. But in addition you have to have a method of working, which we must help pupils to acquire. It is this deficiency in current education that they complain about most, if we trust the survey on first-year lycée pupils which I mentioned just now. We find here again all the emphasis that I also place on the questions of research material and libraries. If we want to develop a scientific spirit in young people, we have to teach them more about how to assimilate knowledge. Le Débat: Speaking in concrete terms, the increase in the number of pupils passing the baccalauréat is being achieved through the increase in the number of course options which are in fact very hierarchical, even if this is not officially the case. Isn’t the system adding hypocrisy to inequality by making the ability to find one’s way through this maze work to the advantage of the initiated? L.J.: We are in the process of deliberating this point and I would not like to give too categorical a verdict. It is true that we see ‘echo effects’ which enable the better informed to maximize their advantages. Even so, I would not like to condemn the principle of course options: young people are different, aptitudes are different and so are training courses and jobs. Returning to a strict common-core syllabus would not be an appropriate solution. Without going to this extreme, we can do several things. I can see at least three. First of all, we have to examine and test these options to see to what extent they work. In the second place, we have to fight against excessively hierarchized options by trying to level out a system which has tended to develop vertically. From this point of view, mathematics has played and plays too great a role in

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France, as the best mathematicians themselves acknowledge. The paradox is that the privileged position given to mathematics does not in the end make it possible to train enough mathematicians and to recruit mathematics teachers in sufficient numbers. It is essential to widen the field of scientific subjects in education and in particular to restore to favour the experimental subjects. Along with abstract ideas, a better place must be given at all levels to the spirit of research, the sense of the concrete. This is not only important from the educational point of view. It is important socially in helping form new types of élites and economically in the way research can develop commercial attitudes to the home and foreign markets. Thirdly, the baccalauréat options can only be viewed today in relation to those at the start of higher education. The baccalauréat is not an end in itself, in the majority of cases it does not lead straight on to a job, except for those which are rightly called vocational. It is from the viewpoint of the transition to the first two-year cycle of university studies that these options must be examined. This is what we wanted to take account of with the plans for developing post-baccalauréat training intended not only to adjust the quantitative flow in each area education office but also to define qualitatively, by working on the stage two years before and two years after the baccalauréat, what I call the routes to success. For experience shows that success or failure in higher education hangs to a very significant extent on fitting one type of baccalauréat course to one type of first-cycle university course. This is moreover an illustration of the main ideas guiding our action. I was talking just now about my intention to work on the weak points of the system taken as a whole. The most vulnerable points are the transitions, and one example of this is the transition from secondary to higher education. But we are equally working on the transition from nursery to primary, from primary to collège and from collège to lycée. These are the key times, the times when options are chosen, and at the same time the most vulnerable points. They are one of my paramount concerns. Le Débat: What do you as a socialist think of the phenomenon of reaction against and protection from mass education such as the Louis-le-Grand [an élite Paris lycée] phenomenon? We really are faced here with something like a hijacking of the public service to the advantage of a favoured few who reserve for themselves the use of a privileged bastion of over-selection. How can the existence of such pockets of privilege be reconciled with generous talk of equality of opportunity? L.J.: You mention the case of Louis-le-Grand; we could extend it to the classes préparatoires and to the grandes écoles themselves. It is a question of something specifically French and once this fact has been recognized, we must be aware that we can either keep it as it is or change it. We can’t destroy

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this special quality. We will change the system. It is so élitist, even if it is excellent, that it becomes marginalized. The number of engineers trained by the French grandes écoles is so limited that it does not meet all our needs. The result is that with the support of the professional body for engineering qualifications, with the support of the major universities, with the approval of the employers, the large firms and the unions concerned, we have had to decide on the creation of a new training course for engineers in France. We are in a situation where we are training too few engineers and, in particular, too few production engineers, who are neglected in favour of generalists and administrators. At the same time, in French firms, we have allowed tens of thousands of higher-level technicians to accumulate who have only a very small chance of becoming engineers through continuing training because this operates very sparingly at the moment. So once again, in accordance with the old law of the history of education in this country, we have to create a course outside the university system to correct certain deficiencies linked to overselectiveness. What is my philosophy, faced with this situation? It applies from nursery school to the most specialized higher education. I would like the system to become capable of changing itself without having to be systematically entered from the outside. Just as I would like the remedy to be inside the schools, I would hope to make sure that the education system as a whole opens itself up to innovation and change when the realities impose it. This is what I am aiming at when I take action to reform content and programmes, to promote school-level ‘plans’, to encourage teachers, through targeted bonuses, to work on specific tasks (supervision, pupil guidance, extra-curricular work; pedagogic, research or administration activities in higher education). A more open and at the same time a more closely-knit educational community is in my view an essential factor in the reform of the education system. This is the policy that I wanted to translate into the Education Act. A LAST CHANCE Le Débat: You’re setting out a major plan. But you have to achieve it at the head of a particularly cumbersome administration with a reputation for being unmanageable. You’re dealing with trade unions which are still relatively powerful in this sector and well established in the machinery itself—the ‘joint management’ promised by the FEN [Féderation de l’école nationale] appears to be no more than a myth. As a socialist, you have particular obligations towards the teaching world, whose natural family it is. What freedom of manoeuvre do you have left amidst all these constraints? L.J.: In a way, even at the risk of sounding immodest to you, I have the impression of having something like a last chance. The circumstances are relatively favourable, because there is a great awareness of disquiet. The will

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for reform exists despite tensions and sometimes sectional interests. The President of the Republic has stated where the priority lies and he is holding to it. The Prime Minister is supporting me in its implementation. In short, a certain number of conditions have come together, if not for total success— who could claim that a priori? —at least for a real step forward. And I sometimes tell myself that if it is not accomplished now, it will be more and more difficult to carry it out. If sufficient resources are not made available, if there are too many tensions in the environment, if cases of antagonism, patriotism and conservatism of subject, field or category all combine to create a blockage, if faced with legitimate questioning, emotion gets the better of reason, no government will return to the work in hand with the same vigour. Or it will return constrained by circumstances, by a 1968 of a different kind. Then the system will implode or compartmentalize. No one will try to manage it as a whole again. This is what feeds my conviction. It is true now that the system is enormous, but it is already much more differentiated than people think. It is the massive bulk that makes an impression: about fifteen departments in the ministry, twenty-eight area education offices, four thousand officials in central government, a million teachers, two hundred thousand ATOS (technical and other non-teaching staff) personnel, more than twelve million pupils and students. But this impression is partly misleading: deconcentration and decentralization have modified the conditions for managing the system. Everything does not come back to the minister’s office as it used to: he is directing the machinery but he does not have to be directly involved in all the decision-making. The new responsibilities which the local communities have, the districts for schools, the departments for the collèges and the regions for the lycées and, most of them, in university development through planning contracts, make it possible, in addition, to develop a policy of partnership. Le Débat: The structure of the administration is one thing, its state of mind is another. Yours is not thought to be enthusiastic for change and it has time on its side. L.J.: One must not underestimate the will for change which there is in the administration itself. All the contacts that I have give me a feeling of support for the policy that I am trying to implement which does not come out of hierarchical obligation. I’ll take one example: we have just implemented a reform of the inspectorate. Now this reform was conducted by the inspectorate itself. To me that is a very significant phenomenon. The administration wants to change its image of itself. Le Débat: Will you say the same thing to the unions? L.J.: It’s a long time since the days when it was not possible for the Minister of Education to be a trade unionist himself. This is the case with me. I

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know the union phenomenon from inside. In my philosophy and culture, there is a profound respect for trade unionism. But perhaps it is just because of this that I am not tempted by the much-vaunted ‘joint management’. The philosophy of French trade unionism, inherited from the Amiens charter, is not joint management. I believe in the independence of the unions in relation to the state and in relation to the parties. I respect the independence of the unions, and I expect them to respect the independence of the minister. We do not have joint management in this ministry but we consult an enormous amount and that’s a good thing. I am in favour of a contractual vision of politics and I am delighted that the relative strength that trade unions have kept in the teaching world means that I can have genuine dialogue with those opposite me. And here again we must move on from images from the past. The teaching unions are going through the same crisis as the other unions, they know that they are threatened and they are aware of the need to change the education system and to change with it. UNIVERSITY: THE THIRD APPROACH Le Débat: Let’s approach the university question from its most hotly-debated angle: selection. Do you reject it or are you in favour of it? L.J.: This is a very difficult issue. Let’s take it from the point of view of the future. In 1993, there will be increased mobility for students in Europe. If the French university system stays as it is, that is to say a system without selection and without any right to enrol, there is a danger that it will not admit and not keep the best students, French or foreign. We can’t ignore this problem. It concerns the general interest as well as the interests of the students. It must be discussed with everyone and decisions must be taken with the agreement of everyone. If we still have to have taboos we will have them and we will do the best we can. I simply want to say that we will have to weigh up the consequences. As far as I’m concerned, I will never impose anything in this sphere. One must always take account of the cultures that one is inheriting and thus also of the restrictions that they pass on. The rejection of selection is one of these cultural elements, one of these taboos. The logic of the French system, and this is how it finds its balance after a fashion, is to combine an over-selective sector, the grandes écoles, with non-selective universities. I am not in favour of returning to the rule whereby those passing the baccalauréat have the right to go to university. But I think we have to try to make an adjustment. Because in the current state of affairs, selection depends on a proportion of students failing and it is hypocritical to wash our hands of this. We need to work on the French university system so as at least to introduce better guidance for students. The problem will not be sorted out in an authoritarian way. It can only be legitimately confronted if it is recognized as a problem by the

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students themselves and their representatives. Tackling it under other conditions would be doomed to failure. But a lot can be done as regards reform and making the first two years more occupation-centred. And of course there is a lot of work to be done in the area of admissions. I am going to propose an emergency plan to the Prime Minister for the academic year starting in 1990 and a national scheme for higher education planning, for developing the universities both qualitatively and quantitatively for the coming years. To sum up, without going into detail, I would say that it is not possible to talk in terms of a philosophical obstruction in any case. What we can do is to develop guidance and baccalauréat routes by increasing the routes to success. Le Débat: Increasing the number will inevitably lead to an accentuation of the differences between the institutions. Must one cling to the increasingly hypocritical vision of a homogeneous system while the press publish university rankings or do we have to come to terms with the competitive market which is de facto outlined and draw inferences from it? L.J.: Here again it is necessary to synthesize the realities of what we have inherited and the developments which are essential. I will say straight away that I am opposed to the sort of autonomy which would move towards the privatization of the universities, the abandonment of national qualifications and the freedom for each institution to decide on its own methods of selection and enrolment fees. Such a development would lead very rapidly to extremely marked inequalities and I do not believe that it would be accepted in France. However, that does not mean to say that I want to see the system remaining as it is. My preference is clearly for the growing autonomy of the universities within the state higher education system with the state keeping its regulatory role. It is for us socialists to carry through these developments precisely because our ethos is that of equality and public service. It is up to us to open it up to a world of competition and decentralization. Le Débat: In other words, you believe in the possibility of a third approach between an American-style competitive private system and a French-style centralized egalitarian system? L.J.: Absolutely. The state can be a regulator while leaving a considerable margin of initiative to the universities. This is the role that we are currently trying to define through a policy of contracts with the universities. We have begun to negotiate a series of four-year contracts with an initial sample of French universities. The universities decide on their training programmes, their priorities for equipment (libraries, audio-visual facilities), courses that they want to create. We discuss with them, and we authorize their choices and receive commitments with regard to them in terms of resources: creation of teaching posts, means of financing. Moreover, we have given the universities

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control of building work and challenged a series of measures blocking their vice-chancellors’ initiatives. We give them the effective means for autonomy in their day-to-day running and we agree contractually with them on their own development. This seems to me to be a very new state of mind and way of doing things. Le Débat: The situation of French university libraries is one of the most glaring symptoms of their under-equipment. On your arrival, you took emergency measures and you have entrusted André Miquel with a report. How far has it been implemented to date? L.J.: Without research material, without modern libraries, without sufficient capacity for the numbers admitted, clearly students cannot do private study and cannot develop a mind for research. That is why we immediately placed emphasis on this matter. Already the budget for libraries has more than doubled in a year and a half. That’s a lot. And it’s only a beginning. In our contracts with the universities, we lay great stress on the role of libraries: a number of projects, renovations and innovations have been decided on. I will add, finally, that we are taking a close interest in the foundation of the French National Library and that we are going to play our full part in it. ON THE STATUS OF TEACHERS Le Débat: Your policy remains broadly linked to the idea of upgrading the position of teachers. Do you think that it has, on the whole, done more than twist the knife in the wound? In order to carry it through, you have chosen to follow a remunerative path in preference to a statutory path, which is a controversial choice. Was this wise? And do you think that it is only through financial measures that you will restore the appeal of the position of teachers? L.J.: I really want to point out that this is the first time since the war that a government has initiated a comprehensive upgrading of the teaching profession. I am aware of the fact that in relation to expectations, in particular those of primary and secondary school teachers, the result may still seem inadequate. But this is a process which will last ten years and which involves considerable sums of money. The reason that I preferred the remunerative system to the statutory system is not the result of a philosophical position. It is out of concern for efficiency. I would have been unable to get a purely statutory solution from the budget because of the knock-on effects that any measure of this kind has on the other professional bodies. We have drawn a lesson from the advantages won by certain sections of the civil service in the course of the last few years. If they have improved their income, it is because they

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have been able to establish a system of bonuses. We have transferred this lesson: it was the only way of moving quickly and taking relatively strong action. In addition, the upgrading plan includes a number of important statutory developments: the creation of category A school teaching staff, recruited from graduates, comparable to the secondary school teachers with the postgraduate teaching certificate (CAPES) and the setting up of an ‘exceptional’ category for these teachers as for collège and lycée teachers. In my opinion, these measures will have an impact. They have already had one in higher education. There was a definite influx of candidates for the competitive posts. The higher education world’s reaction was immediate and very strong. It has been less obvious, until now, in school teaching. But I believe that things will change gradually and positively. That said, it is perfectly clear that upgrading the position of teachers is not confined to financial measures. It is a complex matter of social status. But if a major education policy is asserted in the country and if the identity of the teaching profession is more clearly defined through more occupation-centred training, I think that we will manage to restore it to favour. Even so, we will not make the primary school teacher once again the key person that he or she was in rural France in the early twentieth century. We will not make lycée teachers once again the teachers of a privileged group of pupils that they used to be. We have to create a different social status, that of an education professional, a diffuser of learning, or a creator of this learning in the case of teachers in research work. Opening up the school to the outside world, developing links with parents, firms and local communities can, in this respect, endow this role with significant recognition. THE MUSLIM HEADSCARF, IMMIGRATION, THE REPUBLIC Le Débat: Of course we have to come to what is now the historic ‘chador affair’. Perhaps we can, if you would, go back over the genesis of your stand, which touched off an explosion. It is interesting, with hindsight, to be able to explore the anatomy of a political decision. Your intervention seemed to come somewhat late. Why? What exactly were the reasons which guided your timing? Were you aware of the stakes with which the controversy would be loaded and of the emotion that you would arouse in the teaching world? L.J.: My answers would not be the same at each stage of the affair. There was a progression which altered the realities of the issue several times. At the start, my concern was to single out a method of settling a problem of education management, a problem which contained elements of principle but was first and foremost a human problem. There had been children with headscarves before in schools and nobody talked about it. Nobody in these schools considered that secularism in France was threatened. To settle a

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problem, you discuss. The principles have to be very clear: respect for secularism, rejection of proselytism, respect for religious teachings. Assuming this to be the case, you talk. That was my approach. Le Débat: But you didn’t realize the general outcry that you were going to provoke? L.J.: I wasn’t responsible for things taking on the dimension that they did. To begin with, it was given media coverage. The problem had arisen in several other schools and had been settled either with the veil finally being taken off or being temporarily accepted under certain conditions. There was media coverage because it was invited locally. And from then on, there was politicization. A certain number of reasons came together so that the problem was politicized and so that the Minister of Education was not left to manage it as a local problem. Because it remained, and not enough attention has been given to this, a local problem. There wasn’t a movement, the problem didn’t spread: first five, then ten, then a hundred, then a thousand. The scale of the problem hardly varied: it was public opinion that shifted and passions which were inflamed, not the phenomenon itself, which remained very confined and of quantitatively minor importance. The politicization came from both sides. From the right, which saw the opportunity to put the government in a difficult position and which rushed to the defence of secularism in which it has not always had such a profound interest if we remember recent history. In fact, in some people this call for secularism concealed hostility towards foreigners. But there was also a politicization on the left. On the whole it didn’t come from the Communist Party, who remained very prudent at least at the beginning. It came from the ranks of the Socialist Party itself, in some cases through thoughtlessness, in others for ulterior political motives. The politicization of the process forced me to handle the problem differently. What I will readily admit is that I underestimated the risk of politicization. I confess that I was not expecting this sort of behaviour— on the part of my friends at least—having myself increased the number of demonstrations of solidarity over the years. But whatever the case, basically what else could I have said? I would have adopted the same attitude because it is the only one that seems right to me, philosophically and humanly, from the point of view of secularism, and legally, from the point of view of existing legislation. We didn’t have the right to suspend these girls simply because they were wearing headscarves: the Council of State reminded us of this. That seemed to me and still seems to me the right attitude politically, because even if it is essential to send a message about secularism to some immigrants in France, it is equally essential not to convey at the same time a message of exclusion. This was, in short, the right attitude from the point of view of the public responsibilities of someone who had to manage the question of state education.

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Moreover, look a little more closely at the philosophical and political rows which have broken out. I haven’t seen any politicians, or any intellectuals either, who have come out against my position, who have had the courage to follow their position through to its logical conclusion by asserting that there had to be a priori expulsion. Now that is the only point which might be clearly different from what I said. On the principles of secularism, I could not, I believe, have been clearer. If they don’t dare say: the girls must be suspended, sent home to their fathers, how is the position of these opponents different from mine? Le Débat: Why did you appeal to the Council of State? L.J.: This wasn’t my original intention. My intention was to see how, through dialogue, we could settle this problem. But once it became a discussion which was both passionate and about principles, I needed to know on what legal bases the problems could be resolved either by myself or the headteachers. I was quite simply forced to handle the issue at a national level. Besides, in the heat of all this passion, it was right to remind everyone that France is a state with laws. Le Débat: As there was politicization, what in your opinion have been the political repercussions of this affair? Do you link it to the successes of the National Front? L.J.: The reactions of one section of the left-wing of the socialists left out a fundamental element. They forgot the distinction to be made between them and the positions of the hard right and the extreme right. They defended secularism in the abstract, as the right and the extreme right were able to do. From that moment on, there was no longer a sufficiently clear discrimination, even for a certain section of our own voters, between what secularism might mean for us and what it means for the conservatives, including the supporters of Le Pen. This way of doing things, while in my opinion there was no risk for secularism, opened up a flood-gate. It made a bed for a xenophobic current which in this way we ourselves supported, or at least on this occasion we did not fight it as we should have done. Le Débat: But how do you see the very great emotion that this affair has aroused in the teaching world? L.J.: It is absolutely natural that the teachers have been very sensitive to an issue which revolves around a fundamental precept of their profession. But they have reacted much more calmly than others. Le Débat: On the whole they rather seem to have disowned you.

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L.J.: Do you really think so? I observe, for example, the five intellectuals who have launched an appeal to the teachers; if they had collected five hundred or a thousand signatures, with a certain number of prestigious intellectuals, they would not have failed to be published. Now, nothing like that happened. Reactions in the teaching world seem to me, in fact, to have been very varied. In particular, beyond the emotion provoked by the idea of defending secularism, who put forward a different attitude to mine? Now that, once again, is the real issue. Who spoke in favour of suspension? I think that on this point, the rejection of suspension, there is in fact very broad agreement within the education community. The work of teachers consists in taking in, and on no account turning away. Even in Creil, let me remind you, the pupils were not suspended. There hasn’t been a mass movement among the teachers to suspend the girls who wear the sign of Islam at school. They certainly agree, like me, that it should be rejected, but I believe that the great majority of them are confident that dialogue will settle the problem. There are some ideologists who have reaffirmed an ideal form of secularism with chilly intransigence, once again, however, without drawing all the conclusions of their premisses. None of them, to my knowledge, teaches in a context where they would risk being confronted with the issue. Le Débat: The teaching body has rallied and united around the principle of rejecting the veil. L.J.: They were right. I myself am against the veil at school. I am in favour of rejecting the veil. My objective is that veils should not be worn at school. My only problem is the means of achieving this, especially when there are not ten thousand cases, nor even five hundred cases, but a few tens of cases, a good number of which, what’s more, are unknown except where they arise. The fact that France could become so inflamed about this is most certainly a sign of unease. Le Débat: But isn’t this because behind the local problem people were aware of the big issue, that is, immigration, and from the schools’ point of view, the need for and the problem of integration? L.J.: This debate has brought to light both some very important things and some real problems. Let’s call things by their proper name: it has first of all produced a re-emergence of a powerful anti-Arab feeling; the Algerian war and independence continue to work on the French consciousness. It is very important in this kind of situation to make sure that we don’t start off on the side of Robespierre and Saint-Just only to end up on the side of Robert Lacoste and Max Lejeune. I belong to the Algerian war generation and there are some paths that I will not be made to travel. In the second place the controversy revived the issue of immigration, of the number of foreigners in France, of

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the ability to limit their numbers, then to welcome them, accept them and integrate them. It is the government’s job to come up with some answers. The joint ministerial committee set up by the Prime Minister will work along three lines. It is within the framework of this overall problem that the work of state education lies. The first step is to control the flow of immigrants. We are well aware that this question is crucial. We can make the country understand that it is possible and desirable to integrate a finite number of immigrants. We cannot give people to believe that we are going to integrate a number which is constantly growing. We have to show public opinion clearly that it is possible to control the movements of the immigrant population. We must make what we say credible. This is a fundamental condition of people continuing to believe in the power of the French integrationist model. The second issue is housing. It raises the tricky question of approach and argument. There is a specific problem, which is that of immigrants, and then there is a social problem, which is that of people who do not have sufficient opportunities for housing. We have to find a solution to both problems, being mindful, if we want to be effectively integrationist, of the effects of positive discrimination too. And then finally there is the question of French national identity and the place that foreigners can have in it. For my part, I can see no reason to change the French model. I am not in favour of substituting the AngloSaxon model of communities for the French model of individual integration. In a word, I am against ‘differentialism’, but I am also against assimilation. Against assimilation if it means denying cultural differences, origins, traditional support systems. Against ‘differentialism’ if it means isolating each person in his community or justifying attacks on democratic values. Integration is respect for differences out of concern for what brings people together. Le Débat: What are schools doing today to encourage this integration, faced with more heterogeneous and culturally remote communities? One has the impression that they are less effective than in the past. Is this an illusion? L.J.: Schools are already doing a lot of things. In order to take in new nonFrench-speaking pupils, classes with reduced numbers are being formed in primary or secondary schools. These are reception classes in the primary schools and introductory classes for the new intake in the collèges. But we are making sure that these classes work closely with the ordinary classes so as to ensure that the pupils are integrated into the normal curriculum. If some classes cannot be open, then remedial courses or special supplementary courses are organized. Apart from specific modules planned for primary school teacher training, and within the future IUFMs for all collège and lycée teachers, the setting up

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of training and information centres for the schooling of the children of immigrants (Cetisem) in almost all regional education authorities is decisive in the matter. Finally, support activities for pupils in difficulty, projected for all pupils who need it, of course benefit the children of immigrants, as do all the activities run in the priority education zones where there are often many of these children. So both specific action directed at the children of immigrants and general action for the children of the less advantaged social classes are being taken. Let’s not forget that integration poses two kinds of problems and involves this dual approach. Le Débat: Is there not, all the same, a specific character to the present situation which partly explains the difficulty in applying the usual formulae —the number of children of immigrant origin, the heterogeneousness of the cultures of origin, strong concentrations and, with Islam, as we have just seen, the introduction of a new and powerful parameter? L.J.: As far as the number is concerned, I don’t believe that it is significantly greater than it was. Cultural heterogeneousness poses a more significant problem. The Polish, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese immigrants were European and Catholic. We are now dealing with non-Europeans and it is a fact that their integration is encountering more difficulties. So, in the state schools, pupils of foreign nationalities represent roughly 10 per cent of the school population, the main nationalities being Algerian (26.3 per cent) and Portuguese (14.7 per cent). It is clear that, compared with the 1920s or the 1930s, the proportion of foreign children from the African continent has increased significantly since they make up more than 60 per cent the total. I am convinced that integration will work for these populations too. The school system alone will not be able to provide the answer. It is beyond its powers. It depends in part on an urban policy which would make it possible to divide up further and to relieve the congestion in these areas. It’s a matter of negotiation between the state and the cities. The answer also comes, for people who belong to the Arab-Muslim world, through a necessary change in Islam. It is true that the headscarf issue, in this light, evokes a certain form of religious affirmation that we are not prepared to accept, in secular schools any more than in French society. Islam, now that it has a strong presence in France, must travel a path comparable to the one that other religions have travelled before it. It must agree to remain more in the private sphere. It has to organize itself—that is the paradox: there has to be a certain level of community organization so that the community is not too separate from others—and it is to be hoped that it will change. If it means to dominate public life and the social life of those who belong to it, it is a type of religious presence which will be rejected.

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Le Débat: Does it seem to you that the schools themselves are coping with this tremendous diversity? L.J.: I think that the majority of school communities are coping in a very positive way. Teachers may be faced with other problems such as pupils underperforming. I am not talking about the cases where there is a particularly large presence of immigrant children. I’m talking about the average cases, the majority, where the proportion varies between 10 and 15 per cent. Teachers are very used now to having brown-faced, yellow-faced, curly-haired children in their classes. I am very struck by how at ease they are. It has become quite normal for them. Le Débat: All in all, basically, there isn’t much between you and those who were your most vehement denigrators at the time of the headscarf affair? L.J.: Let’s be quite clear about this. I think I have shown you throughout this interview how much I myself am a product of this French model which I have been accused of undermining. I think I have shown you how convinced I am that we can only make a number of our institutions change by bearing in mind that tradition and the culture in which they are rooted. At the same time, I am not convinced that we have to make a mockery of this rehabilitation and that’s what I’m opposed to. If France experienced the industrial revolution later than other countries, if we also have a fearsome inability to change our institutions, if our country has between now and the French Revolution oscillated between phases of conservatism and phases of revolutionary tension, if it has not been very progressive either, if we have been gradually left behind in a number of fields of research, if we are also still unable to adapt to other people’s world so as to sell them, for example, our products, this is also because of the rigid and sometimes pretentious French model. Its abstract universalism leads it to forget what is real, alive and concrete. I remain a devotee of this universalism. But we must still be able to temper it. We must still know how to assess its limits, when it reaches the stage where we lose interest in applications in favour of principles, where we look down on experimentation, give lessons to the world when we have so much to learn from the world. We will not face up to the twenty-first century by withdrawing into the French model in its most rigid and narrow version. Le Débat: Is it this the sort of inspiration that you see in the work in praise of the Republic in the style of Régis Debray? L.J.: I can’t resist the pleasure of beginning with two trivial remarks about Régis Debray’s recent article on republics and democracy. It displays rigour, principle, reasoning. To what end? A game: are you republican or are you democrat: Are you Apollonian or are you Faustian? Why not are you ‘hearts’

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or are you ‘clubs’? A nice party game. It has an impressive punchline. My second comment is that at a fixed, brief but eloquent moment, Debray indulges in an interesting sexualization of the contrast between republicans and democrats. This is the real story behind it all: republicans ‘have it’, democrats ‘don’t have it’. As he is a skilled dialectician, he talks of the masculine faults of the republican and of course the feminine virtues of the democrat. It is a concession to the spirit of the times as well as the most hackneyed trick of male pride. I would ask feminists to ponder this typology! Basically, it is going too far, at the very time when at this ‘fin de siècle’ the victory of democracy over totalitarianism is being played out in Europe, to see a French intellectual lead a charge against democracy in the name of the Republic. It is clear that the Republic and democracy are indissociable. Unless Debray’s Republic is an aristocratic republic, like his school. What interests him is the nation; what he knows nothing about is the people. When he is obsessed by the headscarf, he forgets the girls. Le Débat: Listening to you, one is struck by your optimism. You have quite a positive vision of the capacity for change of a system which is often considered unchallengeable by the experts. Just as more generally you have a sort of confidence in the ability of this country and its culture to adapt yet you yourself stress its sluggishness. So is this a misleading impression or a real feeling? L.J.: Let’s take the psychological dimension into account. If I wasn’t an optimist, I’d pack up and go home. But this optimism is well-reasoned. It is nourished by analysis. I am convinced that we are in a phase when education has to change. It is not possible for it to stay as it is any more than, to use an exaggerated image, it is possible for Gorbachev’s Soviet Union not to alter. Forces of change exist inside the system. The teachers themselves are divided. They are hesitating between conservative discouragement and the desire for innovation as they begin to believe that this is possible. My job is to see to it that they believe in this. And for a year and a half I have had the feeling that we have come a long way. Whatever happens, however long I am in this post, whoever my successors are, it seems to me that what we have begun will be carried on in one way or another. I am here to serve. I know that there will only be a partial success —but the time for uncompromising slogans is over. I am convinced that we are on the right lines because nothing in my approach is a matter of my personal whim. We are able to act effectively because we are not acting in a haphazard way, we’re doing what needs to be done.

6 Avoiding the break-up of the French education system François Bayrou

It is now three weeks since the revised version of the Falloux law failed to be passed and one week since the round table meeting on the future of education, chaired by Edouard Balladur. In an interview with Le Monde, François Bayrou, Minister of Education, says that ‘Now, no one else can dodge the real questions’. Whilst committed to the forme nationale de l’éducation, he goes on to say that the ‘real danger’ lies in the risk that the education system, if no reform is undertaken, will end by being ‘broken up’. The minister considers that the debate which sprang up on the day after the mobilization of the defenders of state schooling, on January 16, is ‘one of our last chances to show that the education system is in fact capable of being adapted and improved’. Even if the prime minister has not failed to back you up, you have emerged somewhat weakened from this agitated period which followed the failed attempt to revise the Falloux law. How much room for manoeuvre do you have left to move your reforms forward? It has been a tense time lately, admittedly. But at the Ministry of Education, more than anywhere, we cannot allow ourselves to be held up by this type of crisis which comes round in cycles. It is not enough to put up a form of passive resistance. We must make use of the crisis in order to speed up a solution to the problems. That it why the debate began the day after the demonstration. From what came out of the round table which the prime minister set up, it is clear that everybody involved is playing their part. I think they realize the importance of the questions which are put to them, and the level of expectations which each one must live up to. At the end of the month, you are supposed to be announcing whether or not emergency measures for the start of the new school year will be taking place. Given the huge demands which the unions are making, and taking budgetary constraints into account, are you not afraid that whatever measures you announce will be disappointing?

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There are some budgetary constraints which no one can escape. The budget that was agreed in December already allows us to improve staffing levels for the next school year: two thousand new teaching posts have been created in secondary schools. If some jobs are being cut, others are being opened and the overall picture is positive. The real danger lies elsewhere. It lies in the notion that national education cannot be reformed. If this idea prevails, then one day, someone from either the left or the right will decide to start breaking the institution up in order to make it more adaptable, more supple and less resistant to change. This could be done either by dint of some brutal decentralization policies, or by making a vertical split and separating primary schooling from secondary schooling, secondary schooling from vocational schooling and so on. In the debates which took place before the political changeover, I always opposed this idea. I strongly believe that, if we are to create places of initiative and freedom, the forme nationale de l’éducation is part of the French pattern, and it is the cement which holds our national homogeneity together. It is altogether essential that young people and families continue to see school as giving each person a chance in life. The debate which is going to take place is one of our last chances to show that the education system is, in fact, capable of being adapted and improved, that it is not an ancient fossil unsuited to the modern world. Does the present power struggle with the unions seem to you to favour profound reforms? In the eyes of public opinion, the balance of power is on the side of those who would like to see progress happening in such a way as will benefit pupils. There are strong expectations on the part of families, young people and teachers. We have identified in which subjects progress can be made. The lack of help for children with difficulties, the need to make teaching and learning more suited to individual requirements, and to find a fast solution for certain violent situations; on these points, opinion is agreed. As for the unions, I consider them to be reasonable and I am certain we can reach an agreement. I refuse to resign myself to a situation where we decide that the most strongly conservative positions cannot be overcome. In three months, at the end of the debate which is starting now, I will suggest answers to all the issues which will have been laid on the table. Paradoxically, the events which took place during the month of January are forcing us to take a step in the right direction. Those who wish to protect the status quo have been happy to allow a preoccupation with one issue; now, no one can dodge the real questions. With regard to the reform of the collèges which you are hoping to get underway, one has the feeling that the unions are not really in a hurry to tackle the roots of the problems…

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What I have to do is act in such a way that the necessary changes are not held up. Everybody knows that the collèges as they are at present do not fulfil the role they are supposed to. We must make use of the energy which has been generated around the issue of the schools to accompany the necessary changes which French people are expecting. In the area of the collèges, as in others, I will make some more precise proposals before the month of May. Several times, you have stated that as far as you were concerned, the question of the collèges should not be resolved by a return to the old system of rigid early subject specialization. But there is a strong temptation amongst the majority to re-establish these types of courses. My responsibility is also to resist, if necessary, excessive debate. My point of view on the collèges has not changed. My ambition is to build a collège which is open to all and where there will be teaching to meet everybody’s needs. French children must be taught together, through common programmes, because it is an essential factor in social cohesion. Specializing too early, without the possibility of changing course later on, and with no cross-over points, strongly penalises the pupils who have had the least chance at the start. I do not hold to this nostalgia for rigid subject specialization. At the same time, it is not enough to look only at the question of how to deal with children with difficulties. We also have to make it possible for those who can to go as far as possible. This is particularly important for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Really, we must make sure that classrooms are not made up of too great a mixture of children, since it is too difficult for teachers to manage. I am sure that this balance, where everybody is given a chance, can be achieved, even though it is difficult. The possibility of introducing a law on education or a new act at the end of the debate has not been dismissed by the prime minister. At the same time, many of the unions are still very keen on Jospin’s 1989 education law… I am not bent on reforming laws at any cost and even if I was, recent events would undoubtedly have persuaded me that this was not the most comfortable route to take. Having said that, I am not ruling anything out. If it turns out that we have to modify the education law to make things happen, I will not hesitate to do so. It is the Jospin law which fixes the target of ‘80 per cent of an age-group taking the baccalauréat’ — a dangerous objective—and it is also the Jospin law which suggests the principle of organizing the primary school in cycles—of which I approve. If there is controversy over this law, then the national debate will resolve it. What do you think of Jacques Chirac’s suggestion of a referendum on education?

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A referendum always arouses strong passions. It divides the country in two. I do not think that schools need brutally antagonistic confrontations. I sincerely hope that it will not come to this in order to reform it. Will private education, which for the time being is absent from the negotiations, be kept out of the dialogue on the future of education? One child in six at primary level and and one in five at secondary level go to private schools which are linked to the state system. We have no intention of suddenly excluding them from the national debate! Today I still have the respect I have always had for private schools under contract.1 What did the prime minister say? That there are two kinds of subjects to be dealt with: those which concern the state system and the means which we grant them, and those which apply to schools in general, and with which all members of French society should concern themselves, from industry to all kinds of other organizations. Naturally, private education has its place in this, along with the rest. Moreover, the organization of the debate will take place from the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation, where private educational institutions are already represented. The previous government had taken a clear decision to negotiate with the general secretariat of Catholic education, which speaks on behalf of all the members of the private Catholic sector. You seem to give preference to the parents from UNAPEL….2 That is completely untrue. In my position I cannot give preferential treatment. I work with everybody. The Vedel report highlighted the complexity of the funding of the private sector, which often leads to illegal practices in which even government figures have become embroiled. Vedel considered that the laws need to be revised and corrected. Is the majority ready to reopen this matter one day? I have tried to encourage an answer which was suggested by the National Assembly. We have encountered problems with the Constitutional Council and with part of the opposition. In its present form, the question is no longer on the agenda. And is not likely to reappear in the next ten years? No, I am convinced that this question should be looked at some day or another, because the status quo cannot be maintained. What do you think of the Constitutional Council’s decision?

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We were hoping that the local communities would obtain a freedom which was not previously theirs: to decide freely the ways in which investment support is raised for private institutions under contract. The Constitutional Council did not want this to happen, and their decision is final. But this decision could have far-reaching consequences for the future of French society. In a nutshell, it will mean that France will become centralized once again, and will return to Jacobin principles. I am still one of those who believe that the future of French society does not lie in a return to centralization. Isn’t this a contradiction with your commitment to the forme nationale de l’éducation which you have spoken to us about? Not at all! It has nothing to do with it. On the one hand, it is a question of the freedom of local communities. On the other, the necessity of promoting a national melting pot which passes on national values. From now on, what is the timetable and the method which you have adopted? We are going to work until the month of May. At that point, I will formulate some concrete proposals taking into account what will have been said in the working groups. These will bring together not only the institutions themselves, but also outside contributors, for example intellectuals, philosophers, observers of French society. But I also want us to listen to the people on the ground in the primary schools, the collèges and the lycées. For example, this could take the form of discussion days so that everyone can contribute to the dialogue. French people would not feel comfortable with discussions behind closed doors, where they would not know what was going on. What we need, on the contrary, is a public forum for debate, open to all whose experience, expectations and ideas qualify them to talk about schools. NOTES 1

2

The private sector in France is overwhelmingly made up of Catholic schools — ineligible for public sector status given the constitutional separation of church and state. But to have private sector status is not necessarily to be deprived of public funds. Over 98 per cent of private sector primary pupils and 96 per cent of private sector secondary pupils are in schools ‘under contract’ a formula created by the Debré law of 1959. In return for respecting the public order— i.e. teaching to the national programmes, preparing pupils for national examinations, etc. — running costs and a small proportion of capital costs are paid for by public fund. Teachers are paid by the state. Also see Chapter 23, this volume. L’Union nationale des associations des parents d’elèves—the main private school parents association traditionally takes a far more militant stand than the Catholic hierarchy.

Part III Actors

Introduction

There are few aspects of French education where it is as difficult to separate myth and reality as the relationship of national government to schools and localities. In the 1980s it was a theme of overriding importance, taking over from the relationship of government and teacher unions. In retrospect those battles, with their resonance of the class struggle, belong to the era in which the Communist Party and Marxist ideology were still strong (see Jospin on the ‘educational professionals’). The idea of the all-powerful Napoleonic centre wielding absolute power over teachers, curriculum and enfeebled localities remains deeply entrenched, and not only when French education is looked at from afar. It is a view that the French themselves like to perpetuate. Talk to any regional administrator or school principal in the French provinces. But such simplification is disingenuous, as those directly involved are prepared to recognize if you pursue the questioning. If this section is entitled ‘Actors’ it is to underline that there are many different theatres of action within the French education system. It is also designed to indicate that the actors have remained the familiar ones, but, as in the theatre, they are now having to play new roles. Decentralization is one of the elements to bring about major change. But the recognition that parents, and public opinion in general, will increasingly react as consumers is potentially a change of even greater significance. School risks being no longer thought of as a public service but as an institution at the service of the public. In French terms this is nothing less than a Copernican revolution (Ballion, see Chapter 12, this volume). The point can also be illustrated by taking an evocative portrayal of nineteenth-century relationships, as in Roger Thabault’s Mon village: l’ascension d’un peuple (1945), which recounts the career of Auguste Bouet, headteacher of a small school at Mazières-en-Gâtine in the Vendée around the turn of the century. Bouet had little time for the département and less still for Paris. The commune was the centre of his life. As a teacher he had an esteemed place in the village. He was also Secretary to the Mairie, a position of knowledge and influence he held for most of his years at the school. Paris was another world.

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He accepted that his mission in life was to bring up the young in the service of the Nation. He was a ‘soldier of the Republic’, preparing its future citizens and its future manpower. And as such, he accepted that his life should ultimately be shaped by the capital. Paris was the bastion of republican liberties, as Eugen Weber (1977) describes in his Peasants into Frenchmen, against disparate regional and linguistic traditions. Buet’s opposition to Paris was thus very different in nature from the antiParisianism expressed in the nineteenth century by anti-republicans. They harked back to the absolutist ancien régime as a golden age of liberty. In the words of Robert Gildea, this explains why progressive France was for so long hostile to any weakening of the centralist Jacobin state: The suspicion of counter-revolution and separatism that hung over all claims to decentralize the administration in France made defining a position both decentralist and republican extremely difficult… the presence of Paris as both a political and administrative centre, and as a hotbed of radical revolution, served to complicate the simple equation of revolutionary and centralist, provincial and counter-revolutionary. (Gildea 1994:171–2) Gildea an American, interprets the experience of decolonization as the factor which gave the regional case intellectual respectability: Regionalism…elaborated a left-wing discourse during and as a result of the process of decolonization. This made it possible for a socialist government (in 1983) to accommodate at an ideological level a major law of decentralization. Indeed the onus on those who proclaimed themselves the friends of liberty was to begin to dismantle the worst features of the centralist state. But it is hard to deny the mainstream French interpretation provided by Catherine Grémion: A more dispassionate look at the history of this ideological and political issue shows the astounding continuity of certain themes of decentralization discourse. What is also striking is the degree to which decentralization partakes of France’s common political heritage, no matter which group claims paternity for it. Decentralization has been much more than an ideological issue: it has been a passion of those in opposition. (Grémion 1987) Part III looks at the role and the conflicts of the education ‘actors’ during the 1980s and 1990. It starts with John Ambler and Roger Duclaud-Williams examining the policy process before decentralization took effect. Ambler, inspired by the fact that both Britain and France in the early 1980s had

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governments with large majorities and thus in theory had their hands free, looks at why there was almost no ideologically inspired change (failure to reduce private school privileges in France, failure to introduce education vouchers in England). Though there is evidence that France’s centralized system encourages bureaucratic inertia, it is, Ambler suggests, the particular character of the educational policy process which provides the clue: educational administration is relatively autonomous in relation to other areas of the political process (a point Legrand backs up), and it has an exceptionally strong network of ‘vested interests’, including teachers and parents. Only sustained political pressure and external demands permeate the system. Educational change thus tends to be incremental, the adhesion of public opinion being ultimately more important than that of party activists. Duclaud-Williams, looking at the behaviour of the local ‘actors’ on educational matters in two regions in France—the prefects, rectors, mayors and other notables—supports the idea that education has its own system of bureaucratic and political relations. In the process he nuances the famous Crozier view that France is a ‘stalemate society’ in hock to its bureaucracy, finding support in the thesis of Cathérine Grémion that the chief resistance to innovation comes from a defensive and conservative alliance on a territorial basis between bureaucrats and local politicians. Bob Moon, examining the introduction of new maths in four countries, challenges the view that the shape of the administrative structure of the education system is the critical element in accounting for innovative success or failure. This is a finding more recent French research confirms (Thélot 1993). In all the cases studied by Moon much of the change occurred outside the conventional institutional framework. Hélène Hatzfeld, rapporteur for a major research study conducted in four French regions after decentralization, not only provides a detailed description of the form that decentralization has taken and the arguments invoked in parliamentary debate. She shows how decentralization, even in the limited terms in which the policy was applied to education, can expect to open up strong policy divergence between regions. She provides evidence of the assertive role that regions can now take. Her theme is taken up in journalistic form by Christine Garin of Le Monde with the significant title The regions in the educational race. In the final chapter of this section Robert Ballion deals—in provocative fashion—with another crucial part of the equation: the 1980s recognition that the policy process needs to incorporate a notion of education as a private good and hence be much more open to public opinion. This he sees as ‘a complete reversal of the relationship between the state and education’. What is clear is that the French education system has been distinctive for a public language emphasizing education as a public not a personal good (whatever individuals’ actual behaviour). French forms of social organization have been designed to suppress individualism by tying people up in rules or diverting their interests to common ends in the national interest. The underlying reasons

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can be attributed to a traditional French governmental fear of a disruptive citizenry which Ballion traces back to the Revolution, and others, with more reason, to the ancien régime (Mény 1993). The change of the 1980s to the acceptance that (even) French parents and pupils have behaved, and will behave, in a consumerist way is significant of a new transparency in the system, and enshrined by the Education Framework Act 1989, already referred to. It is a shift from a notion of education as a public service to a notion of education at the service of the public. The challenge for the French is to see how that can be given a definition which is compatible with republican values. REFERENCES Becquart-Leclercq, J. (1983) ‘Cumul des mandats et culture politique’, in A. Mabileau Les Pouvoirs locaux à l’épreuve de la décentralisation, Paris: Pedone. Gildea, R. (1994) The Past in French History, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Grémion, C. (1987) ‘Decentralization in France: A historical perspective’, in G. Ross, S.Hoffman and S.Madzacher The Mitterrand Experiment, Oxford: Oxford Polity Press. Legrand, A. (1994) Le Système E, Paris: Denoel. Mény, Y. (1993) La Corruption de la République, Paris: Fayard. Thabault, R. (1945) Mon village 1848–1914: L’Ascension d’un peuple, Paris: Librairie Delagrave and Cie. Translated and published as Education and Change in a Village Community: Mazière-en-Gâtine 1848–1914, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (1971). Thélot, C. (1993) L’évaluation du système educatif, Paris: Nathan. Weber, E. (1977) Peasants into Frenchmen, London: Chatto and Windus.

7 Constraints on policy innovation in education Thatcher’s Britain and Mitterrand’s France John S.Ambler

Changes in education policy were central to the vision of the egalitarian society proposed by the French Socialist and Communist Parties in 1981. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party focused less on education in the 1979 British election but none the less called for increased parental choice and, in direct contrast to the French Left, for a reduction in public expenditure for education and a de-emphasis of the school’s responsibility to fight social inequality. Four years after the French Left came to power, Lionel Jospin, secretary general of the Socialist Party, offered these reflections to a colloquium on ‘French Society and Its Schools’: ‘In 1981 we thought we had ideas and convictions—some of which have been brutally unmasked. We thought that we had only to act. Today we can have a rational and concrete approach to problems of the school, far from ideological and political concepts.’1 Across the Channel, the government’s leading ideologue, Sir Keith Joseph, confessed after three years as secretary of state for education and science that ‘I am myself ready to acknowledge that I underestimated the task which we face in raising standards in schools when I took up my office in 1981. In particular, I did not at that time fully appreciate, for example, the problems of teaching low attainers and the special difficulties faced by teachers in many inner city schools.’2 The following year, after having abandoned hope for a voucher system, Sir Keith told an interviewer that ‘I am a disappointed denationalizer…I found that it is just not practicable to have a state-financed but parentally conducted system.’3 Such confessions suggest that education policy in these two cases follows a familiar learning curve whereby policy ideas conceived by a party in opposition are overwhelmed by ‘the realities’ once that party reaches offices. One of the principal objectives of this chapter is to explore the nature of these realities. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that French and British education policies simply confirm the view of those analysts, both Marxist and non-Marxist, who hold that elections and parties have little impact on policy. The French Socialist victories of May and June 1981 produced an immediate increase in the percentage of GDP expended

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on education, after three years of decline. In Britain the reversal of the respective budget priorities of education and defence in the 1980s was largely the consequence of the Conservative victories of 1979 and 1983. The important question is not whether newly elected governments can alter policy, but rather under what conditions and in which policy areas. The Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher and the Socialist governments under François Mitterrand belong to a relatively rare set of democratic governments which come to office with a reliable parliamentary majority and an announced objective of effecting fundamental change in a wide range of public policies. The experience of these governments in attempting to implement their education policy objectives reveals obstacles to innovation which are found particularly but not exclusively in education. In these two countries, it will be argued, the inherent complexity and relative autonomy of educational institutions create particularly strong resistance to change. Despite their comfortable parliamentary majorities, these governments had great difficulty mobilizing sufficient political support to overcome the resistance of vested interests. We will begin by summarizing the objectives and accomplishments of the two governments in four key areas of education policy—relations between the state and private education, funding levels, democratization, and modernization—and then proceed to explore the economic, institutional, and political constraints which shaped policy in these areas. The analysis closes with brief attention to social and economic constraints on policymakers. OBJECTIVES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS: AN OVERVIEW The most dramatic examples of retreat from innovation are found in the area of private education. Few values and objectives have deeper historical and emotional roots in the French Left than defence of public schools against Catholic education. Catholic schools became increasingly dependent on state funding, especially after the passage in 1959 of the Debré Law, which authorized the state to pay teachers’ salaries and most other expenses for those private schools which agreed to accept certain state controls. This system of state subsidies was anathema to the majority of public school teachers, the major unions which represented them, and the Socialist Party in which they often played a dominant role. From the Common Programme of 1972 through François Mitterrand’s Manifesto of 1981, the party pledged itself to create a ‘united and secular’ educational system. Thatcher Conservatives, in contrast, believed in privatization as a solution to many of Britain’s ills. Neither government has achieved notable success in this domain. The compromise settlement to the ‘school question’ laboriously worked out by the French minister of education Alain Savary from 1981

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to 1984 came apart in the late spring and early summer of 1984 when amendments to the Savary bill added by militant secularists (laïcistes) in the National Assembly led to a massive protest demonstration by supporters of private schools on June 24, 1984. This demonstration in turn helped to persuade President Mitterrand to withdraw the Savary bill and remove Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy, to whom he had delegated authority to handle the legislation. Savary’s successor, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, drafted and saw enacted a more modest law which left existing rights of private schools largely intact and sought simply to adapt legislation on state subsidies to fit the new powers of local governments granted by decentralization. In Britain, the Thatcher government quickly passed the promised Assisted Places Scheme, designed to allow parents of modest means to send their children to private schools. Yet by 1985–86, this programme was paying partial or full tuition costs for only approximately 28,000 pupils, or 5 per cent of all private school pupils and 0.3 per cent of the total British primary and secondary school population.4 A much more ambitious plan for educational vouchers, to be used in any school of the parents’ choice, was proposed to the Conservative Party conference by Keith Joseph in October 1981.5 By the end of 1983 the government had abandoned the voucher plan. Efforts were also made, with mixed results, to ‘privatize’ the universities by reducing their government grants and encouraging them to seek private funding. An ambitious plan to increase tuition income by substituting loans to university students for the traditional system of tuition grants was announced by Mrs Thatcher to the annual conference of the Conservative Party in 1982. This plan was first delayed, then abandoned by the government in the summer of 1985, and subsequently revived for further study in 1986 by Kenneth Baker, Keith Joseph’s successor as secretary of state for education and science. Important differences emerge between the two governments with respect to funding levels, although neither fully accomplished its objectives. The French Left, which came to power promising sharp increases in spending for social programmes generally and for education in particular, proceeded to honour its pledge by increasing the education budgets of 1982, 1983 and 1984 by approximately four to six per cent per year above inflation. Even when the austerity budgets of 1985 and 1986 reduced increases to approximately the rate of inflation, educational funding rose slightly more than the budget as a whole. Total expenditure for education as a percentage of gross domestic product declined from 6.7 per cent in 1977 to 6.5 per cent in 1980, then rose under Socialist leadership to 7.1 per cent in 1984. In 1980 the outgoing government under Prime Minister Raymond Barre had decided to reduce the corps of teachers. The new government instead increased it by 30,000 from 1981 to 1983.6

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Across the Channel, Keith Joseph reminded a conference of educators in 1984 that the British Conservative government ‘aims to reduce the share of national resources taken by the public sector. We have twice been elected on such a commitment.’ 7 Joseph was most successful in reducing grants to universities, which were cut by more than 10 per cent in real terms from 1981 to 1985. He struggled valiantly, but with limited success, to force local education authorities (LEAs) to reduce educational spending. Although the relative share of education in the central budget declined from 1979 onward, official British statistics show a total governmental expenditure for education in 1983–84 of £15,827 million, compared to £9,123 million in 1978–79, or an increase over five years of 73 per cent, marginally higher than the rate of inflation.8 Only in 1984 did central government pressures begin to reduce LEA expenditures.9 Sharp cuts in real terms were planned for the late 1980s when Joseph was replaced in May 1986. On the theme of equality in education the rhetoric of the two governments also was diametrically opposed. In education as in other policy areas the French Left faulted de Gaulle and his heirs for favouring the privileged classes, for condemning the children of the working class to academic failure or to short, technical courses. François Mitterrand, then a recent convert to Socialism, charged in his introduction to the 1972 Socialist Party programme that ‘big capital…has measured out general education and oriented it to its fancy’.10 Once in power, the Left attempted to fight educational inequality with a series of programmes. Priority education zones (ZEP), usually areas with a high concentration of immigrants, were designated on the basis of high failure and dropout rates and provided with extra teachers and funding. Special classes were created in professional education lycées (LEP) to allow pupils in shortcycle programmes to shift to the long cycle, leading to the baccalauréat and access to the universities. The collège, or middle school for sixth through ninth grades, was singled out for reform in the belief that the survival at this level of a traditional, élitist, and overly ‘intellectualist’ mode of instruction was largely responsible for high failure rates and premature assignment to apprenticeships and short-cycle technical programmes, especially among children from the working class. Alain Savary appointed a professor of education, Louis Legrand, to chair a commission charged with examining the collège, then supported many of its recommendations.11 Legrand and Savary called for more team teaching and tutorial work, a severe curtailment of the common practice of requiring weaker pupils to repeat a grade, an expansion of the small or nonexistent collège programmes in the arts, sports, and technical subjects, greater involvement of parents and local officials in school managements, and the creation of flexible ability groupings in French, mathematics, and foreign languages. Faced with strong opposition from secondary teachers, who warned against the

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‘primarization’ of the collège, Savary decided upon no more than a limited test of the reform plan in ten per cent of all collèges, strictly with volunteer teachers, beginning in the autumn of 1984. Savary’s replacement at the rue de Grenelle, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, carried through many of Savary’s plans, including the collège reforms, which he decided to extend to an additional 15 per cent of collèges in 1985 and to 25 per cent more in each of the three following years. He launched an ambitious retraining programme for teachers. He proposed the goal of raising from under 50 per cent to 80 per cent the proportion of the age group completing a full secondary education by the year 2000. Yet, while maintaining the orthodox Socialist position ‘that there is no opposition between quality and democracy’, Chevènement fundamentally altered the thrust of education policy, proposing ‘republican élitism’ as the appropriate ideal.12 In oblique response to Legrand’s emphasis on ‘learning to learn’ and on meeting the varied needs of children in classrooms ‘opened to life’, Chevènement insisted that ‘the best way to learn is still to learn’.13 and again, ‘the school is not responsible for the whole future of the children and young people with whom it is entrusted. It is first responsible for teaching them.’14 Inspectors were told that their basic task was, once again, to evaluate how effectively teachers were teaching basic disciplines, rather than ‘general evaluation of the educational system’.15 Pedagogy, interdisciplinary work, the tutorial, and the priority education zones all faded in importance. A new general examination was created at the end of the collège to evaluate the accomplishements of both pupils and teachers. Chevènement’s vision of democratization of the schools, compared to Savary’s, relied less on adapting education to a new mass clientele and more on inspiring teachers and pupils to meet high standards, essentially within the traditional secondary classroom, less on new pedagogical techniques and more on expertise in a teaching field, less on local school initiative and more on the old, Jacobin style of regulation from Paris. In contrast to the French Socialist position, the leadership of the British Conservative Party since 1979 has never professed to believe that equality is the primary goal, nor one wholly compatible with the maintenance of high standards. It has increasingly joined forces with the middle-class backlash against the egalitarianism of the comprehensive school movement. As early as 1974 Keith Joseph asked, ‘If equality in education is sought at the expense of quality, how then can the poisons created help but filter down?’16 The Thatcher wing of the Conservative Party shares the traditional Tory view that equality is neither attainable nor desirable in human society. It rejects Tory paternalism, in education as elsewhere, in favour of a system of rewards based strictly on performance.17 Some of these themes were reflected in the conservative election manifesto of 1979. Here the party promised to raise standards in education and to repeal the 1976 Education Act, which authorized the central government to compel

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reorganization of state secondary education into comprehensive schools. The government’s commitment to raise standards, even at the expense of equality, became clearer when, in a purge of the ‘wets’ in 1981, Mark Carlisle was replaced by Keith Joseph as secretary of state for education and science. In rhetoric and in action, Joseph sough to limit the influence of the progressive education school, which, like the social sciences generally, he viewed as being more interested in social reform and life adjustment than in academic learning. He terminated state funding for the Schools Council and sought, unsuccessfully, to abolish the Social Science Research Council.18 He called repeatedly for more systematic evaluation of teachers. He struck down plans proposed by the local education authorities in Manchester and Croydon which would have terminated the sixth-form programmes of secondary schools in middle-class neighbourhoods in order to send those 16- to 18-year-old students to more socially heterogeneous ‘tertiary’ schools.19 He sought to revise and strengthen examinations at the secondary level.20 In 1984 he announced that ‘it is a realistic objective to bring 80–90 per cent of all pupils at least to the level now associated with the CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) grade 4: i.e. at least to the level now expected and achieved by pupils of average ability in individual subjects; and to do so over a broad range of skills and competence in a number of subjects’.21 In all of these efforts, Joseph found that his ability to raise standards was severely limited, especially as his relations with the LEAs and with the National Union of Teachers soured over funding disputes. Across the ideological gulf between the governments of François Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher, one finds particularly strong agreement on one set of educational policy goals: the need to bridge the gap between the school and the world of work and to modernize the curriculum to serve the needs of the economy. Jean-Pierre Chevènement made the argument most emphatically. He insisted repeatedly that the school is ‘the spearhead of modernization’ and cited Japanese schools as models of educational support for high technology.22 In the 1970s French Socialists had deplored official links between private industry and the schools, for example in the higher education reforms of 1976, on grounds that education was being subordinated to the interests of capitalism.23 With the Left in power, now presumably able to resist capitalist pressures, the government proceeded to outdo its conservative predecessors in linking schools to factories and businesses. By early 1986, more than 10,000 schools had signed cooperative ‘twin’ agreements with local factories and businesses in response to government urging.24 Beginning under Savary and intensifying under Chevènement in 1984 and 1985, the ministry of national education (MEN) worked to expand and to modernize technical education throughout the school system, to change the image of technical education as the dumping ground for weak

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students, to introduce all pupils to computers, and to teach mathematics in a more applied and less intimidating manner. The Savary Law of 1984 on higher education provided increased incentives to universities to cooperate with private industry in research, in continuing education, and in the development of new, professionally oriented degree programmes of varying lengths. Among these new degree programmes was the highly selective magistère, designed to help selected universities compete with the grandes écoles.25 Keith Joseph, like Jean-Pierre Chevènement, called for closer cooperation between universities and industry, both in training and in research. The reduction in university funding had the effect of motivating several universities to recoup their losses with industrial research and training contracts. Salford, which received a budget cut of 44 per cent in the early 1980s, was among the most successful. 26 Again like Chevènement, Joseph supported an expansion and renovation of technical education at the secondary level and urged the LEAs and universities to reverse the traditional anti-technical bias of general education programmes. While Chevènement insisted more strongly than did Joseph on the responsibility of education for economic growth, particularly in high technology, both believed that modernization of the curriculum would benefit the economy and reduce high unemployment rates among youth. THE LIMITS OF INNOVATION With respect to funding priorities, the educational policies pursued by the French Socialists and the British Conservatives reflect the different objectives of the two governments. In other aspects of education policy, one finds striking similarities, both between the two governments and between each and its predecessor. French education budgets grew for three years at well above the inflation rate, while in Britain the government struggled to reduce educational expenditures. French education ministers called for an increase in the proportion of the age group completing the bac and going on to higher education, while in Britain Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph reduced funded places in higher education, even as the age group was growing. In France, where approximately 26 per cent of the age group enters higher education, policy remained expansionist, while in Britain policy emphasized rationalization of resource allocation, recognizing no need to expand the proportion of the age group entering full-time higher education beyond the 17 per cent level reached in the mid 1970s. 27 Differing ideological perspectives on equality also were apparent, although apart from the modestly funded French priority education zones and the effort to bring more working class children to the bac level, they are evident more in rhetoric than in action and more in 1981 than in 1985.

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Once the Thatcher government abandoned plans for school vouchers, deferred action on university student loans, and accepted the comprehensive school as the basic framework for secondary education, its education policy became more one of continuity than of innovation. It was the Labour prime minister James Callaghan who in 1976 called for higher standards in education and more attention to preparation for a vocation. 28 It was not Margaret Thatcher or Keith Joseph but that eminent Labourite and pioneer of comprehensive schools, Anthony Crosland, who looked at Britain’s stagnant economy and shrinking school-age population and announced to the educational establishment in the mid 1970s that ‘the party’s over’.29 To be sure, in attempting to raise standards and reduce expenditures, Thatcher and Joseph became the bêtes noires of the educational establishment. In 1985 Oxford University decided that it would be inappropriate to give Mrs Thatcher an honorary degree, and Sir Keith was locked in a bitter battle over pay and working conditions with the National Union of Teachers. The tension which developed between educators and the Thatcher government was the result not simply of restraints on spending (which probably would have come in a less radical form under a Labour government), but also of what was perceived by many educators to be a pugnacious, philistine, and centralizing style of leadership.30 Most of the themes in Sir Joseph’s campaign for change— better teaching, higher standards, improved performance by weaker as well as stronger students, curriculum modernization, and efficient management—were as appealing to opposition parties as to the Conservatives. With the abandonment of their original objectives of merging the prestigious grandes écoles with the universities and of integrating subsidized private schools into a ‘unified and secular’ educational system, the French Socialists, like the British Conservatives, tended to move toward the middle ground. On the themes of raising standards, linking education to economic needs, and establishing the educational priority of knowledge over life adjustment, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the Wunderkind of the French Socialist Party’s left wing, spoke a language remarkably similar to that of Christian Beullac, the last of the preSocialist ministers of education, and, indeed, to that of Mrs Thatcher’s most conservative education secretary, Keith Joseph. Mitterrand’s Socialist governments, particularly during the first three years, gave higher financial priority to education than had their predecessors in the late Giscard years but remained essentially within parameters laid out in the 1960s and 1970s. The comprehensive collège built by René Haby in 1975, the decentralized university system designed by Edgar Faure in 1968, and the professional second cycle programme in the universities created in 1976 were all reformed in their particulars but retained as basic components of Socialist education. The teaching corps was expanded slightly, but, in time of recession, far less than the major

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teachers’ unions had expected. The government’s substantial accomplishments in the fields of teacher training and retraining, technical education, and continuing education built upon programmes adopted and ideas considered by earlier governments. In some cases where the Socialists accomplished more than did their predecessors, notably in bridging the gap between the schools and private industry and in encouraging diversity and open competition between universities and between the universities and the grandes écoles, the change was in a direction different from that which most observers expected.31 How can one explain the abandonment of key party objectives and the predominance of continuity over policy innovation in both governments? What are the principal obstacles to policy innovation? ECONOMIC CONSTRAINTS The most parsimonious answer, but one which must be qualified in the cases under consideration, is Richard Rose’s dictum, ‘votes count, resources decide’.32 In the long term, Rose is correct. Mass secondary and higher education of the sort found in all highly industrialized societies is unimaginable without the enormous wealth which industralization has provided. In the short term, economic resources are not necessarily determining. To be sure, the continuing recession and the austerity budgets adopted by the French Socialists beginning in 1982 and 1983 inhibited policy initiatives in education, but less severely than in other areas of social policy. The government was unable to expand the teaching corps and increase salaries as it would have liked, nor was it able to provide sufficient funds to the priority education zones to expand their development and sustain the enthusiasm which the experiment initially inspired among volunteer teachers. Yet the problems encountered in the struggle to democratize secondary schools, as we shall see, were not primarily the result of budget limitations. Limitations on resources played an even less important role in the dramatic retreat on the private school issue. The Thatcher-Joseph crusade to limit educational expenditure was hardly imposed by lack of resources. Indeed, overall government spending increased in the Thatcher years.33 It was the government’s policy priorities, not economic necessity, which led to a rise in military spending from 11.7 per cent of total public expenditure in 1978 to a projected 13 per cent for 1987–88, while education’s share was expected to drop from 14.3 per cent to 10 per cent in the same years.34 In the long term, continued reduction in educational expenditures very likely would undermine the government’s drive for higher standards of teaching and research. In the short term, imposed scarcity of resources gave the DES leverage in forcing LEAs and universities to re-examine programmes and seek alternative sources of funding.

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INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS: BRITISH DECENTRALIZATION The experience of the Thatcher government in education demonstrates the difficulties in imposing broad policy changes from above in a decentralized structure. The French Socialist experience suggests that, while centralization eliminates certain of these difficulties, it exacerbates others such as bureaucratic inertia and trade union power. Tony Crosland once reflected on his experience as secretary of state for education and concluded that there were four principal limitations on ministerial freedom: the size and complexity of the educational system, the high degree of autonomy of the educational world, the strong pressure groups in education, and insufficient funds.35 Crosland’s successors, as well as their counterparts in France, very likely would confirm this analysis. The first two of Crosland’s categories of limitations have to do with the institutional structure of education, while the third—the nature and strength of pressure groups—is partially shaped by the formal distribution of power. Size and complexity, which inhibit rapid change except at the risk of great disruption, are characteristics common to educational systems in all large industrialized societies. The specific manifestations of complexity, and particularly the degree of formal autonomy of universities and local school districts, vary enormously between Britain and France. In Britain, education is still primarily a function of local education authorities and self-governing universities, while in France, despite the limited decentralization of universities in 1968 and the further efforts of the Socialist governments, final authority over funding and curriculum is still concentrated in the ministry of national education. Centralization is generally perceived in the literature as advantageous to policy innovation. Harold Wilensky has demonstrated that welfare state spending tends to be greater in countries with centralized governments.36 Peter Hall proposes, as the first of four organizational conditions favourable to governmental policy innovation, that ‘to the degree that it is possible, power over a particular area of policy must be concentrated in the hands of relatively few individuals’.37 In a study of the development of comprehensive schools in Sweden and Germany, Arnold Heidenheimer concludes that centralized authority facilitated innovation in the direction of greater equality in the Swedish case, while its absence obstructed change in the German case.38 This general conclusion no doubt is correct, and, as we shall see, helps to explain why Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph had such great difficulty in refocusing British educational policy. Yet the experience of the French Socialist governments, like that of their conservative predecessors, demonstrates that centralized structures may produce their own set of obstacles to policy innovation. The Thatcher government found that reduction of educational expenditures was easiest in the case of universities, since the government

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has only to cut its block grant to the University Grants Committee (UGC), leaving that body, composed mostly of academics, to make the painful choices. Persuading proud, self-governing universities to modernize programmes and increase administrative efficiency was more difficult, especially in the cold war atmosphere produced by the cuts. The UGC, while constantly protesting reductions in the block grant, assisted the DES by eating away at university autonomy with earmarked funding and national evaluation of programme. At the elementary and secondary levels, the government soon realized that it had very limited power to raise standards and reduce spending, since curriculum and personnel management were under the control of local education authorities. Even though the school-age population was declining, local education authorities were exceedingly reluctant to fire teachers or close schools.39 As a result, and despite incentives for early retirement and a drop in the number of full-time teachers in England and Wales from 408,723 in 1975 to 395,598 in 1984, the pupil-teacher ratio declined in those nine years from 24.2 to 22.0 at the primary level and from 17.0 to 16.0 at the secondary level.40 At the close of 1982, an editorialist for the Times Education Supplement described Sir Keith’s problem: The paradox is, of course, that it is extremely difficult for the DES to exert external pressure on a system as complicated, diffuse and decentralized as ours. The Secretary of State has considerable negative and regulatory powers, but for positive development, he can only try to be the catalytic agent which enables change to take place. He cannot do this by decree or by handing down tablets from Mount Sinai. So long as he stands aloof and seeks to hector or preach, he is more or less impotent. The system will always see him off, closing ranks to resist the intervention of the outsider.41 In order to overcome the resistance of local authorities in education as in other policy areas, a Conservative government which took office pledged to reduce the role of the central government found itself attempting to centralize power through the imposition of unprecedented financial sanctions. The Local Government Planning and Land Act of 1980 authorized the central government to reduce grants to local authorities when the latter ‘overspent’ the government’s assessment of expenditure needs.42 Subsequent legislation authorized the central government to ‘cap the rates’ of those local authorities (frequently metropolitan authorities controlled by Labour) which were supporting increased spending by shifting the burden to local taxpayers. In 1985 the central government ‘capped the rates’ of eighteen ‘overspenders’.43 As total expenditures dropped markedly after 1984, LEAs allowed buildings and equipment to deteriorate to a state which alarmed Her

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Majesty’s Inspectors, but remained reluctant to close small schools.44 Reporting in May 1986 on a study of secondary school management, the Audit Commission found that between £500 million and £1,700 million were being wasted every year on ‘teaching empty desks and maintaining underutilized buildings’.45 The Commission recommended that about a thousand schools be closed. Even the heavy artillery of financial sanctions was insufficient to persuade some LEAs to risk the political consequences of closing schools. The government’s limited successes in forcing spending cuts were won at the cost of increased confrontation and recalcitrance in the attitude of the LEAs toward the central government and a general demoralization of teachers and local school administrators. The government adopted a different strategy in its effort to expand and renovate technical education for 14- to 18-year-olds. Sir Keith agreed to allow the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) to develop first the Youth Training Scheme, a one-year training and work programme for school-leavers, and then the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative, a pilot programme to be offered to pupils still in school. This latter programme, described by the secretary of state for employment, Norman Tebbitt, as ‘the rebirth of technical education’, was prepared rapidly under the guidance of the MSC, without the usual consultation with the LEAs, teachers’ unions, or even many DES officials. 46 The government demonstrated that with the lure of new funds in an era of budget reductions it could violate the usual rule of broad consultation with the educational community before announcing a new programme, allow an agency other than the DES to take control, and still receive applications for participation from two-thirds of eligible LEAs. At the implementation stage, however, the LEAs were drawn into the policy process to help refine, administer, and evaluate the fourteen pilot programmes selected. Short of the costly solution of constructing a parallel system of schools under central control, the government has no choice other than to enlist the cooperation of the LEAs. INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS: FRENCH CENTRALIZATION A common textbook illustration of a highly centralized form of administration is Hippolyte Taine’s portrayal of an education minister in the Second Empire, who looked at his watch and announced with pride, ‘at this hour, in a certain class, all pupils in the Empire are interpreting a certain page of Virgil’.47 Despite recent research findings that French local governments can and do play an important policy role in certain fields, in education the central government retains impressive formal powers over funding, curriculum, and teachers, who are national civil servants.48 Many of the accomplishments of Savary and Chevènement—the introduction within one year of 120,000 microcomputers with trained teachers to help students use them, changes in curriculum at the elementary and secondary

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levels, and increased standards for the initial and continuing training of teachers—would have been beyond the institutional capacity of a British education minister. Once stated, the authority of the French minister of national education must quickly be qualified. He does not control the majority of the prestigious grandes écoles, which are under the jurisdiction of local chambers of commerce, private boards of directors, or other ministries, which jealously guard their independence.49 French Socialist ministers of education found themselves constrained by the growing assertiveness of the Constitutional Council, controlled by a majority appointed under previous governments. In January 1984, the council ruled unconstitutional that section of the Savary law on higher education which created a single electoral college for the election of faculty members to university councils on the grounds that it denied full professors the right to choose their own representatives.50 A year later the council struck again, overruling those sections of a 1983 decentralization law which allowed local government veto over certain contracts governing subsidies to private schools.51 While these decisions did not fundamentally obstruct Socialist initiatives in education, they limited the government’s ability to satisfy the demands of disgruntled groups within its clientele. These institutional constraints on ministerial power, while significant, are limited in scope to a few issues and hence are less important than obstacles to innovation which result from centralization itself. Centralization in French education has produced an intricate set of vested interests and a tendency for all issues to become politicized. Margaret Archer, in her sweeping historical and comparative analysis of the educational policy process in centralized and decentralized systems, concludes that centralization inhibits professional educators from satisfying their own demands and those of their clientele at the local or school level. ‘To effect educational change’, she writes, ‘all groups must move outside the educational field to engage in political interaction at the national level.’52 Frustrations build, educational issues become politicized, and change takes place in a wrenching, stop-go pattern, reminiscent of the ‘stalemate society’ described by Hoffmann and Crozier.53 Subsequent work by Jacques Fomerand and Roger Duclaud-Williams has shown that, while dramatic changes sometimes occur in French education (the Faure law of 1968 and the Haby law of 1975), the policy process is characterized more often by incremental change than by alternating periods of inaction and global reform.54 What Duclaud-Williams correctly retains of the Archer thesis is the tendency of centralized systems to inhibit change from within the system and to make reform dependent upon the will and capacity of the government to mobilize external support. The experience of Jean-Pierre Chevènement, compared to that of Alain Savary, illustrates the kind of leadership style which is favoured by the French institutional framework. Savary’s style, characterized by

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consultation, compromise, persuasion, and impressive diplomatic skill, ultimately was inadequate to overcome the obstacles to democratization of French education and to settlement of the private school issue. Chevènement’s style, based much more on dramatic media appeals to public opinion, showed greater promise of success. He consciously sought broad support in public opinion as a means of ‘getting the system moving’ by putting pressure on the teachers and their unions to accept change.55 In so doing, unlike Keith Joseph, he frequently praised teachers and suggested that their profession deserved greater status and rewards. Yet it must be noted that Chevènement’s relative success is attributable not simply to a change in leadership style, but also to the adoption of more popular policy goals.56 The ministry of national education, with a total of 928,000 employees and 11,165,000 students in 1985, and an annual budget of over $20 billion —the third largest enterprise in the world, its officials like to claim, after the Red Army and General Motors—is composed of a multitude of categories of civil servants, each with rights and privileges to defend.57 Olivier Guichard, whose reward for years of diligent service to General de Gaulle was to be appointed minister of education in the troubled years following the demonstrations of May 1968, recalls that among the many formally recognized and unionized groups of teachers who made claims upon him were secondary teachers ‘two times admissible to the agrégation’, who at least twice passed the written portion of that highly competitive examination but failed the oral. This group is not to be confused in terms of salary scale, teaching load, and status with the agrégés, who teach fifteen hours per week, or with mere professeurs certifiés, who teach eighteen hours, and certainly not with collège professors of general instruction (PEGC), who are only slightly retooled elementary teachers trained in normal schools who teach twenty-two hours, nor with those elementary teachers who teach special education courses at the collège level, whose teaching load is twenty-five hours.58 Guichard learned that ‘the least modification of rules is experienced as an assault on the system of stratification, which is social as well as cultural. All rapid changes are inadvisable in this type of universe’.59 The size and complexity of the French educational system pose particular problems for specialized technical education, where demands of the job market may change rapidly. In 1982 French professional education lycées and technical lycées offered 4,862 different specialized programmes leading to the short-cycle certificate of professional aptitude (CAP) and 4,834 programmes leading to the long-cycle certificate of professional studies (BEP).60 Once a programme has been approved by the appropriate councils, the requisite teachers recruited, schools designated, and equipment purchased, bureaucratic inertia is likely to keep the programme in existence well after its usefulness has ended. Once recruited and trained, teachers and administrators are likely to become vigorous defenders of

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existing programmes. A programme in hand-sewing for girls, for example, lasted into the 1960s. Antoine Prost, one of Alain Savary’s most trusted external advisers, was bold enough to ask in 1985 why France has the largest in-school technical education programme in the western world and also one of the highest rates of youth unemployment.61 School programmes like those in France, he suggested, are too rigid to keep up with the needs of the job market. One of the major obstructions to democratization of French education from the 1940s onward was the multiplicity of legally recognized categories of teachers and the accompanying rivalry between unions, especially between the National Union of Secondary Teachers (SNES), primarily representing certified secondary teachers, and the National Union of Elementary Teachers (SNI), representing elementary teachers and PEGC.62 Among those recommendations of the Legrand Commission on the collèges which Alain Savary did not feel capable of implementing was one proposing that all collège teachers, whatever their credentials, be responsible for twenty-two hours per week of individual teaching, team teaching, and tutorial work. Publication of the report provoked a protest meeting by the SNES which ended with 5,000 irate teachers marching across the Seine to shouts of ‘Revive the collèges, yes. On the backs of the teachers, no’.63 The delay, then the reformulation of the reform of the collèges were due in part to union resistance and to conflicts between elementary and secondary teachers’ unions whose members had very different conceptions of the role and status of the middle-school teacher. Savary and Chevènement made some progress in narrowing the gap in teaching loads as more collèges came under the reform plan. It was not until the victory of the conservative parties in the legislative elections of March 1986 that a new minister of education, René Monory, dared take direct action to unify collège faculties. He halted all new recruitment of PEGC and urged those in place to seek full secondary certification, to the utter dismay of the SNI, which feared the eventual loss of its controlling majority within the Federation of National Education (FEN). The power of French teachers’ unions is closely related to their national civil service status and to the centralized structure of French education.64 The British National Union of Teachers (NUT) clearly is a force to be reckoned with, as in 1985–86 when its strikes and ‘work to rule’ orders threatened to delay preparation of the new secondary examinations so important to the minister. Yet the NUT deals with too many employers and works under too many different sets of regulations to develop the national power of the FEN. British teachers are local government employees. Although often consulted by the government, the NUT lacks the developed corporatist role of the FEN. Integrated by law into numerous consultative committees, the FEN always has the right to make its case and in personnel matters often to decide. French teachers’ unions repeatedly have

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demonstrated the ability to block or delay new policies proposed by the government. Margaret Archer is correct in suggesting that a decentralized structure allows greater opportunity for policy innovation within the educational system. 65 In Britain the movement toward consolidating universitypreparatory grammar schools and secondary modern schools into something like the American high school was inspired by research revealing the social consequences of early and definitive tracking. Comprehensives spread to cover half of the state school population by the mid-1970s and 90 per cent by the mid-1980s, all by action of local education authorities, sometimes with strong support and pressure from the central government and sometimes despite its scepticism.66 Such a development is inconceivable in France, where policy changes rarely occur except when a minister mobilizes broad political support to overcome the powerful conservative forces within the system. INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS: HIGH CIVIL SERVANTS The French minister of education not only commands a more centralized apparatus than his British counterpart; he also has much greater control over his senior advisers and department heads. Peter Hall has argued persuasively that the ministerial cabinet and the power to replace department heads give the French minister an independence in drawing on expert advice and preparing proposals which is unavailable to British ministers, who must rely upon the permanent secretaries in place.67 To be sure, a number of Labour ministers have attested to the dedication and objectivity of high civil servants inherited from Conservative governments.68 Moreover, the Thatcher government was more active than its predecessors in transferring permanent secretaries and examining the political views of new appointees.69 Yet limited political influence over appointments and bureaucratic neutrality, where it in fact exists, are unlikely to produce the kind of personal loyalty and political commitment which a French minister has a right to expect of those he appoints to his ministerial cabinet. The fate of Sir Keith’s voucher plan is a case in point. The secretary asked DES officials to study the voucher proposal. Their response, in a report which Sir Keith later released, noted that a voucher plan would increase the burden on the treasury by subsidizing the five per cent of parents who paid full fees to send their children to independent schools. If these schools were exempted from the scheme, educational planning still would become extremely difficult for the LEAs. Some schools would be hopelessly overburdened and others rendered incapable of maintaining an adequate curriculum. The LEAs would lose all control over enrolments at individual schools.70 These arguments were persuasive to the Beloff manifesto group of the Conservative Party, which opposed vouchers prior to the 1983 elections. Following the Conservative

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victory in these elections, Margaret Thatcher announced that she would not introduce education vouchers because ‘the administrative consequences would be colossal’.71 In this case the DES establishment prevailed over the government’s ideological preferences, but only because it had broad support from the LEAs and could show that vouchers would undermine other central Conservative objectives, notably efficiency and economy. A proposal of similar importance might also be shot down in France by bureaucratic resistance and union pressure, but at least the French minister has the option of asking his ministerial cabinet to identify problems, seek ways of addressing them, and then draft a full plan, drawing upon its expertise and that of department heads chosen by the government. The structure of relations between politicians and high civil servants clearly is more favourable to politicians in France at the stage of formulation of policy. At the implementation stage, the French minister still faces formidable obstacles when the innovation is unpopular, even when, like Alain Savary, he exercises his authority to replace department heads and rectors, who head the twenty-seven geographical academies.72 As Savary was well aware, the teacher in his or her classroom enjoys a natural autonomy which ministers and their formal hierarchies penetrate only with great difficulty. When school principals conspire with teachers to circumvent MEN policies, the ministry’s inspectorate corps usually is outmatched, if indeed it is not won over by the conspirators. To take one particularly striking example, when the Haby law of 1975 prohibited formal ability tracking in the collèges, local school administrators quickly found informal and unacknowledged ways of keeping the more able pupils together, thereby nullifying much of the effect of the reform.73 In sum, in both Britain and France the speed and scope of feasible education policy initiatives are limited by the sheer size and complexity of the educational system. While the central government enjoys far greater theoretical control in France than in Britain, the autonomy it gains through the absence of LEAs is at least partially offset by greater bureaucratic inertia and increased trade union power. POLITICAL CONSTRAINTS The victory of a party pledged to policy innovations is, of course, no proof that a will for change exists at the critical decision points. The record of our two governments on education policy presents examples of political blockages of innovation at the levels of local government, the parliamentary party, the ministries of the central government, and mass public opinion. We have noted the Thatcher government’s difficulties in persuading LEAs to implement policies with which local officials disagreed. In education as in other fields, the central government’s enormous power to

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reduce the autonomy of local authorities by simple legislation, as exemplified in the breakup of the Greater London Council, is counterbalanced by the political costs of being perceived to act in an unfair or unconstitutional manner. Labour promptly won forty-five of fifty-eight seats on the council of the Inner London Education Authority in the first election of that body in eighty years.74 Mrs Thatcher’s proposal to substitute student loans for grants at the university level was blocked principally by opposition within her own party. She told the annual conference of the Conservative Party in 1982 that the government intended to support only a limited number of university students. Universities and colleges could admit more only if the additional students were charged fees equal to the total cost of their education. Fee-paying students could apply for loans, she suggested, as in the United States.75 The government’s efforts to move in this direction following the 1983 election set off a major backbench revolt by Conservative MPs who were concerned with the reaction of the party’s sizeable middle-class electorate and annoyed by the government’s failure to consult them on sensitive issues. A treasury statement issued on November 12, 1984, announced a reduction of maintenance grants for students from families with incomes of more than £12,000 per year and a reduction of tuition waivers for those from families with incomes of over £20,000. By November 30, 130 Conservative MPs, including eighteen former ministers and six parliamentary private secretaries, had signed a motion critical of the increased charges. Following a meeting of the Conservative backbench education committee, attended by Sir Keith and over 250 MPs, the government backed off, agreeing to abandon tuition charges entirely and to scale down the announced increases in maintenance costs which more affluent parents would be required to pay. 76 The student loan issue subsequently was reconsidered, then rejected by the cabinet in the summer of 1985.77 The issue was revived by Kenneth Baker in 1986, but with little immediate prospect of repealing tuition waivers. The failure of the French Socialists to enact the Savary bill on private schools offers dramatic evidence of the importance of political support within the parliamentary majority and in the electorate at large. Within the National Assembly elected in 1981, the 48 per cent of Socialist and Left Radical (MRG) deputies who declared teaching to be their profession formed the nucleus of a militant secularist lobby, eager for the implementation of Mitterrand’s promised ‘unified and secular’ educational system.78 Alain Savary pledged himself to pursue unification, but by the means which Mitterrand also had promised in a 1981 preelection letter of reassurance to parents of children in private schools: ‘I mean to convince and not compel.’79 In May and June 1984, Alain Savary and Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy found themselves caught between militant secularists in the Socialist parliamentary group, who clung to the traditional view of the French Left

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of ‘public funds for public schools and private funds for private schools’, and Catholic educators, who were supported by the Church, by a large, dedicated, and well-structured association of parents (UNAPEL), and most important by a French population in which over 70 per cent of respondents in a series of attitude surveys professed their support for the survival of subsidized private schools. One Socialist deputy who supported the compromise Savary bill regretted that the party leadership had clung to the old rallying cry of laïcité, failing to tell the hard-line secularists that the majority of French voters did not perceive the Church as a threat either to public education or, even less, to the Republic and, indeed, viewed the subsidized private schools with favour as an inexpensive alternative to public schools.80 One of those party leaders, Pierre Joxe, president of the Socialist group in the National Assembly, was himself a committed laïciste who supported the amendments which were added to toughen the bill by the special committee headed by André Laignel. Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy accepted the Laignel amendments on May 22 out of fear of a split within the party, knowing that Savary strongly opposed them and believed, correctly, that they would kill his delicately constructed compromise.81 Mauroy had put out the fire in the Socialist group in the National Assembly, but in so doing set off a more dangerous one. Unable to hold out against sceptics within Catholic education who charged that their representatives had been duped and that the amended Savary bill was a step toward loss of all autonomy for private schools, Savary’s Catholic bargaining partners abandoned the bill and, through UNAPEL, organized a day-long march of over a million demonstrators through Paris, culminating, in a brilliant choice of symbols, at the Place de la Bastille.82 President Mitterrand, misjudging the consequences of the Laignel amendments, had failed to intervene in May to push through the original Savary bill. Now, in July, he cut his losses and dropped both the bill and Prime Minister Mauroy. For Mitterrand, as for Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, the opinions of centrist voters ultimately were more important than those of militants within his own party. Another of Savary’s reform proposals—a first step toward the integration of the grandes écoles with the university system—failed from lack of support within the government. Rapid expansion of university enrolments from the 1950s through the 1970s had the effect of devaluing university diplomas and widening the prestige gap between the universities and the grandes écoles, which train all high civil servants in the ‘great corps’ and a large portion of the nation’s business leadership. 83 The Socialist Party platforms on education of 1972 and 1978 identified the grandes écoles as undemocratic institutions and called for their gradual integration into a common system of higher education.84 Savary’s initial proposal for the reform, which became the Savary law on higher education of 1984, called for the creation of an interministerial commission on national titles and diplomas, authorized to oversee degrees granted by both

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universities and grandes écoles. There ensued a period of active lobbying against integration by the alumni associations of the grandes écoles.85 Unlike the Catholic schools, the grandes écoles needed no massive demonstration to make their point. Their graduates, who were well represented in this as in previous governments, warned that the Socialists, even more than the conservatives, needed the first-class administrators that only the grandes écoles could produce. Like many Socialist and Communist lycée professors, grandes écoles graduates within the government could favour democratization in principle, but battle vigorously to prevent its application to their own schools. In practice, the Left was not entirely certain that equality is fully compatible with quality. In the Savary bill which emerged from the council of ministers, the grandes écoles retained their autonomy, separate from the universities. The British experience with cuts in university funding demonstrates that public and parliamentary indifference may be adequate support if the government is united and persistent in a policy initiative. Sir Keith gave surprising testimony to this effect when in October 1985 he advised a conference of vice-chancellors on how to get more government funds for scientific research: ‘It is not enough to convince politicians in private. They will only be prepared to support science if the public at large accepts that it has a high priority. My mail bag does not suggest that is so.’86 In 1985–86, with teachers on strike and opposition parties paying increasing attention to the state of British education, there were indications that public indifference on this issue was coming to an end and with it some of the government’s already limited freedom of action. The replacement of Keith Joseph in May 1986 by a noted ‘wet’, Kenneth Baker, heralded a retreat to a less confrontational style and a more centrist policy on funding and local autonomy. CONCLUSION The experience of the Thatcher and Mitterrand governments with education policy suggests that there are at least three interrelated explanations for the failure of governments to realize announced policy objectives. The first has to do with institutional complexity and bureaucratic inertia. Given its size and complexity in modern, industrialized societies and the natural autonomy of the classroom teacher, education would appear to be an area in which rapid and dramatic policy changes are particularly difficult to effect. The inherent complexity of education is intensified in Britain by the relative autonomy of local education authorities, which seriously obstructed and delayed Keith Joseph’s campaign to close small schools, dismiss weak teachers, and reduce educational expenditures. The French alternative of highly centralized administration produces costs along with benefits from the perspective of the central government. It gives

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the government far greater formal control over curriculum, examinations, and personnel than in Britain, but at the same time tends to strengthen two obstacles to innovation, the inertia of a giant bureaucracy staffed by national civil servants divided into innumerable bastions of self-defence and the power of teachers’ unions, which are highly centralized in mirror image of governmental structure. Any innovation which threatens to disturb the status of one of the many organized categories of teachers and administrators is certain to meet vigorous resistance. The history of the comprehensive middle school affords numerous examples. The striking continuities in education policy which we have described, across the apparently broad ideological divides of 1979 in Britain and 1981 in France, should be no surprise to the incrementalists. 87 The educational policies which seemed most likely to succeed were not those which represented radical breaks with the past, like educational vouchers in Britain and integration of private schools in France, but rather those which were continuous with the policy objectives of previous governments, for example higher standards for teacher training in France and closer linkage between higher education and the economy in Britain. In order to overcome the network of interests which inhibits educational innovation, a government must of course mobilize political support at key decision points. This, the second of our categories of constraint on policy innovation, is well represented in the governments under consideration. One must first recognize that campaign promises may or may not indicate a real commitment to change. Alain Savary discovered that Mitterrand’s ‘ten proposals for the schools’ had been drafted by the candidate’s campaign staff without consultation with the party delegation on education. Savary quickly dismissed two of them as financially impractical and two more—including a promise to halt all school closings—as downright objectionable.88 The Socialist Party was more seriously committed to point seven of Mitterrand’s proposals: a ‘unified and secular’ system of education. Yet the party’s electoral victory was no proof that it had a proper mandate to fuse public and private education or that it could agree within its own ranks on a specific policy. In the event, Mitterrand and Savary understood ‘unified and secular’ very differently than did the large secularist bloc in the Socialist parliamentary group. The Socialist Party’s commitment to the integration of the grandes écoles with the universities represented the preferences of the party’s specialists on education. Once in power, the reformers found that many fellow Socialists in ministries other than education saw little merit in merging France’s most prestigious schools (from which many of them had graduated) into a university system still struggling to cope with the effects of rapid expansion. Despite these failures of collective will, the Fifth Republic has produced far more innovation than the Fourth, in which sustained political support

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was more difficult to mobilize. The creation and progressive democratization of the collège is an example of such innovation, troubled as that institution may be. In Britain the backbench revolt set off by Keith Joseph’s plan to replace student grants by loans is a striking example of retreat from innovation occasioned by conflict within the governing party. The major lines of Conservative education policy were set by Joseph, with Prime Minister Thatcher’s support. Growing opposition to that policy in the world of education, in rival political parties, and within the ruling party no doubt influenced Thatcher’s decision to name a moderate as education minister following Joseph’s resignation and to make available increased funding for higher education. Finally, although the focus of the present chapter has been on institutional and political constraints, no analysis of continuity of educational policy within countries and of similarity in policy trends between countries would be complete without brief mention of the way in which common experiences shape policy options in western democracies. As Anderson, Heclo, and Freeman, among others, have told us, one cannot understand the evolution of policy without understanding the problem and the way in which policymakers perceive it.89 The postwar experiences which framed the contemporary problem have been similar throughout western Europe, although they have varied in intensity from country to country. They include dramatic postwar growth of secondary and university enrolments, experiments with democratization of secondary schools (notably comprehensive schools), a challenge to authority in universities in the 1960s, and high rates of unemployment among youth in the late 1970s and 1980s. The consequence of these experiences has been a blacklash against the schools, which are perceived as having lowered standards and failed to prepare young people for jobs. The message of Jean-Pierre Chevènement and of Keith Joseph, partly nostalgic and partly visionary, is heard in various forms across the western world. The schools are told to go ‘back to basics’, back to discipline and effort, but also to train modern professionals who will help guide and serve industries of the future. It is not surprising that similar problems have been addressed with similar policy trends. The obstacles to policy innovation in education are imposing but not insurmountable, as evidenced by the dramatic postwar expansion of secondary and higher education enrolments and by the spread of comprehensive schools. The network of vested interests in Britain and France has been unable to resist innovation under conditions of sustained political pressure and changing external demands. The establishment of the French collège was a result of two decades of governmental pressure. In both countries the transformation from élite to mass education resulted less from government initiative than from a rapid growth in demand for education beyond the elementary level. Institutional constraints are most

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effective, it would appear, against ideologically driven initiatives which cannot be sustained without rapid results. NOTES 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19

20

21 22

Le Monde, June 11, 1985. Keith Joseph, ‘Speech by the Rt Hon Sir Keith Joseph, Secretary of State for Education and Science, at the North of England Education Conference, Sheffield, on Friday 6 January 1984’, Oxford Review of Education, 10 (1984), 145. New York Times, June 25, 1985. The Independent Schools Information Service Annual Census reported 22,943 pupils holding government assisted places among their 419,175 pupils, who make up 80 per cent of total enrolment in independent schools. Times Educational Supplement (hereafter TES), May 2, 1986. TES, Dec. 25, 1981. Ministère de l’Education Nationale, Note d’Information No. 86–40, Oct. 6, 1986 (on expenditure levels); Lettre de Matignon, Mar. 1, 1982; and Le Monde, Oct. 2, 1982 (on new positions). Joseph, ‘Speech…6 January 1984’, p. 138. The British Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1986 (London: HMSO, 1986), Table 3.2, p. 44. For inflation data, see Tables 18.5, 18.6, and 18.7. Biddy Passmore, ‘Case Penalties Force 4 in 5 LEAs to Plan Further Cuts in Budgets’, TES, Apr. 26, 1985. Parti Socialiste, Changer la Vie: Programme de Gouvernement du Parti Socialiste (Paris: Flammarion, 1972), p. 16. Louis Legrand, Pour un Collège Démocratique: Rapport au Ministre de l’Education Nationale (Paris: Documentation Française, 1983). The quotation is from an interview given by Chevènement in Le Monde, Jan. 30, 1985. Journal Officiel, Assemblée Nationale, Débats, Nov. 12, 1984, p. 5861. Quoted by Jean-Michel Croissandeau, ‘Les Petites Phrases Simples’, Le Monde de L’Education, 108 (October 1984), 8–9. Jean-Michel Croissandeau, ‘Editorial: Au Café du Ministère’, Le Monde de l’Education, 114 (March 1985), 8–9. Quoted in TES, Oct. 25, 1974. Roger Dale, ‘Thatcherism and Education’, in John Ahier and Michael Flude, eds, Contemporary Education Policy (London: Croom Helm, 1983), pp. 233– 256; and Nick Bosanquet, ‘Sir Keith’s Reading List’, Political Quarterly, 52 (July-September 1981), 324–341. Michael Shattuck, ‘British Higher Education under Pressure’, European Journal of Education, 19 (1984), 203–204. Stewart Ranson, ‘Contradictions in the Government of Educational Change’, Political Studies, 33 (March 1985), 59–62; Colin Hunter, ‘Education and Local Government in the Light of Central Government Policy’, in Ahier and Flude, eds, Contemporary Education Policy, p. 96; and Janet Finch, Education as Social Policy (London: Longman, 1984), p. 58. Joseph, ‘Speech…6 January 1984’, pp. 141–142; and Geoff Whitty, ‘State Policy and School Examinations, 1976–1982: An Exploration of Some Implications of the Sixteen-Plus Controversy’, in Ahier and Flude, eds, Contemporary Education Policy, pp. 165–190. Joseph, ‘Speech…6 January 1984’, p. 139. Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Apprendre pour Entreprendre (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1985), pp. 34–48.

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23 John S.Ambler, ‘The Politics of French University Reform: Ten Years after May’, Contemporary French Civilization, 3 (Fall 1978), 17–18. 24 Roland Carraz (secretary of state for technical education in the second Socialist government). ‘Technique: Changer les règles du jeu’, Le Monde de l’Education, 124 (February 1986), 54. 25 Guy Neave, ‘Higher Education and Economic Change: France’, paper delivered to the Conference of Europeanists, Washington, DC., October 1985. 26 Michael Shattuck and Gwynneth Rigby, Resource Allocation in British Universities (Guilford: Society for Research into Higher Education, 1983); and John M.Ashworth, ‘Universities and Industry: National and Institutional Perspectives’, Oxford Review of Education, 11 (1985), 235–244. 27 Guy R.Neave, ‘Elite and Mass Higher Education in Britain: A Regressive Model?’, Comparative Education Review (August 1985), 353, reports that the proportion of the age group ‘qualified to enter higher education’ has stagnated around 14.2 per cent from the mid-1970s onward. He contrasts France, where the proportion of the age group passing the baccalauréat rose from 12 per cent in 1966 to 28.6 per cent in June 1982. Although his general conclusion regarding Britain is correct, the comparison is misleading. The French intake rate into all types of higher education is about one-fourth of the age group. However, this includes many who are part-time students, not counted in the British figure, and many who soon drop out. Only approximately 40 per cent of French students entering in the early 1970s completed full, second cycle diplomas, compared to over 80 per cent of British entrants who completed the full first degree. 28 See his speech at Ruskin College, reported in TES, Oct. 22, 1976. 29 Times Higher Education Supplement (hereafter THES), May 24, 1985, p. 40. 30 Ibid. 31 Guy Neave, ‘Higher Education and Economic Change’. 32 Richard Rose, Do Parties Make a Difference?, 2nd ed. (Chatham: Chatham House, 1984), pp. 146–152. 33 Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Government (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1983), pp. 69–71; and Anthony King, ‘Governmental Responses to Budget Scarcity: Great Britain’, Policy Studies Journal, 13 (March 1985), 476–493. 34 Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1986 (London: HMSO, 1986), pp. 43, 135, 245; The Economist, June 28–July 4, 1986, p. 56. 35 In Maurice Kogan, The Politics of Education (London: Penguin, 1971), pp. 159–160. 36 Harold Wilensky, The Welfare State and Equality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 52–53. 37 Peter Hall, ‘Policy Innovation and State Structure’, The Annals, 466 (March 1983), 46. 38 Arnold Heidenheimer, ‘The Politics of Educational Reform: Explaining Different Outcomes of School Comprehensivization in Sweden and West Germany’, Comparative Education Review, 18 (October 1974), 388–410. 39 Hunter, ‘Education and Local Government’, pp. 94–95; Ranson, ‘Contradictions in the Government of Educational Change’, p. 68; and TES, May 16, 1986. 40 TES, Apr. 26, 1985. See also Ray Robinson, ‘Restructuring the Welfare State: An Analysis of Public Expenditure, 1979/80–1984/85’, Journal of Social Policy, 15 (January 1986), 8–11. 41 TES, Dec. 31, 1982. 42 R.A.W.Rhodes, ‘Continuity and Change in British Central-Local Relations: “The Conservative Threat”, 1979–1983’, British Journal of Political Science, 14 (July 1984), 270–271.

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43 TES, Apr. 26, 1985. 44 ‘Report by the HMI on the Effects of Local Authority Expenditure Policies on Education Provision in England in 1985’ (DES, 1986), as reported in TES, May 23, 1986. 45 Audit Commission, Toward Better Management of Secondary Education (London: HMSO, 1986). 46 Jeremy Moon and J.J.Richardson, ‘Policy-Making with a Difference? The Technical and Vocational Education Initiative’, Public Administration, 12 (Spring 1984), 23–33, quotation on p. 24. 47 Hippolyte Taine, ‘L’Ecole’, in Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, Part III, Le Régime Moderne, Vol. III (Paris: Hachette, 1907), p. 226. 48 On the power of local government, see Pierre Grémion, Le Pouvoir Périphérique (Paris: Seuil, 1976); Douglas Ashford, British Dogmatism and French Pragmatism: Central-Local Relations in the Welfare State (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982); and François Dupuy and Jean-Claude Thoenig, L’Administration en Miettes (Paris: Fayard, 1985). 49 Bruno Magliolo, Les Grandes Ecoles (Paris: PUF, 1982), pp. 38–42. 50 John T.S.Keeler, ‘Toward a Government of Judges? The Constitutional Council as an Obstacle to Reform in Mitterrand’s France’, French Politics and Society, 11 (September 1985), 12–24; and ‘Confrontations juridico-politiques: Le Conseil Constitutionnel face au Gouvernement socialiste comparé à la Cour suprême face au New Deal’, Pouvoirs, 35 (1985), 133–148. 51 Pierre Delvolve, ‘Le Conseil Constitutionnel et la liberté de l’enseignement’, Revue Française de Droit Administratif, 1 (September-October 1985), 624–634. 52 Margaret Archer, Social Origins of Educational Systems (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979), p. 618. 53 Stanley Hoffmann, In Search of France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963); and Michel Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964). 54 Jacques Fomerand, ‘Policy-Formation and Change in Gaullist France’, Comparative Politics, 8 (October 1975), 59–89; and Roger Duclaud-Williams, ‘Centralization and Incremental Change in France: The Case of the Haby Educational Reform’, British Journal of Political Science, 13 (1982), 71–91. 55 Jean-Pierre Chevènement, interview with the author, May 23, 1986. 56 Philippe Bernard, ‘La grande lessive idéologique’, Le Monde, Mar. 13, 1986. 57 On the MEN as an enterprise, see Jacques Minot, L’Entreprise Education Nationale (Paris: A.Colin, 1970). 58 Olivier Guichard, Un Chemin Tranquille (Paris: Flammarion, 1975), p. 148. 59 Ibid., p. 149. 60 Antoine Prost, Eloge des Pédagogues (Paris: Seuil, 1985), p. 164. 61 Ibid., chap. 7. See also the debate which ensued in Le Monde de L’Education, 124 (February 1986) and 126 (April 1986). 62 Jean-Marie Donegani and Marc Sadoun, ‘La Réforme de l’enseignement secondaire en France depuis 1945: Analyse d’une non-décision’, Revue Française de Science Politique, 26 (December 1976), 1125–1146; and John S. Ambler, ‘Neocorporatism and the Politics of French Education’, West European Politics, 8 (July 1985), 23–42. 63 Le Monde, Jan. 25, 1983, p. 12. 64 On this theme see Duclaud-Williams, ‘Centralization and Incremental Change in France’. 65 See, for example, her discussion of comprehensive reorganization in Britain. Archer, Social Origins of Educational Systems, pp. 583–595. 66 Maurice Kogan, The Politics of Educational Change (Glasgow: Fontana/ Collins, 1978), pp. 32, 53–62.

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67 Hall, ‘Policy Innovation and State Structure’, p. 46. 68 For example, H.S.Crossman, Godkin Lectures, Harvard University, 1970, quoted by Samuel Beer in Samuel Beer et al., Patterns of Government (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 167–168. 69 For figures on transfers and retirements in the first Thatcher government, see Donald R.Shell, ‘The British Constitution in 1982’, Parliamentary Affairs, 36 (Spring 1983), 156–159. 70 This report was released by Sir Keith after a parliamentary question from Sir William van Staubenzee, MP from Workingham. TES, Dec. 25, 1981. 71 Quoted in TES, Dec. 30, 1983, p. 9. 72 The Socialists replaced almost all department heads and eighteen of twentyseven recteurs. Yves Agnès, ‘L’Administration dans le changement: Vers l’état P.S.?’, Le Monde, June 29, 1982. 73 On circumvention of the Haby law, see Jean Binon and MEN, ‘La réforme dans les collèges: Situation en 1979–1980’, report of the Inspectorate General, reported in Le Monde de l’Education, 84 (June 1982), 14. 74 ‘Tories Lose Control as Schools Vote Changes Political Map’, TES, May 16, 1986, pp. 14–15. 75 Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 27, 1982, p. 17. 76 Donald Shell, ‘The British Constitution in 1984’, Parliamentary Affairs, 38 (Spring 1985), 134–135. 77 THES, Oct. 11, 1985, p. 1. 78 Les Elections Législatives de Juin 1981, Le Monde, Dossiers et Documents (June 1981), p. 84. 79 Alain Savary, En Toute Liberté (Paris: Hachette, 1985), p. 17. 80 Didier Chouat, Député Socialiste, Côtes du Nord, interview with the author, July 25, 1984. 81 For Savary’s account, see Savary, En Toute Liberté, pp. 158–166. 82 For an account by the president of UNAPEL, see Pierre Daniel, Question de Liberté (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1986). 83 On the link between the grandes écoles and French élites, see Ezra Suleiman, Elites in French Society: The Politics of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 84 Changer la Vie: Programme de Gouvernement du Parti Socialiste (Paris: Flammarion, 1972), p. 152; and Libérer l’Ecole: Plan Socialiste pour l’éducation nationale (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), pp. 117–121. 85 Antoine Reverchon, ‘Grandes Ecoles: La Puissance des Anciens’, Le Monde de l’Education, 126 (April 1986), 12. 86 Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 9, 1985, p. 39. 87 See the works of Charles Lindblom, for example, The Intelligence of Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1964). 88 Savary, En Toute Liberté, pp. 13–14. 89 Charles W.Anderson, ‘The Logic of Public Problems: Evaluation in Comparative Policy Research’, in Douglas E.Ashford, ed., Comparing Public Policy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978); Hugh Heclo, Modern Social Policies in Britain and Sweden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974); and Gary P. Freeman, ‘National Styles and Policy Sectors: Explaining Structural Variation’, Journal of Public Policy, 5 (October 1985), 467–496.

8 Policy implementation in the French public bureaucracy The case of education Roger Duclaud-Williams

Using evidence gathered in interviews with local politicians and officials, this chapter examines the relationship between educational and prefectoral bureaucracies, between educational administration and the local political environment, and between different levels of educational administration. It is argued that prefectoral intervention and influence is slight and that potential problems in co-ordinating the implementation of policy are thereby avoided. Contact between local politicians and officials appears to concentrate heavily on interventions on behalf of particular individuals and has little impact on policy. Educational administrators feel no need of a notable to manage local political activity. The authority of the rector, at regional level, is not diminished either by the influence of local politicians or by internal bureaucratic obstruction, as a simple extension of Grémion’s model to education would suggest. Throughout it is stressed that the educational system has its own pattern of interbureaucratic and politicoadministrative relations and that general French models are therefore misleading if applied to this historically, very specific, policy arena. Educational politics in France are like an iceberg. They have their visible tip and their larger, some would say more interesting, hidden submerged area. Above water we find the dramatic conflicts between the advocates of the integration of private education into a public system and the Catholic church and its supporting parents’ organizations.1 We also find above water the politics of students’ resistance to plans to make university education available more selectively. This chapter focuses on the submerged area of policy implementation. There are a number of ways in which such a concern can be justified. First, by concentrating on the problem of implementation, we avoid becoming over-preoccupied with particular events and personalities. We can instead use the case of the implementation of educational policy as a test of certain perspectives on implementation generally and on the nature of local politics in France.2 In the first section of this chapter the enquiry centres on the problem of interorganizational co-ordination in policy implementation. The problem

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under examination is relevant to the general theory of implementation but has also some specifically French dimensions. We are concerned here with the relationship between the educational bureaucracy and the prefects, now properly referred to as Commissaires de la République. A number of possible relationships between the educational bureaucracy and departmental and regional prefectures can be imagined. Either side might defer to the other, renouncing, in fact, the formal independence which it enjoys in theory. In the absence of such bureaucratic deference, one might envisage either a situation of genuine and equal collaboration between two independent actors, or a situation in which effective action was frequently blocked through an inability to co-operate and constant appeals to higher national authority. This last possibility seems the most likely if one adopts Crozier’s perspective on French administrative practice with its emphasis on compartmentalization and formal but ineffective centralization.3 We have here a conflict between two models of organization and between two sets of political forces. The clear preference of teachers and educational administrators is for a strong ministry with its own internal hierarchy. According to this model, territorial co-ordination with other ministries, which is bound to threaten internal hierarchy to a degree, is minimized at the regional and departmental levels, and occurs mainly at national level. The Ministry of the Interior’s preferred model is that in which prefects, as representatives of the state as a whole and not of just one department of the state, co-ordinate a range of ministries at both regional and departmental levels. The same conflict can be stated not in organizational but in more political terms. The teachers and the educational bureaucracy constitute together an educational establishment with its own very clear political identity. As such they have represented a threat to the spirit of much of the administrative reform championed by the Fifth Republic. The object of this reform has been to achieve better integration and greater administrative rationality through a reassertion of the prefects’ traditional function of territorial co-ordinator on behalf of the state. The second section of the chapter examines the relations between bureaucracy and local politicians and in this way continues to use education as a window through which to gain a more exact view of French local politics. How significant is informal interaction between officials and politicians, and does the concept of the notable help us to understand the relationship between the bureaucracy and local politics? French students of the sociology of administration, particularly Pierre Grémion, have offered us an empirically based account of politico-bureaucratic relations at the local level in France.4 The most prominent figure in the picture which they provide is the notable who acts as a go-between linking bureaucracy and affected local interest. He channels and organizes communication, he offers the bureaucracy predictability in an uncertain world and, for affected interests, he seems to offer an entrée into a mysterious world in which

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informed and powerful friends are necessary for success. One of the aims of the research reported here was to test Grémion’s general picture in the particular, but very important, case of education. The third section of the chapter is also concerned to test some propositions derived from the work of Grémion and Worms. Much of their work has been concerned with the study of the obstacles encountered in the establishment of a regional level of government. One of the difficulties to which they refer constantly is the tendency of such regional authority as exists to become diluted, so that those with regional responsibilities are unable to think in terms of the interest of the region as a whole. Instead, a strong tendency emerges for decisions to be made in terms of giving equal satisfaction to the demands of each of the départements which constitute the region. Thus, attempts to avoid the undue geographical dispersion of certain sorts of public investment are thwarted. Close relations between external services and their clientele in the départements make it impossible to analyse problems, and make policy, in truly regionalist fashion. With these findings in mind interviewees were closely questioned about relations between département and region. The analysis of the nature of obstacles to change must also be discussed in this section of the chapter. Grémion has argued that the resistance to the effective implementation of policies designed to produce reform and change in many areas of French life arises not, as Crozier would suggest, from resistance within the bureaucracy or, as many political analysts suggest, from national political opposition, but instead from a defensive and conservative alliance, on a territorial basis, between bureaucrats and local politicians. With this problem in mind it is important to try to locate the French educational system in relation to other sectors of political and bureaucratic activity. Is the case of education nearer to the pole represented by the Ministry of Finance with high centralization and relatively slight links at the local level between bureaucracy and its environment, or nearer to the other pole represented by the Ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées where considerable local discretion and strong links with local politics exist?5 How important are political bureaucratic territorially based solidarities as obstacles to change in education? It would not be appropriate, at this point in the discussion, to provide a detailed account of the conclusions reached. It may nevertheless be helpful if some indication is provided here of the principal points at which established orthodoxies are challenged. It is argued that interorganizational difficulties are not serious and, for this reason, that much of the implementation literature is over-pessimistic.6 It is further argued that, despite the appeal of the concept of the notable to distinguished students of French local politics, it has no place in the important educational arena. Again, while the existing literature insists on the primacy of the département and the weakness of the region as a decision-making level, the

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reverse is nearer the truth in education. Finally, this account serves to reinforce an argument presented by this author previously, namely that obstacles to change in the sphere of education are located in national politics and not, as many would have us believe, either within the public administration or in territorially based politico-bureaucratic alliances.7 Interviews were carried out in two regions and two départements. The regions were selected mainly on the basis of a clearly expressed willingness, on the part of both recteurs (the heads of the local educational administration), to do all that was necessary to aid in the conduct of the research, but care was also taken to avoid regions which might be expected to have a strong sense of regional identity. The two départements studied, both within region one, were chosen because they provided the opportunity of studying the impact of Socialist versus Communist control of the most important teachers’ union. Both regions were south of the Loire; the first, in which most of the work was carried out, was large but rather economically underdeveloped; the second, visited much more briefly for more selective interviewing, was smaller, more prosperous and much more urbanized. All interviewees agreed to the recording of interviews. Interviews lasted on average one and a quarter hours, and some key officials were interviewed a second or third time. This was true, for example, of the secretary general (the official immediately below the rector) in region one. Interviews were carried out during the academic year 1981–82 but discussion concentrated on the situation as it had existed before the Socialist electoral triumph of 1981. Since the interviews on which this chapter is based were carried out, a measure of decentralization has been introduced into the educational system by the law of 22 July 1983. However, there is every reason to believe that the operation of this law will not modify substantially the relationships described here. There are a number of reasons for taking this view. In the first place, the Ministry of Education successfully resisted attempts to include in the law any provisions relating either to the curriculum or to the recruitment, evaluation, and allocation between schools, of teachers. Furthermore, even in those limited areas where departmental and regional councils have obtained new powers, namely with respect to new building, final decisions authorizing expenditure are still to be taken by the Commissaire de la République. As we shall see in the first section of this chapter, there is every reason to expect that he will defer to educational officials when taking this decision. The form taken by the legislation on decentralization, as it applies to education, in fact illustrates in some rather interesting ways the importance of the conclusions reached in this discussion. We shall argue in sections two and three that local politicians tend to be excluded from the exercise of influence over education. It is, of course, just this exclusion which has weakened local political pressure for

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decentralization and allowed the ministry to escape with such minor concessions to the general Socialist commitment in this area. We have argued elsewhere that the teachers’ unions are the crucial actors with whom a minister must deal.8 They remain firmly opposed to any increase in the influence of local politicians which would be a necessary consequence of any real decentralization. The modesty of moves towards decentralization in education is a tribute to this teacher power. The unions are organised like the state…I can assure you that they prefer to discuss something with the appropriate director in the central administration rather than 27 rectors. Here, in areas where deconcentration has already occurred, I am overwhelmed [assailli], literally overwhelmed, by letters saying that in this or that school, this or that is happening and that it shouldn’t. I reply invariably that those concerned should contact the headmaster or the departmental director of education, or the rector. But that’s not good enough for them!9 PREFECTORAL POWER IN EDUCATION Interorganizational problems Unquestionably one of the most important powers exercised by the regional prefect is that of finally fixing the annual programme of construction for the region of the whole of the secondary and technical sector. The decision about the total public investment which will occur in the region is, of course, made centrally, but this still leaves open decisions on how to share out the available investment between the départements within the region, and which schools to start immediately and which must wait. Most of the technical expertise required for forecasting educational demand and assessing relative priorities, however, lies within the educational rather than the prefectoral bureaucracy. With these facts in mind I began interviewing, with the working assumption that there would probably be some tension between the educational and prefectoral authorities at the regional level. This proved not to be the case in either region 1 or region 2. As the following quotation makes clear, the absence of difficulty in region 1 seems due to a willingness on the part of the regional prefect and his bureaucracy to accept the rectors’ lead in this area. The relationship (between the rectorate and the prefecture) may vary from one academy to another…Here we have a rector who has been here for a long time. This creates a situation which is unique in France. It is the rector here who has the reputation of establishing the investment programme, that’s how people see things. You can look at

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matters from a legal perspective or you can take a more practical view, but from this practical point of view, it is the rector who is truly responsible for establishing the investment programme.10 This education official is clearly aware that the close relations between the prefects and local politicians might, and perhaps in some regions do, cause tension between the rectorate and the prefecture, but it is quite clear that no such difficulties are to be observed in the region with which he is personally familiar. The secretary general, charged with the general task of co-ordinating all the work of the rectorate, took exactly the same view: ‘In this region there is no doubt at all that the power is situated here’.11 In region 2 the tendency for the rector to lead, and for the regional prefect to follow, was less marked, but there was a similar lack of tension between the rector’s administration and the prefectoral administration. The rector in region 2 described the relationship in the following terms: Here we have two rectors who must deal with one regional prefect. Quite naturally, therefore, the role of arbiter is assumed by the prefect when he shares out the investment budget, but this doesn’t mean at all that the regional prefect wishes to develop this role to its full limit…What is required is collaboration between two administrations, two administrations which must take account of technical realities, must also take account of the aspirations of local politicians, parents, and the unions.12 It is worth noting in passing that the rector in region 2 had, at an earlier point in his career, worked as rector in another region where the relationship between the school administration and prefectoral administration was quite different. As for the case of the region in which I previously worked, I can tell you that, there, it was truly the rectorate, extremely well provided as it happens, which prepared…the investment programme. So much was this the case that the relevant documents were actually printed by the rectorate and then later approved in discussion with the regional prefect. That was an extreme case.13 To what factors can we point in attempting to frame an explanation for this relaxed relationship in which the regional prefect effectively declines to use, except in exceptional circumstances, the formal powers accorded him? We may first usefully invoke a little history. In the exercise of authority at the regional level the rector is an old hand and the regional prefect a relative newcomer. This sequence of events has helped to establish firmly, among concerned politicians and officials, the belief that the rector has always played, and should continue to play, the leading

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role in the implementation of educational policy when decisions at the regional level are required. Of course, this relative autonomy of educational administration might have been more seriously called into question as a result of the discussion in the early 1960s of the desirability of giving the regional prefect important powers to co-ordinate and control, in the interests of regional economic development. In the case of education, however, Catherine Grémion has described how the Ministry of Education successfully resisted any such development.14 The Second Empire’s arbitrary use of power against teachers and educational administrators, the close political links and sympathy which developed after 1877 between the world of education and the Third Republic and the appeal within the world of education of the notion of laïcité, are all part of the historical tradition which sees nothing but danger in closer links, particularly at the local level, between education and politics. But a purely historical explanation of this absence of interorganizational conflict is not adequate. It must be supplemented sociologically, by reference to organizational factors. How important are these educational decisions to the regional prefect and his staff? ‘Altogether marginal. On the technical side here we do not have the means to enable us to call into question the proposals which are submitted to us.’15 The crucial explanatory factor here is the asymmetry in the relationship between regional prefecture and rectorate. What matters greatly to the rector is relatively unimportant to the regional prefect. Where the rectorate is technically strong the prefecture is technically weak. No wonder then that the separation of formal authority to decide from the collection of relevant information causes little difficulty. Hall has recently argued that French administrative norms have, in recent years, shifted significantly from the legalistic to a more flexible approach in which bargaining and informality play a larger role. We have here an example of just such flexibility.16 When we shift our attention from the regional down to the departmental level we find an extremely dispersed pattern of formal organization. New primary schools are financed jointly by commune, département and central government. The expertise necessary for the forecasting of educational needs lies with the departmental education office but this office has little direct contact with the departmental council which has the final word on the order of priority of new primary schools. Individual mayors, the prefecture, the departmental education office and the departmental council are all involved. Most of those interviewed recognized that the dispersion of formal authority might be expected to cause difficulties but felt that in practice these could be overcome. Difficulties could arise, it was claimed, as a result of the fact that ultimate responsibility for initiating the process eventually leading to the construction of a new school remained with the mayor. The mayor might hesitate to set this process in motion, perhaps because he was politically hostile to state educational provision and would prefer a private

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denominational primary school, or perhaps because he was frightened of the financial implications. In such circumstances what was the DEO to do? The answer seemed to be that one would contact the prefecture and arrange for as high-powered a delegation as possible from the prefecture and the DEO to visit the mayor in question in order to ‘persuade’ him to reconsider his position. In other words, obstacles resulting from the separation of authority for the completion of a single task between the DEO and the mayor, could be overcome by calling into play the informal authority which the prefecture could exercise over recalcitrant mayors. We have here a mechanism whereby, despite the absence of any clear authority at the local level of either a bureaucratic or democratic character charged with overall co-ordination, the necessary collaboration between formally independent actors can be achieved. Such mechanisms are particularly necessary in a system which has refused to opt for either of the two most obvious ways of organizing the local provision of a service—the locally elected educational authority or total central and bureaucratic control of all aspects of educational provision. BUREAUCRACY AND THE LOCAL POLITICIANS In this section we leave the study of bureaucratic relations in order to focus our attention on the relationships between the bureaucratic and the political. We begin with a brief discussion of the departmental council’s involvement in the primary school building programme in département 1. The received view of French local politics lays great emphasis on personalization, that is the tendency of politicians to act alone and in a personal capacity rather than as representatives of a party group or council.17 Given this emphasis in the existing literature, it is worth noting that, with respect to primary school building, a partisan Socialist majority in département 1 operated as a group, rather than as a collection of individuals and gave a clear preference to requests for new primary schools coming from Socialist mayors. The partisanship of the Socialist-controlled departmental council displayed in favour of the Socialist mayors of rural communes was reinforced by a certain consciousness of the urban-rural divide and by the fact that the departmental and regional capital was controlled by an independent right-wing mayor. It goes without saying that elected local authorities in France have no influence on curriculum, on the appointment and promotion of teachers, and on the structure of educational provision. The case described briefly here of a departmental council refusing to rubber-stamp proposals put to it jointly by the prefect and the departmental education office is all the more interesting because it is an exception to the general rule that local authorities have an insignificant role as providers of education. Real but limited opportunities do exist for politicians to influence certain aspects of educational policy, both within the departmental and

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regional councils, but most of the time invested by politicians in educational questions is not related to policy in any ordinarily understood sense of that word. When one questions officials and politicians in France in the educational sphere about contacts between politicians and the bureaucracy, the word immediately on everyone’s lips is ‘intervention’. The concept of the ‘intervention’ is easily understood but not easily translated. In region 2, it appeared that written replies addressed to politicians numbered, at that point in the year, 30 a day, and, in order to expedite this voluminous correspondence, the rectorate was using 15 prepared letters which were suitable for a large percentage of these enquiries. Some idea of what an ‘intervention’ is and the kind of reaction which it gives rise to can be gauged from the following: ‘It’s a sign of health for our democracy when you see people calling on those elected to represent them for assistance, but at the same time it almost amounts to a malfunction. People write more readily to their deputy than they do to the bureau, for example, which is responsible for new appointments or student grants’.18 Many of the officials regarded these pleas for special treatment for particular constituents as a waste of time, and felt that the whole procedure was strongly tainted with elements of farce or at least pretence. Most of the time the politician did not really expect special treatment for his school or constituent, nor was he likely to get it. All that most politicians required was some reply, whatever its content, which they could then show to the constituent. There were occasions, however, on which these pleas for exceptional treatment took on a more sinister character. Claims were made of school building projects which had suddenly and inexplicably jumped to the head of the queue, of lycées provided for small towns when larger towns nearby were without one, and of a trickle of unrequested additional teaching posts allocated to the department by exceptional procedures during the school year. Interestingly, some of these unexpected gifts were not as welcome at the local level as one would expect: These posts reached us in dribs and drabs and, as a consequence of demands made by politicians. The primary school teachers concerned, previously teaching in départements around Paris, who were transferred into our département and who, because they were personally acquainted with certain well-placed civil servants, brought their posts with them. …These posts which we received, let’s call them gifts, were not always very welcome from our point of view. You will understand, I’m sure, that when a politician, as a result of personal acquaintance, succeeds in getting one or two posts from the ministry, these would not be posts to be allocated in the ordinary way. They would be posts for a particular commune or a particular school. Or again:

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The rector may say to me: ‘I met the mayor of X in such and such a circumstance. There’s a particular problem which we must see to. I would like you to reply in the following terms’. As for me in those circumstances my view is that this is an example of the rector’s power or the rector’s will, and we, in the administrative divisions, are here to execute that will. It may be a decision which, as far as the texts are concerned, is, how shall I put it, improper, but which must be taken in the interests of the academy, and which is part of the rector’s overall strategy. Perhaps the rector simply cannot afford to offend a particular politician.20 It must be stressed that questions framed very generally concerning the influence of local politicians on the implementation of education policy invariably elicited a discussion which led rapidly to comments of the sort cited above. We have, unfortunately, no hard data that would allow us to make cross-national comparisons and establish whether this kind of political activity is more prevalent in some systems, or some policy arenas, than others. Such political activity may well be a particularly prominent feature of the relations between French bureaucracy and elected politicians at all levels. How can we explain this phenomenon? Part of the answer seems to lie in French political culture and particularly in the popular French conception of democracy. Many French citizens seem to lack confidence in the impartiality and fairness of those who administer the public services and therefore, at least as an insurance policy, they feel it is worthwhile to try to use the democratic apparatus in order to defend individual rather than group interests. This attitude may mean that the politician is faced with a particular dilemma. He must seek to serve the electorate in order to win re-election, but the municipal, or departmental, or regional council of which he is a member, does not control the provision of many of the services which are of the greatest concern to the general public. Most crucial policy decisions are taken at the centre where only the most powerful politicians who combine local and national office can exert any influence. Without the power to affect general policy the politician must fall back on an attempt to influence its application in particular cases. We see here a rather unhappy aspect of the relations between the worlds of administration and politics, and one which constitutes a substantial obstacle to progress towards decentralization of the educational service. We may conclude this brief discussion of the local politician’s educational activities by pointing out that, even in a service as bureaucratized and centralized as French education, possibilities do exist at all three levels of French local government for some significant political input to occur. Mayors in their communes are concerned with balancing a range of interests affected by the drawing of the boundaries for primary school catchment areas. They must also take the initiative when a new

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primary school is required in their commune. Some departmental councils make active use of their authority to decide on priorities in the primary school building programme. Regional councils may use their own funds to provide new schools in addition to those funded by the state. Region 2 provided a significant example of this. Here the academy had been provided with 10 additional technical schools. This additional provision had significantly altered the balance between traditional and vocationally oriented education and was a local response to problems created by rapid economic expansion. But councillors devote infinitely more time and attention to pleas on behalf of particular schools and individuals than they do to the making of educational policy. Nor should it be forgotten that this individualistic and defensive political activity, though it may contain a large element of playacting, does have a significant impact on the image which officials form of the political world. The character of this image and the image which local politicians form of officials is a crucial element in obstructing necessary cooperation between the two in the process of decentralizing education. Before leaving this discussion of the relationships between the locally elected politicians and the field services of a central department, it is necessary to say a few words about that phenomenon which continues to haunt the study of French local politics. Grémion defines the notable, who is not of course necessarily elected, in the following terms: The notable is an individual who, because of his representative capacity, is able to obtain, from local administrative agencies, exceptions to centrally defined rules. For this reason, he occupies a strategic mediating position between the State and civil society.21 Far from seeing the notable as an anachronism in the process of being swept away by new forms of administration and communication, Grémion elaborates what we might call a bureaucratic theory of the origins of the notable phenomenon. According to this theory, the field services of central departments are not in a position to deal effectively and directly with their local environment. In order to deal with this problem, the administration develops links with those who, it feels, are in a position to provide necessary information and introduce, for the administration’s benefit, a degree of predictability into its external relations. The rapid twentiethcentury expansion of the provision of state services of all kinds, many of which are provided within a highly centralized framework, is therefore likely to stimulate, according to this theory, increasingly frequent resort to the notable as a means of linking administration and society. If the notable, as described by Grémion, is to be able to produce the predictability valued by the bureaucracy, he must be in a position to channel a substantial part of the communication between the bureaucracy and the local environment. Wherever possible, interviewees

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were questioned about the extent to which this channelling occurred. There was general agreement that, while some local politicians clearly carried much more weight than others, in none of the regions or départements studied was there any single politician enjoying the kind of privileged status suggested by the notion of notable. The only hint that such a relationship between the bureaucracy and a local politician had ever existed, came from a senior official who had worked in département 2 for more than 20 years. He explained that in the 1960s one of the département’s deputies had been an ex-Minister of Education. In his time this man had managed and totally dominated contact between the departmental administration and its local clientele. But, with increasing age, this deputy had become less active and, after his retirement from politics, no one had emerged to take his place. It is worth reporting that when the relevant rectors and departmental directors of education were questioned about relationships with local politicians and the extent to which contacts were concentrated or dispersed, it was made clear that a high degree of concentration or channelling would be resented. Officials of the rank of rector and departmental director clearly feel that they can manage, directly, without any need for intermediaries, relations with the turbulent world of local politics. In fact they see this as one of the most challenging and interesting aspects of their work. For Grémion it is particularly important to understand the notable’s conservative role within a system which can adapt to changing circumstances only with great difficulty. Too often, in his view, new rules and procedures fail to produce the intended results because the informal reality of power relations between the local administration and local politicians constitutes a formidable obstacle to centrally conceived reforms. The above account has shown that, although the greatest number of contacts between administration and local politicians is certainly concerned, as Grémion suggests, with attempts to bend general rules to particular cases, most of these attempts are unsuccessful. In the analysis of change and obstacles to it, this is crucial. Grémion believes that the territorially based solidarity between local administration and local politicians is one of the most effective obstacles to the kinds of change which central government seeks to promote. If the relations between administration and local politicians have the rather superficial character described here, then it would seem highly unlikely that such a solidarity would emerge as a significant element in the implementation of education policy. It has been argued elsewhere that, if the relations between the educational bureaucracy and particular interests do constitute a formidable obstacle to change, then these relations exist at the central rather than the local level, and the interests represented are not territorial in character.22 In fact, the absence of the notable as a link between local administration and society in education certainly does not

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constitute a refutation of Grémion’s theory, but is rather an elaboration of it with particular reference to education. Grémion and his collaborators have recognized that there is substantial variation in the form which the relations between administration and society take from one ministry to another. The crucial variable in explaining these variations is thought to be the degree of centralization within the ministry concerned. If we compare the Ministry of Education with other departments, it would seem to come fairly near the centralized end of the scale. According to Grémion and his collaborators, this will mean that local links between administration and society will be less significant, and obstacles to change will be located more often within the central and local bureaucracy than in the relations between bureaucracy and its environment. Important obstacles to educational change do indeed lie more within the educational system than in any local link between educational administration and its environment. Grémion argues that it is the bureaucracy itself which constitutes the major obstacle to change in centralized departments. With respect to education, however, we must always bear in mind the distinction between administrators and teachers. Although both are civil servants, Grémion’s argument points more to the former, whereas in fact it is teachers, acting individually and collectively, whose attitudes are much more crucial. What light does this case throw on Grémion’s theory of the notable? First, we confirm his view that, in centralized departments, local links between administration and politics are not a serious source of resistance to change. Second, we also confirm that this means that resistance is encountered more often from within than from outside the educational service. But finally, we conclude that this resistance finds expression in national, not local, policy-making and that it is organized by teachers, not administrators, and is therefore, in a very important sense, not truly bureaucratic in character. Another point contained within the above definition of the notable which requires qualification, at least as far as education is concerned, regards the degree to which the relations between the bureaucracy and its environment are personalized. The definition seems to imply a high level of personalization and a limited role for organizations in linking the administration to its environment. While this picture seems quantitatively accurate, it is important to remember that the most significant relations ‘those which have an effect on the policy output’, are invariably those which have a more organized character. I refer here to the involvement of the regional council in region 2 in expanding technical provision, to the role of the departmental council in département 1 in making difficult choices between the claims of rival mayors for new primary provision, and to the relations at the local level between the teachers’ unions and the administration. In all of these three cases we are not dealing with individuals but with organizations or assemblies which pursue their own

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goals and practices regardless of the leaders whom they have selected at the local level at any point in time. We have concluded, then, that the notable, as a means for handling relations between the educational administration and its environment, is not present and not desired. Where the roles played by politicians are personalized they do not have the policy significance which Grémion attaches to the mediation by a notable. Channels of contact are much more dispersed and the administration much more confident of its ability to handle local politics than the notable model would suggest. Grémion’s views can accommodate these findings but, if this escape route is chosen, it suggests, according to Grémion, that educational change will encounter significant obstruction from within the local educational bureaucracy. We have found no evidence of such obstruction in education. THE DEPARTMENTAL THREAT TO REGIONAL AUTHORITY With respect to the attempt in 1964 and subsequently to create a genuinely regional level of authority within the French administrative system, it has been argued that the attachment of many interest group leaders, politicians and officials, to the departmental framework with which they are familiar, has often emptied regional authority of the capacity to treat the region as a whole rather than as a collection of diverse departements.23 Within French educational administration some authority has long existed at both regional and departmental levels. The question of the relationship between departmental and regional power is therefore posed within the educational system in terms that are not strictly analogous to those governing the debate in the 1960s and 1970s about regional reform. The question of whether power located formally at the regional level does tend to be diluted in the way described above is nevertheless one of considerable interest. The examination of this question also throws light on the extent to which debate and decision about the allocation of scarce resources can be confined to the educational world. These two questions are associated, because a rector who can successfully keep decision-making within the educational world will reinforce the hierarchical principle embodied in the educational bureaucracy and thus limit departmental dilution. We may conveniently consider these two related problems successively in four areas of decision-making: (1) building primary schools; (2) allocating primary teaching posts; (3) building secondary schools; (4) allocating secondary teaching posts. Regional allocation of funds to départements for primary school building The responsibility for sharing the available funds between the départements within the region rests with the regional prefect. He must,

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however, seek the advice of the regional council before making this decision. In practice, the word ‘decision’ with its implication of the exercise of choice seems somewhat exaggerated in this context. In both regions 1 and 2, a rather complicated but exact mathematical equation exists which is used to determine the distribution of available investment between contending départements. The official at the regional prefecture most closely concerned with this question in region 1 claimed that the formula was exact and was always scrupulously respected. As to the role of the regional council and its commission for educational affairs, it was noted that the formula had existed before the regional council was created. It was true that they had examined the formula and asked for it to be modified so that the average age of primary school buildings in each département could be incorporated into the calculation so as to give greater assistance to those départements with a particularly decrepit set of primary school buildings. This had been done but had not produced any significant alteration in the final percentages. In region 2 the position was rather similar although here there was some conflict in the testimony collected. Let it not be thought, however, that the application of this formula represents an ideal solution for all those concerned. Two informants, both from département 2, a peripheral département, complained about the rigid application of the formula as having been ‘invented by énarques who were completely cut off from reality’. 24 The latter was able to produce from his files a letter addressed to the departmental prefect from the departmental education office, written as many as five years earlier, complaining about the unfairness of the formula to the département. Feeling in some quarters clearly ran high on this question but had not succeeded in altering either the principle of the formula or its application. There is no sign here of effective departmental particularism destroying regional authority. Regional allocation to the départements of primary teaching posts The procedure by which the departmental allocation of posts is made has varied in recent years. The system in the 1970s provided for direct allocation from the centre to each département—an arrangement which naturally minimized tensions between region and département. For a twoyear period at the end of the decade, however, primary posts were given to the rector and he was made responsible for their distribution between départements. Since the 1981 elections this system has itself been abandoned in favour of a return to direct central allocation, but the rector still has an important advisory role. For our purposes, clearly the two-year period is the most revealing. There was general agreement in region 1 that, when the rector sat down with the departmental educational officers in his region to distribute posts between them, there was considerable tension and conflict; and this took

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primarily the form of rivalry between the département in which the regional capital was situated, and the other, more rural and less economically dynamic départements. A closely involved observer from the departmental office in département 1 explained: There was a great deal of conflict in the meeting of the departmental education officers because the other départements formed what you might call a common front against our département…The meeting was a sort of market. I would go with the DDE. Of course, I made sure that I had a precise view of the situation in my département but I managed by one means or another also to have exact information about the situation in the other départements…the whole situation was rather uncomfortable.25 What is remarkable, however, is that all those questioned on this matter were agreed that, though the tensions were real, the DDEs and the rector between them monopolized the decision-making process. ‘Couldn’t the DDE seek allies in his attempts to obtain more posts for the département?’ Perhaps the prefect for example? Absolutely not, the DDEs and the rector are, you might say, like all the corps in the education service, sufficiently jealous of their prerogatives, in the best sense of that term, to be careful above all not to involve the prefect. These are matters internal to the educational service.26 Other interviewees viewing the process from a different vantage point were unanimous in their support for this view. Another official at the regional level put it this way: Does the DDE channel communications pretty effectively from his département or does the rector himself have important contacts in the départements which bypass the DDEs? In my view almost everything is channelled through the DDE. As far as primary education is concerned, the custom is well established, and has been for many years, of treating the DDE as the sole point of contact at that level.27 It was explained that, of course, the rector would have contacts with some politicians from the départements, and even on occasions the departmental prefects, but it would be difficult for either politicians or prefects to intervene in the allocation process because the meeting at which these decisions were made in the regional capital would not be announced and would not figure on any official calendar. The rector, as the direct hierarchical superior to the DDEs, could call them to a meeting for this purpose, at the appropriate moment in the year, with only one day’s notice. It is clearly in the interests of rectors to use the DDE as a shield against departmental influences in the way in which the above citations suggest. Generally speaking, they seem able to do this successfully.

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The above description and citations refer entirely to region 1. The general picture in region 2 was very similar, but with one interesting difference. In recent years, on a number of occasions, the regional capital had been the scene of riots, involving in many cases young people from the families of immigrants. The 1982 allocation of primary posts, made, as explained, at the centre, on the basis of advice supplied by the rector, had been a cause of particularly acute disappointment in one of the more rural départements in the academy. One of the reasons for this feeling of unfairness was clearly that those in the département concerned felt that a special effort had been made in favour of those areas where disturbances had occurred and that they had been the victims of this transfer of resources. The conviction in the rural département that they had been hard done by was reinforced by their knowledge that the distribution of available posts recommended by the rector had been modified in Paris in favour of the regional capital and at their expense. The unusual point about this incident is that it had proved quite impossible to contain discontent within the educational system, and many politicians from the département in question, particularly the mayor of a large town, had made the matter one of public and national concern. The minister, wishing to appear ready to make reasonable concessions, had officially communicated with the rector, suggesting that he might consider the desirability of using a special procedure to reallocate, within the region, the primary posts made available to him. The comments concerning this particular ministerial manoeuvre were caustic. Clearly, once an initial allocation had been made and made public, it was quite impossible for the rector to please politicians in one département by taking away posts already allocated to another. But the point worth emphasizing is that the circumstances of this particular dispute make it quite clear that very exceptional circumstances are required for politicians concerned with the welfare of their département to become involved in interdepartmental allocations of educational resources within the region. This really is a case of the exception which proves the rule. The general rule is that primary post distribution causes more tension between départements than the distribution of investment credits, but that, even in the former case, the tension can usually be contained within the educational bureaucracy. Regional allocation to the départements of funds for secondary school building None of the officials, trade unionists or politicians interviewed in region 1 cast any doubt on the capacity of the rector to allocate the available investment for the building of new secondary and technical schools in the light of the needs of the region as a whole. There was clearly no constraint imposed by a need to give something to every département. The case is even more clear-cut than that of teaching posts for primary schools just

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discussed. In that case, as has been seen, needs were considered and debated in departmental terms even if the debate was confined within the education bureaucracy. In this case, because we are dealing with secondary and not primary education, the role of the département was much diminished, and the rector, in consultation with the regional prefecture, dominated the allocation process. It is possible to point to a number of factors which help to explain this situation, some of them general to the educational system as a whole, others specifically related to the situation in region 1. It was explained by an official in a peripheral département that the département was doubly disadvantaged in its attempts to obtain a fair share of what was on offer. The first disadvantage was that tradition and custom, and the distribution of technically competent staff, were all on the side of the regional level and against the departmental level in this area. Second, he argued, the département was additionally disadvantaged because the final decision on allocations was made in the Conférence Administrative Régionale or CAR, a body which met at the regional prefecture and contained, under the chairmanship of the regional prefect, the prefects from each département and the rector and his staff. Thus, the educational service in the département had to rely upon the departmental prefect to represent its educational needs, and it was argued, quite reasonably, that a more technically competent defence of departmental needs would be possible if the DDE and/or his staff could be present. In fact, as we have seen from the earlier discussion of the relations between the rectorate and the regional prefecture, the CAR is more or less a rubber-stamping body in this area, and it is therefore the first disadvantage rather than the second one which is more significant. A further factor explaining the inability of départements to dilute regional authority in this area is a purely technical but nevertheless very important one. In recent years, with the coming to an end of the massive programme of construction of lower secondary schools which occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, the investment budget for secondary education has shrunk very considerably. In these circumstances many recent annual investment budgets have included no building projects at all in some départements. Any attempt in this situation to achieve equity as between départements, rather than treating the region as a whole, would involve a complicated system of comparison of departmental shares which would have to stretch over a period of at least two or three years. In other words, the existence of a small budget lumpy in content constitutes an extremely effective bulwark for regional authority in budget-making. On this technical dimension there is an interesting contrast between the positions in secondary and primary building programmes, because in the latter case the smaller size of individual projects does make it possible to apply a formula designed to produce equity as between the different départements.

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A final contributory factor helping to explain this state of affairs is particular to the region. The immediate collaborators of the rector were able to indicate two characteristics of his personal working methods, both of which are relevant in this context. The first is that the rector was not a strong believer in the bureaucratic hierarchy, at least in the sense that he attempted, rather successfully, to develop direct relations between himself and the heads of many establishments in the secondary sector. In this way his style of work tended to cut out the intermediary departmental level as far as matters relating to the secondary system were concerned (this approach was never extended by him to the primary system). Additionally, although the rector was generally praised for his willingness to delegate, he had always taken a personal interest in the building programme of secondary and technical schools, and worked directly at the regional level with those officials responsible for forecasting and planning in this area. Towards the end of the year spent in region 1 a new rector was appointed, and many of those interviewed after this date pointed to the contrast in personal concerns between the old and the new rector. The previous rector had a considerable interest and expertise in administrative matters and long experience in educational administration. The new rector had previously been the president of a university and therefore his detailed knowledge of educational administration was very much confined to the university sector. He was much more interested in strictly educational matters and inclined to regard administrative questions as without much interest or importance. In region 2 the tendency to think in terms of equity as between the different départements, rather than simply in terms of the relative urgency of individual proposals, was slightly more marked. In this matter, as in many others, we can observe that the educational bureaucracy in region 2 is somewhat less well in command of the situation, less autonomous, and rather more accountable to local political opinion. ‘We do try to make sure that a certain balance (between départements) is respected…We do try to make sure, for example, that département x (the smallest département) has at least one new building.28 This greater tendency to think in territorial, and in this case interdepartmental, terms in region 2 is associated, as we have seen, with a balance of power which is marginally more favourable to the prefecture and less favourable to the rectorate than is the case in region 1. The logic underlying such an association is obvious. We must not lose sight of the fact, however, that even where local politicians do acquire somewhat greater influence over the process of allocation of resources, their efforts are directed principally, at least as far as the secondary sector is concerned, to pressing demands for particular schools in particular localities, rather than pressing the demands of the département as a whole. In primary education important responsibilities are located on the bureaucratic side with the departmental educational office, and on the

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political side with the departmental council. There is at this level, therefore, some, if limited, correspondence between the territorial organization of power within the bureaucracy and within the political realm. Where secondary education is concerned, even this limited correspondence does not exist. The regional council has a purely advisory role, and in neither region 1 nor region 2 has the regional prefecture served as a channel through which substantial political pressure has been brought to bear on the process of allocation which, therefore, remains firmly in bureaucratic hands. For all these reasons, the rectors’ regional authority here seems very much intact although under rather more departmental pressure in region 2 than in region 1. Regional allocation to the départements of secondary teaching posts This is certainly the clearest case of a contrast between the two regions studied. Initiative and control are retained at the regional level in region 1 but have been ceded to the départements in region 2. The importance of the rector’s loss of control in region 2 is that he is not in a position, when difficulties arise in September, to deal with these by interdepartmental transfers of available teaching posts. This possibility is open and is exploited in region 1. Officials in region 2 regret the loss of authority which is formally theirs, but feel that realism requires them, in an age when decentralization and deconcentration are on everyone’s lips, to accept reluctantly the position as it stands. It is necessary to underline that this de facto transfer of responsibility for the allocation of teaching posts as between different schools is a transfer downwards within the bureaucracy. Although this is a case, like many of those described by Grémion, of departmental dilution of formal regional authority, the pressure tending towards the territorial fragmentation of authority is bureaucratic in origin and does not come from the political realm. Our examination of the relationship between regional and departmental levels in the allocation of building funds and personnel entitles us to conclude that the general picture painted by Grémion of weak regional authority constantly undermined by the defence of departmental interests by coalitions of bureaucrats and politicians from the départements is not the position in education. Authority formally allocated to the regional level is frequently successfully exercised at that level. Interestingly, where a departmental threat to regional authority does exist within education, it comes from within the bureaucracy rather than from politicians on the outside, and concerns the allocation of personnel and not the building programme. This is an important point because the involvement of departmental and regional prefects in decisions about school building priorities would seem, on the face of it, to give local politicians more scope for intervention in these questions than in the allocation of teaching posts. To put the matter even more strongly, it is precisely in those areas of

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decision-making where politicians are most assisted by the formal allocation of responsibilities that regional authority has been best maintained, and in those areas where the separation between politics and bureaucracy is more clear-cut that departmentalist pressures to dilute regional authority are more pronounced. In one sense, then, this is a qualification of Grémion’s general thesis, but in a more fundamental sense the specificity of power relationships within education, already referred to, confirms the framework of analysis and explanation which is employed by Grémion. Grémion and d’Arcy observed, when studying the field service of the Ministry of Finance, that the more a particular ministry is organized on a centralized basis, the less significant are likely to be the links between field services and the local political community, and the more important therefore to the proper working of the ministry become the internal relationships within the bureaucracy. In this sense, the Ministry of Education is rather similar to the Ministry of Finance and both are very different from the Ponts et Chaussées. It is, therefore, altogether consistent with Grémion’s observations to find that intra-bureaucratic relationships are more important in a highly centralized ministry than relationships between bureaucracy and the local political community. Grémion’s pessimistic view of the character of these intra-bureaucratic relations needs, however, to be qualified. He and his co-author clearly feel that the resistance by the field administrations to change, promoted by the centre, is a fundamental obstacle to successful modernization in many French public services. It has been argued elsewhere that the major obstacles to change in education do not seem to take this territorial form. Instead, the sticking point seems to lie in the relations between government and teaching personnel organized on functional, not territorial lines, but to argue this case more fully would take us beyond the limits of the present enquiry. CONCLUSION The first section of this chapter examined the relationship between the educational service and both regional and departmental prefects. We found that, even in those areas, such as the secondary and technical school building programmes, where the regional prefect possessed in law the last word, he tended to defer to the rector. We found rectors quite willing and able to assume the responsibility for dealing with political reactions, and for justifying the territorial implications of their decisions. We explained the reluctance of prefects to use their formal powers by pointing out that the decisions in question were unimportant for them and much more important for the rector. The technical superiority of the educational bureaucracy, and long-standing historically based sentiments of selfcontainment within the educational world, were also factors tending in the same direction.

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In the second part of the chapter our attention shifted from bureaucratic politics to the role of the elected politician. After describing the interaction between bureaucracy and politicians, this section was mainly concerned to show that the educational bureaucracy does not make use of notables as a means for controlling or rendering more predictable the political environment in which it operates locally. A number of crucial features of the relationship between the administration and local politics make any recourse to the concept of a notable quite inappropriate in this context. Rectors and their senior colleagues were confident of their ability to handle political relations directly. The world of local educational politics was too individualistic and too fragmented among teachers, parents and local politicians for any single politician or group of politicians to come near to monopolizing communication between the administration and its clientele. In the final section we asked whether regional authority is genuine or has been diluted by departmental particularism. In examining this question it was possible to compare the relative importance of internal and external constraints on regional authority, because the distribution of teaching posts is primarily of interest to those employed in education, whereas the location and size of the building programme is primarily of interest to politicians and parents. The orthodox view contained in the literature on French local politics stresses the power of the département and the weakness of the region. We found, for education, that regional authority was well able to defend itself against departmental particularism and that when departmental pressures emerged, they were more likely to do so through the operation of inter-bureaucratic politics than as a result of the activity of politicians. Our enquiries, therefore, strongly suggest that local educational politics remain a special case. We have tried throughout to maintain a proper balance between the general and the particular. At times we have been concerned with the peculiarities, or even insularity, of the world of French education. But, on a more general level, our purpose has been to contribute in some degree to a better understanding of the relations between bureaucracy and democracy and of the ways in which formally independent organizations can collaborate in policy implementation. The study has underlined the need to employ a more differentiated model of local politics in France than that to which we are accustomed. It is clearly necessary in the light of these findings not only to differentiate between the traditional rural model and the more modern urban model but also to differentiate between different public services. Many of these services, and this is particularly true of education, possess an important historical inheritance of attitudes and formal administrative arrangements which continue to have a direct impact on the character of local political activity.

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NOTES 1 2

3

4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

A.Savary, En Toute Liberté (Paris: Hachette, 1985). This chapter reports on research in two regions and two départements involving interviews with officials, politicians and representatives of the teachers’ unions. Some of the findings from this research have already been published in R.Duclaud-Williams, ‘Local Politics in Centralised Systems: The Case of French Education’, European Journal of Political Research, vol XIII, 1985, pp. 167–86. On interorganizational co-ordination in implementation, see K.Hanf and F.W.Sharpf (eds), Interorganisational Policymaking: Limits to Coordination and Central Control (London: Sage, 1978). M.Crozier (ed.), Où Va l’Administration Française (Paris: Editions d’Organisation, 1974). M.Crozier, Le Phénomène Bureaucratique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1963). On relations between the prefecture and technical ministries, see H.Machin, The Prefect in French Public Administration (London: Croom Helm, 1977). P.Grémion, Le Pouvoir Périphérique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1976). F.d’Arcy and P.Grémion, Les Services Extérieurs du Ministère de Décision Départementale (Centre de Sociologie des Organisations, 1969). P.Grémion and J.P.Worms, Les Institutions Régionales et la Société Locale (Paris: CNRS, 1968). D’Arcy and Grémion, op. cit. J.C.Thoenig, L’Ere des Technocrates: Le Cas des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris: Editions d’Organisation, 1973). F.Dupuy and J.C.Thoenig, Sociologie de l’Administration Française (Paris: Colin, 1983). My rejection of the pessimism to be found in much of the implementation literature is similar to that to be found in E.R.Bowen, ‘The Pressman— Wildavsky Paradox’, Journal of Public Policy, vol II, Part 1 (1982). R.Duclaud-Williams, ‘Centralisation and Incremental Change in France: The Case of the Haby Educational Reform’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. XIII (1983). R.Duclaud-Williams, ‘Teacher Unions and Educational Policy in France’, in M.Lawn (ed.), The Politics of Teacher Unionism (London: Croom Helm, 1985). Director in Ministry of Education, Paris, December 1983. Official, region 1. Official, region 1. The rector in region 2. Ibid. C.Grémion, Profession-Décideurs-Pouvoir des Hauts Fonctionnaires et Réforme de l’Etat (Paris: Gauthier Villars, 1979). Official in the regional prefecture of region 1. P.Hall, ‘Policy Innovation and the Structure of the State’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 466, March 1983. Dupuy and Thoenig, op. cit. M.Kesselman, The Ambiguous Consensus (Knopf, 1967). Official, region 2. Secretary general, département 1. Official, region 2. Grémion, Le Pouvoir Périphérique, p. 212. Duclaud-Williams, ‘Centralisation and Incremental Change in France’. Grémion and Worms, op. cit. Official, département 2. Secretary general, département 1. Ibid. Secretary general, region 1. Official, region 2.

9 Challenging the idea of centralized control The reform of the French curriculum in a European context Bob Moon

INTRODUCTION This chapter explores the formal and informal structures and processes that control educational systems. Three countries, England, France and the Netherlands, provide illustrative case studies for the analysis that follows. England because a traditionally devolved form of control has, over the last decade, been wrestled through legislation into an ostensibly centralist structure; France to reflect in some measure the reverse process, a highly centralist system moving in certain sectors and amidst a complex constellation of political forces in a more decentralist direction; and finally the Netherlands, a federal, decentralized system that has essentially retained these characteristics through a turbulent period in European educational politics. These are the formal, surface ways in which description and analysis are presented. The thrust of the argument presented here is to challenge the utility of such models for understanding the way in which systems presently work and, therefore, the way they may be made to work more effectively in the future. All these cases offer distinctive but related vignettes to illustrate how complex the workings of formal systems are. If the debates about who controls the educational system, and who controls the core of the educational system, the curriculum, are to move beyond empty rhetoric, some reconceptualization of the myriad influences at work needs establishing. This is particularly important if the social, economic and technological challenges facing European countries are to find an adequate response. And it is particularly significant in those countries of central and eastern Europe where the opportunities exist, for just a few years, to rethink and rebuild radically reformed systems of education. THE STRUCTURE OF EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS: A WESTERN EUROPEAN DIMENSION Description of the control of education is almost wholly conceived of in terms of nation states. Accounts of educational change are most

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commonly framed in national terms. Educationalists and sociologists, like historians, have been drawn to the study of national institutions and to observing the attempts to resolve national problems. It is easier and more convenient, the material can be more readily collected and synthesized, it is politic and it has become a tradition. The nation is an important social unit and the most obvious one to study. People live in nation-states and possess national consciousness. Moreover, as Shafer suggests, ‘as practitioners of the scientific methods, scholars are bound to look for distinctions, for differences of kind, level and function; and nationality is the most significant contemporary group distinction’ (Shafer 1955: 265). Categorizations of educational systems, therefore, inevitably cluster national systems into groups formed around criteria that reflect the complementary nature of countries within a specific category and the distinctiveness of these systems from others. Political and bureaucratic structures have often been seen as significant determinants of the models evolved. A series of publications in the 1970s and 1980s pursued this theme and in particular the nature and degree of centralized or decentralized control characteristic of one country or another. An OECD (1972) publication, for example, suggested that the contrast between centralized and decentralized systems seemed an obvious indicator of style, both with regard to education in general and curriculum development in particular. Three years later in a further report specifically examining curriculum development the author submitted that, ‘for obvious reasons the techniques and organization which a country chooses for curriculum development are closely related to the systems for controlling the public curriculum which have been inherited from the past’ (OECD 1975:15). A third publication, a major study in four volumes of educational innovation, relates centralization within school systems to authoritarianism and suggests that the creation of an ‘innovative climate’ requires a more decentralized decision-making structure, particularly within centralized systems (OECD 1973:254). A Council of Europe report (Ruddock 1976) used the term confined to describe systems such as those in France and Denmark where development is effectively and predominantly initiated and controlled centrally by the Minister of Education. This is contrasted with profuse systems such as those in England and Wales or the Netherlands where decision making occurs at a variety of levels. Numerous other publications pursue a similar theme, with Watson (1979), writing prior to the Education Reform Act in England, contrasting the very definitely central control and direction of the French with the piecemeal approach to policy development in England. And Nicholas is able to assert that ‘the high degree of centralization in the organization of the French educational system makes it possible to generalize about future developments with some confidence and accuracy’ (Nicholas 1983:25).

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National traditions, therefore, are seen as highly significant in understanding control and change and this is best exemplified in the wideranging study by Margaret Archer (1979) on the origins of four European education systems (Denmark, England, France and the USSR). She uses the concept of centralized or decentralized systems as the focus not only for a historical appraisal of how systems change but also to predict how they might develop in the future. Archer’s thesis has been extensively reviewed. She suggests that the different forms into which educational systems evolve reflect the ways in which successive groups shook off the constraints of religious control. Thus centralized systems developed where freedom from the old orthodoxy was achieved through political action and the restriction of the activities of the church by law. Decentralized systems, however, were more likely to originate where financially powerful groups, disadvantaged by religious control, established educational institutions outside the influence of church or state. The analysis leads Archer to suggest that in centralized systems, given the overriding importance of political manipulation, it is possible to describe educational interaction as a political story with character, plot and outcome which could be told chapter by chapter for a country such as France. The significant dimension of educational change, therefore, is the changing interrelationship between the political structure and the structure of educational interest groups. This contrasts with decentralized systems where ‘there is no historic saga but only a vast collection of short stories in which some of the same characters reappear and some of the same problems are tackled by different personae in different ways’ (Archer 1979:396–7). In centralized systems, therefore, policy-dictated changes are usually slow and cumbersome, representing a punctuation of the educational stasis, whereas interaction in decentralized systems takes place at three levels and schools, community and nation intertwine and influence one another to produce a seamless web of changes (ibid. 617–18). There is some concluding speculation as to whether a degree of convergence in the period following the mid 1970s is beginning to emerge. For Archer, however, ‘the prospects for change are that future educational interaction will continue to be patterned in dissimilar fashions in the two systems and that the products of change will reproduce the main features of centralization or decentralization’ (ibid. 790). It is a long and detailed argument and not without subsequent criticism (e.g. King 1979; Warwick and Williams 1980; Salter and Tapper 1981; and Anderson 1986). The paucity of comparative studies of educational change, particularly in the school curriculum, has restricted the terms in which the actual workings of educational systems can be understood. The merits of centralized or decentralized control, however, have featured large on the political agenda for educational reform in most European countries. The issue is likely to gain even greater attention as the move to economic union

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among EEC countries and perhaps the wider European community throws up new dimensions to both these concepts. It is becoming increasingly important, therefore, to ground the rhetoric of political and bureaucratic debate in a more rigorous analysis of how systems work in practice. The story of the introduction of ‘new maths’ into the European curriculum and the recent cross-national record of governmental intervention to introduce whole curriculum policies provide starting points for such an analysis. THE RELATIONS OF CHANGE: INTRODUCING NEW MATHS INTO THE EUROPEAN CURRICULUM ‘New maths’ was a global phenomenon which in popular folklore has been linked to the late 1950s resource explosion in the USA that followed the launch of the Russian Sputnik. The origins of new maths, however, go back to before the Second World War. An international and secretive group of academic mathematicians adopted the group pseudonym Bourbaki, named after an unsuccessful nineteenth-century Swiss general, to advocate an entirely new approach to mathematical understanding. Titles such as ‘Set Theory’ and ‘Topological Vector Space’ —two sub-divisions of their first collective publication—give a flavour of the ideas that would eventually permeate into the classrooms of the very youngest children. It was Bourbakists who were to play a major role in promoting reform at university and then school level both through activities within specific countries and international conferences. OEEC, the forerunner to OECD, organized one of the most famous at the Cercle Culturel de Royaumont, Asnières-sur-Oise in France, in 1959, in which Jean Dieudonné, a leading Bourbakist, made a strident plea for change with the emotive title ‘Euclid must go’. International pressure for reform was then sustained through OECD and UNESCO conferences and seminars for almost a decade. The impact of these events was to be felt in every west European country. Three countries, England, France and the Netherlands, provide an illustration of how in the primary school sector events unfolded. France France, more than most countries, is seen to characterize the centralized highly bureaucratic model of educational control. Archer, for example, suggests that ‘curriculum development is not readily distinguishable from curriculum specification and control’ (Archer 1979:358). Becher and McClure (1978) reflect this view and see in France a sophisticated organization staffed by a ‘cadre’ of highly trained inspectors with strong ideas about how the curriculum should develop and clearly defined administrative techniques to carry out these ideas. The overall control of the school curriculum in France lies firmly, they point out, with the Minister of Education. These perspectives give credence to the oft quoted

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but mistaken portrayal by Hippolyte Taine of the education minister who could look at his watch and observe at a certain hour that ‘in a certain class all pupils in the Empire are interpreting a certain page of Virgil’ (see Ambler, Chapter 7 this volume). The reform of mathematics teaching, however, illustrates a much more complex interplay of events. Pressure for reform came initially from Bourbakist university mathematicians (Lichnerowicz 1960) closely allied with subject teacher associations. In the late 1960s and early 1970s extensive take-up of new mathematics was reported across the country. Newspapers and journals carried regular features on the reform, and international figure such as Z.P.Dienes, the inventor of the ‘coloured rod’ material, appeared regularly on television. Independent regional mathematics centres were also established. Textbook sales figures, difficult to obtain for reasons of commercial confidentiality, provide one significant marker of take-up (contrary to popular belief, textbooks are not centrally prescribed in the French system). One leading publisher produced both a traditional and modern primary series and sales indicate the dominance of the new maths approach (see Table 9.1). The formal record of the centrally controlled curriculum, however, gives no indication of the ferment into which the mathematics curriculum had been thrown. In the écoles élémentaires the guidelines in force throughout the 1960s were those established in 1945 and for calcul (arithmetic) rather Table 9.1 Publishers’ records showing dominance of new mathematics approach 1968–72

* Actual ‘sales’ figures not available.

Table 9.2 Sales figures for two French primary school textbooks 1977–81

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than mathematics. These were ignored as ministerial and inspectorial control became marginalized by the strong alliance between university mathematicians, teacher subject associations and publishing interests. Over the next few years, however, controversy surrounding the reform raged ceaselessly in pamphlets and through the press. Explicit links were made between the need to modernize and the changing lifestyles of young people. ‘Le cauchemar des maths modernes’ (the nightmare of modern maths) was the title of an article by Roger Apery, a university mathematics professor in L’Express of 6 February 1972. In his view ‘pornography, drugs, the disintegration of the French language, upheavals in mathematics education all relate to the same process; attacking the central parts of the liberal society’. The reaction against new maths was soon to take root. Publishers were, again, busy anticipating to the trend (Table 9.2). New guidelines, provisional in 1970 and introduced with the full force of state intervention in 1980, marked a rejection of much of the Bourbakist inspiration of a decade earlier. In the decade of subject-based reform, however, up to the point in the late 1970s when central authority was reasserted, the traditional system for development and control was bypassed. Groups outside the formal political and bureaucratic structures were able to wield significant influence. As Pierre Grémion, in an influential study, has suggested, ‘the central administration does not suppress all local power. You will find particular types of power, sometimes obscure, often in a parallel form but sufficiently distinctive to counterbalance the power of the summit’ (Grémion 1976:12). An important assertion reinforced by Sheriff, who in analyzing recent research observed that, ‘the study of the state bureaucracy in France has long been dominated by the Faculties of Law with the result that the traditional literature provides extensive accounts of what ought to happen rather than what does happen’ (Sheriff 1979:212). Historians likewise have cast doubts on the way formal structures should be interpreted. Theodore Zeldin suggests that, ‘the idealizers put forward theories as to what France ought to represent, and by force of repetition these theories have sometimes been accepted as descriptions of what France in fact was. The history of France’s education produces the same conclusions as the history of its politics, that the theories propagated do not provide an accurate guide to what actually happened’ (Zeldin 1980:198). England and Wales In England and Wales similar events were unfolding in parallel with new maths as one of the most significant features of a reformed primary school curriculum. The Plowden Report of 1967, a celebration of the progressive primary tradition, gave unequivocal support to a development in mathematics that ‘may prove to be the beginning of a new era associated

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with the establishment of the “Schools Council”’ (para. 653). And the Report goes on to suggest that this was one reform to disprove the maxim that rapid revolutions are not common in English education. In adopting this ambitious perspective the Committee was responding to the impact of a major national reform project for primary mathematics funded by the Nuffield Foundation. As in France, university mathematics played a leading role working in close alliance with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate. The status of the Nuffield Foundation created a focus of attention for DES, HMI, subject associations, industrialists and university mathematicians (Cooper 1985) that was centralist in its influence despite the lack of formal authority and control. In the first decade of reform it is difficult to define events in primary mathematics other than by reference to Nuffield and its charismatic director Geoffrey Matthews (later the first Chair of Mathematics Education at Chelsea College) (see Broadfoot 1980; Hewton, 1975; Howson, 1978; and Howson et al. 1981). Hewton has analysed sales of the materials, with publishers as in France playing a major role in dissemination (see Table 9.3). The story, however, again as in France, takes a different direction in the early 1970s. Sales figures for materials in both countries show a peak around 1970. In England the election of a Conservative government coincided with increased media interest given to polemicists who in a series of pamphlets, The Black Papers, attacked all forms of progressive education. New maths represented a prime target. Black Paper Two, under the title ‘The mystique of modern mathematics’, suggests: ‘Officially it was quickly decided that we must keep up with the Russians at all costs… the first step was to change the basis of the subject. Almost overnight the word “arithmetic” disappeared from the timetable, being replaced by that much more glamorous term “mathematics” …the opposition to the new maths by some sum loving teachers was quickly overcome. In education if you want promotion, you must not question the suggestions from the experts, however dotty they may seem’ (Critical Quarterly Society 1970:104). The reference to ‘officially it was decided’ illustrates the anger felt by Black Paper authors about the collusion amongst different interest groups (DES, inspectorate, teachers’ unions) to legitimatize progressive approaches Table 9.3 Sales of Nuffield project materials 1967–72

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to the curriculum. In 1972 the first Nuffield project finished and as in France and other European countries the momentum began to falter. The Times Educational Supplement commented (8 February 1974) on the ideological confusion surrounding maths reform. ‘The Aunt Sally of modern maths seems to have provided a focus for the abuse waiting to be handed out and has rapidly established itself as one of those panaceas/ pariahs that stalk the world of educational innovation… modern maths is probably getting it in the neck for many other things —open plan primary schools, new methods, the younger generation and the long hair that coincides with it.’ These and other criticisms were contributing to the pressure that almost inevitably led to an interventionist and central governmental response. The Netherlands In the Netherlands, the Dutch word verzuiling, a derivative of zuil meaning pillar, is used to express the concept of pluralism or separate development. The division of Dutch society into such pillars (sometimes taken as a reference to the various schools of advice offered by the followers of St Simeon Stylites, hermits who squatted out their lives at the top of pillars) has long historical roots dating back to the break between the Protestants of the United Provinces and the Catholics of the Spanish Netherlands in the sixteenth century. This is represented in educational terms by separate Catholic, Protestant and secular arrangements for schooling and supporting administrative agencies. Formal curriculum decision making at the time the ‘new maths’ reforms were being considered across Europe was diffused amongst a myriad of national and sectional institutions (see OECD 1975:25). The Netherlands par excellence, therefore, is seen as decentralist in character. As early as 1961, however, national commissions, independent of the different curriculum development agencies, were established to devise and implement a programme for modernizing the secondary school mathematics curriculum. New maths primary textbooks, translated from French, Swedish and English, began appearing from 1966 onwards. University mathematicians, such as Hans Freudenthal, began campaigning for a national programme of modernization. In 1968 almost daily references appeared in the press. De Volkskrant and De Gelderlander, for example, on 22 and 27 November respectively, surveyed the international situation and pointed to the dangers of the Dutch being left behind. The outcome of the pressure was the founding of a central and national agency, the Instituut Onwikkeling Wiskunde Onderwijs (IOWO) based at the University of Utrecht. Lijphart (1977) uses the term ‘consociational’ to describe democracies where political leaders using a variety of strategies (grand coalitions and mutual vetoes to give two examples) bring stability to an otherwise divided

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Table 9.4 Sales figures for a Dutch traditional arithmetic-based textbook series

political and social structure (see also Dix 1980). During this period there appears to have been an understanding both among politicians, and between Parliament and those watchful of religious freedom that a national programme was acceptable. In the Dutch context the high degree of centralized and bureaucratic interpenetration of formally separate agencies has also been observed by Brenton (1982). In a study of social service provision he points to the impact of growing financial dependency on traditional patterns of control and authority. IOWO was to be a relatively short-lived experiment. Founded as the clamour for reconsidering the reforms was reaching a peak in neighbouring countries, its purpose was soon to come under political and media attack. One newspaper just a year after the Instituut was founded (Trouw 2 February 1972) talked of the chaotic situation in mathematics education and warned ‘Watch out for Wiskobas’ (a new primary maths scheme). De Volkskrant (6 February 1974) warned of the chaotic situation facing schools, with mathematics singled out for specific attention. In the period after 1973 press reporting is wholly hostile. By the end of the decade, after a bitter political struggle, the government withdrew funding from IOWO and established a mathematics unit in a new central agency. Textbook sales of a traditional, arithmetic-based series (sales figures for new maths texts could not be released) show, as in France, a peak towards the end of the 1970s (see Table 9.4). Overview In none of these countries do these accounts of curriculum change conform to the traditional patterns of control and development. The most systematic example of a central, administrative response is represented by the work of the Dutch modernizing commissions which led eventually to the founding of a central, national agency for curriculum development and eventually its incorporation into a new organization responsible for all areas of the school curriculum. In France the ‘manual’ of 1945 in no way represented what was happening in classrooms in the mid to late 1960s. In England and Wales, in contrast, a collaboration between national inspectorate, central adminstrators and a prestigious private foundation created

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the means for providing a national response where no means for this had previously existed. The conclusion emerges that in the events surrounding these curriculum reforms, ‘traditions’ of control in no way determined how particular countries responded to the pressures for reform. The formal procedures for consultation and decision making appear to be only one of a range of influences that needed accounting for by those promoting change. If development through the official system suited, it was adopted; if it inhibited, it was discarded and alternative strategies adopted. Mathematics education reform and the institutes and agencies which accompanied it spawned a whole new professional group of mathematics educators, with figures such as Freudenthal and Matthews playing a leading role. The characteristics of those attending international mathematics conferences reflect the evolution towards a new professionalized grouping. In Royaumont in 1959, 39 per cent of the delegates came from higher education (all bar the British representative from mathematics departments). At Berkeley, California in 1980, this figure had risen to 76 per cent but with only 4 per cent representing mathematics rather than the newly established ‘mathematics education’ departments. In Royaumont 35 per cent of those attending were teachers, in Berkeley 6 per cent. The institutionalization of mathematics education through the early 1970s, a period when higher education was expanding in all three countries, subtly changed the structure and composition of the groups who had earlier played the leading role in orchestrating change. Advocacy for research rather than reform increasingly characterized conference proceedings and journal publications. The groups, therefore, upon which the reform movement had been built represented transitory alliances. In the changing circumstances of the 1970s these either dissolved or acquired new objectives. In summary, therefore, it appears that the interaction of different groups, and in particular the professionalized groupings around subject areas and curriculum movements, is critical to the understanding of the change process. The established patterns of control were radically challenged by a new network of influence in the period after Royaumont. The story of new maths can be seen as the public and private operation of interdependent ‘segments’ of influence competing within institutional arrangements for power and for access to resources. There is, however, no one particular focus of power and influence that overrides the others. Whilst the universities clearly had a major impact on reform, this high status position was used, or later abused, by groups according to their self-interest and according to the group allegiances established at the time. Yet again, therefore, it is necessary to turn to the view that, just as traditional structures could be used or ignored, and just as project development could be embraced or rejected, so too the high status role of

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the universities in determining what happened in school classrooms varied from one period to another. There are significant similarities across each of the three countries. The original impetus for modernization, the organization by university mathematics of semi-official groupings to force the pace of change, the marginalization of formal structures and processes of consultation and decision making characterized the first phases of reform. The orchestration of international support and opinion became a significant means of developing national projects and sustaining the entrepreneurial activities of publishing houses. Mathematics reform in each of the countries then became embroiled in a wider-ranging debate about the quality and standards of schooling across the whole curriculum. Towards the middle and end of the 1970s each country began to move towards legislative responses to the pressure for reform of a very different character. The form that this took, which will be considered in an integrated way across all three countries, provides further evidence against which the assumptions about the writings of educational systems can be analysed. It also provides a further indication of the influence of cross-national movements in the European educational context of the 1980s. THE CENTRALIST AND LEGISLATIVE MOVEMENT TOWARDS CURRICULUM REFORM IN THE 1980s In each of the national studies a growing political disillusion with reform has been noted. Textbook sales of new mathematics series dropped markedly throughout the 1970s. Media reporting became almost wholly hostile. Political intervention is recorded through parliamentary debates in all three countries. In France Le Figaro (21 October 1980) heralded the new 1980 primary mathematics regulations (the first full changes since 1945) with the headline ‘Maths: retour à la raison’, and alongside, a cartoon shows a harassed schoolteacher pointing to the blackboard sum ‘2–1=’ and exclaiming to dispirited looking pupils, ‘Soyons encore plus clairs: je vous donne deux bonbons, vous en mangez un. Il reste?’ The build-up to the new proposals was marked by the resurgence of inspectorial intervention. In 1980 ministerial and inspectorial control over the new regulations was more evident with a number of interest groups relegated to the more token advisory groups appointed by the minister. In England and Wales mounting pressure on educational standards was symbolized in the historic intervention by the then Prime Minister James Callaghan in a speech at Ruskin College, Oxford, where he talked of ‘concern about the standards of numeracy of school leavers’ and went on to say that he was ‘inclined to think’ that there should be a basic curriculum with universal standards. It was a theme that was pursued by

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the Conservative government elected in 1979 through a series of curriculum papers published in the early 1980s. In mathematics a committee of enquiry, established by the Labour government to rebut cross-party concern (the Cockcroft Committee) reported in 1979 and proposed an ‘inner core’ of essential mathematics that should be taught in all schools. In France the new 1980 regulations were introduced with an extensive, centrally organized programme of regional meetings and seminars. In England and Wales the Cockcroft recommendations were supported by designated funding for the specialist updating of both primary and secondary teachers. The apparent excesses of the new maths programmes attracted political and media attention in the Netherlands during the latter part of the 1970s. De Volkskrant, originally a Catholic newspaper but now a widely read left of centre publication sometimes referred to as ‘the social workers daily’, gave extensive and critical coverage to the reforms—for example, on 6 February 1974 the headline read: ‘Chaotic situation facing schools, Maths becomes stumbling block’. In each of the three countries such concerns helped provide the backcloth against which centralist and highly interventionist policies began to be formulated. Again the parallel process of development, what Ambler (See Chapter 7, this volume) has called ‘common experiences’, across countries began to shape policy options. Pressure groups played a significant part in promoting the case for interventionist policies across the whole of the school curriculum. Mathematics was frequently cited to illustrate the excesses of the 1960s. In France, whilst the Minister of Education in the new socialist government, Alain Savary, battled with the issue of private Catholic schooling that ultimately led to his downfall, others within the socialist party were planning a new and radical initiative. Through the latter part of 1983 and early months of 1984, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, working with a small group of advisers within the context of his club de réflexion ‘République moderne’, developed a range of policies to foster ‘republican élitism’ with a reaffirmation of the value of rigorous, orthodox study in the basics throughout primary and secondary schooling. It is now clear that well before Savary’s final demise the decision had been taken that Chevènement would succeed. His political advisers, led by two former Maoists, Philippe Barret and Jean-Claude Milner, comprehensively established a reform programme with a populist appeal. Milner’s book De l’école, published in 1984, provided a key text for the overall design, and Chevènement’s taking the educational world by storm was seen by one of the more conservative teachers’ union leaders, Guy Bayet, as providing ‘le plus beau virage depuis 1968’ (Nouvel Observateur 4 January 1985). Other teachers’ union leaders were less impressed, but Chevènement appealed through widespread media exposure over their heads to the public generally. Opinion polls (Le Point September 1985) showed substantive support.

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In adopting this tactic, Chevènement was working outside the normal consultative structure of interest groups, what Milner in his book had called the triple alliance of the corporation (teachers’ unions, the educational bureaucracy and progressive Christians) —a grouping that in his view had rendered educational change slow and cumbersome. In England a remarkably similar process characterized the slightly later period from 1986–88. There is an intriguing parallel in the way Chevènement’s socialist kitchen cabinet on one side of the Channel formulated proposals similar (albeit with different purposes) to Mrs Thatcher’s advisers in Downing Street). A more shadowy Professor Brian Griffiths fulfilling the same role as Barret in France orchestrated the inflow of advice and ideas from the range of right of centre pressure groups (Hillgate, Centre for Policy Studies, Institute for Economic Affairs) that had published numerous pamphlets and tracts in the early part of the 1980s advocating a return to traditionalist values in the curriculum and the dismantling of the local authority monopoly control in state education (the Hillgate group’s 1986 publication Whose Schools? provided a blueprint for the 1988 legislation that was to follow). John Quicke (1988) has analysed the processes leading up to the quickly taken government decision to introduce a centralist and statutory National Curriculum in the period shortly before the 1987 General Election (see also Chitty 1988, Johnson 1989). He describes the tensions between the neoliberal and neo-conservative elements within the Conservative party and its advisers, between those who saw market principles extending across the full spectrum of educational agents and those who saw defence of traditional and nationalist standards within a managed system as the direction in which policy should be pursued. Despite these internal tensions, the style that evolved for the curriculum was interventionist and regulatory. As in France, the reforms represented a sharp break from the corporate policies that had been distinctive of post-war educational politics, including the first phases of the Thatcher administration. The change is starkly illustrated by these short quotations, the first from Better Schools (DES 1985), the much published document that marked the high spot of Sir Keith Joseph’s ministerial career at the Department of Education and Science, the second published after the 1987 election, from the consultative document on the curriculum (DES 1987). The Secretary of State’s policies for the range and pattern of the 5 to 16 curriculum will not lead to national syllabuses. Diversity at local education authority and school level is healthy, accords well with the English and Welsh tradition of school education, and makes for liveliness and innovation. (DES 1985:4)

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The Government has announced its intention to legislate for a national foundation curriculum for pupils of compulsory school age in England and Wales…Within the secular national curriculum, the Government intends to establish essential foundation subjects— maths, English, science, foreign language, history, geography, technology in its various aspects, music, art and physical education…the Government wishes to establish programmes of study for the subjects, describing the essential content which needs to be covered to enable pupils to reach or surpass the attainment targets. (DES 1987:35) In France Chevènement pursued his policies vigorously. Le Monde de l’Education (March 1985:8–9) reports his new instructions to inspectors to oversee teacher quality in the teaching of the basic subjects rather than make general observations about the system as a whole. Instructions were also issued to the presidents of curriculum commissions set up by his predecessors to make sure that the emphasis would be on the acquisition of knowledge rather than explorations of any idealistic teaching approaches (Nouvel Observateur 4 January 1985). In England, despite overwhelming objections from educationalists (Haviland 1988) the proposals for the curriculum passed unaltered into the statute books through the 1988 Education Reform Act. Implementation was immediately vigorously pursued through DES working parties and the establishment of new national bodies directly appointed by the minister and responsible respectively for Curriculum and Examinations and Assessment. In centralist France the political, as opposed to bureaucratic, centre reasserted influence. In decentralist England a very similar process, characterized by similar strategies for outmanoeuvring the normal range of interest groups, was put in place. The rhetoric was on whole curriculum reform, raising standards (in England), democratizing excellence (in France) and modernization (in the Netherlands), all objectives necessitating governmental intervention. Overall the theme of quality reverberates through political advocacy for new directions and new approaches. It was in many ways a more manageable aim for government policy. The terms in which it was defined could be adapted to resource constraint. For socialist administrations it also achieved what Wise (1979) has termed ‘goal reduction’. Government could appear within the terms they defined to be making progress in ways that previous commitments to ideas of equity, access and opportunity had proved singularly disappointing. In the Netherlands similar forces were at work. The formation of a right-wing coalition government comprising the Christen Democratisch Appél (a grouping of three Christian Democrat parties) and the

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conservative-liberal Volksparty voor Vriheid en Democratie’ opened up education policy to influence from business interests who had been campaigning for educational reforms and increased governmental intervention. In 1979 a working paper on ‘determining, measuring and improving quality’ was produced (van Bruggen 1987), which led in 1982 to a national testing programme first in Dutch and then extending over the next few years to a range of other subjects including mathematics. In 1985 a Primary Education Act with a number of curriculum regulations was followed by the more prescriptive Education Bill of 1987 proposing a national core curriculum of fourteen subjects and an assessment programme linked to attainment targets; a development that paralleled similar proposals in England. Proposals such as these were not unique to European countries. Across most of the industralized countries of the world the 1980s saw national reappraisal and the development of national policies to combat what was variously termed educational decline or crisis. The publication in the USA of the 1983 ‘Open letter to the American people’, from the US National Commission on Excellence in Education A Nation at Risk, attracted worldwide attention for its indictment (p. 5) of the ‘mediocre educational performance’ of the American school system. In Japan, Prime Minister Nakasone’s ‘Extraordinary Council on Education’ has been seen by some commentators (Horio 1988:376) as an attempt by business interests to impose an even more directive and unaccountable policy-meeting structure than the highly centralist if rather more paternalist Central Council of Education controlled by the Ministry of Education. A right-wing think tank, ‘The Kyoto round table’, is widely reported as inspiring a number of the reform proposals. Again these developments show how educational systems, very different in structure and historical lineage, can be worked where orchestrated reform is vigorously pursued. The increasingly centralist intervention of government in France, England and the Netherlands shows a striking homogeneity given the very different traditions from which each emanated. Numerous observers (Westbury 1984, Apple 1986, Altbach 1986) have explored the underlying social and economic forces that have led in the last decade to motivate the new style of legislative and centralist intervention. These observations of the way in which different educational systems responded to these pressures point to the difficulty of sustaining the characteristic of systems in terms such as centralized or decentralized. Over significant periods of time changes have occurred, working through different institutional arrangements, without reformers necessarily feeling the constraints or controls of the systems in which they moved.

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AUTONOMY AND CONTROL: THE EVOLUTION OF EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS The difficulties of accommodating specific accounts of change processes within prevailing assumptions about the structure of formal systems is reflected in a number of studies in other areas of social and public policy. As in this chapter, the juxtaposition of apparently centralized and decentralized systems occupies much attention. Interest in the centralized structure of French government and administration has attracted considerable attention. The fate of reform programmes initiated by socialist governments between 1981 and 1986 have stimulated particular concern over a number of years and across a range of administrative contexts. Ashford (1982) has pursued a central concern of this chapter, the reliability of the concepts of centralization and decentralization for understanding change. His analysis points to the dangers of allowing traditional and formal procedures to obscure the way systems work in practice. In a comparative study of French and English bureaucracies, he concluded ‘that central-local relations, viewed through the multidimensional components of the subnational system are paradoxically more formal and rigid in Britain, a country often admired for its pragmatic politics. In France [however] the subnational system is more important to the political system and the formalities of administrative and political behaviour can easily cloak the more flexible and diverse ways that political action have devised to influence each other’ (1982:281). Ashford has been accused of pushing his conceptual model too far, a criticism similar in kind to the criticisms made of Archer’s over-arching theoretical structure. Sharpe (1983), for example, suggests that the ‘incredible fragmentation’ of French local government set alongside the closely intertwined structure of local, regional and national office holders (a consequence of the cumul des mandats—or the holding of multiple offices) creates a symbiotic relationship of mutual dependency that Ashford’s categorization ignores. Overall, however, he sees Ashford’s study as ‘an important corrective to many of the standard assumptions on the nature of French central-local relations’ (Sharpe 1983:132). Duclaud-Williams (1981; 1983; 1988) has also questioned many of the general assumptions about French educational administration. He sees the system as having its own pattern of inter-bureaucratic and politico-administrative relations, and questions, therefore, the validity of applying general French models to this very specific policy area. He is also critical of the concept of change within the French administration advanced by Michel Crozier (1964) in The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. In this work Crozier described organizational change as a process in which long periods of routine during which nothing alters are interspersed with crises, and it is these crises which have to bear the entire burden of adaptation. Although Crozier’s name does not appear in

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the index, Margaret Archer (1979) has incorporated this perspective into her model of change within centralized systems. For Archer, ‘changes are evidenced and documented at the centre by laws, decrees and regulations…education can change very little in the centralized system between such bouts of legislative intervention. Patterns of change, therefore, follow a jerky sequence in which long periods of stability (i.e. changelessness) are intermittently interrupted by polity directed measures. This has been termed the Stop-Go pattern’ (Archer 1979:617). Massey (1986), looking at governmental policy development in France, is critical of attempts to premise analysis on formal, legalistic descriptions of the French state, and she points to the rich variety of sources of local power and autonomy that stand in opposition to the centralist model of the authoritarian Gaullist Fifth Republic. In her terms, ‘given the importance for public policy making of external pressures, conflicting interests, local and regional factors, the variation in the state-group’s relations, financial conditions and changes in all these variables over time, and between policy sectors, any attempt to discover a single French policy style is doomed to fail’ (Massey 1986:425; see also Wilson 1983). Finally Ambler (1985) shows how effectively one interest group, in this instance the teachers’ union, the Fédération de L’Education Nationale (FEN), could obstruct Savary’s reform proposals, and he points in a later paper (see Chapter 7, this volume) to the parallels that could be drawn with Sir Keith Joseph’s difficulties in circumnavigating the interests of teachers’ union and local authority influence over the same period of time. These examples illustrate the difficulties of existing over-arching theories of change of the sort advanced by Archer. Within the political sociology of education, Smith has argued that rather than trying to understand change through any particular theory, ‘better understanding may be gained through the more modest development of models that are wide in scope, are flexible and whose usefulness depends on how well they contribute to understanding complex relationships over limited periods of time’ (Smith 1989:176). In the concluding part of this chapter, therefore, drawing on the evidence from the curriculum reforms described, some indication of the points from which such models could be established are explored. Two areas merit particular attention: the evidence of local influence and control, and the activities of interest groups in initiating and sustaining reform movements. First there is clear evidence of local autonomy, even control, within systems that would fall within the centralized model of policy formulation and decision making. In the French mathematics reforms, the local, school-based authority to purchase new textbooks provided an important means of bypassing central directives. Parallel evidence for this exists in other areas of curriculum.

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Hörner (1981), for example, describes how, despite the dissolution by ministerial diktat of a reform commission for science, the members reconstituted themselves and set about publishing textbooks to ‘salvage as much as possible’ of the original proposals. Broadfoot et al., following a comparative study of the roles of French and English teachers, have shown how ‘the actual constraints to which French teachers are subject, and the controls which are exercised over them, are relatively limited’ (Broadfoot et al. 1988:282). In looking at the working of the French system, it is possible to see how, contrary to popular perceptions, significant decisions about the curriculum can be made at the level of the schools or the commune. The Maire, for example, with the conseil municipal can decide whether to fund the teaching of languages other than German or English in the local collèges. In the early part of the 1990s, countries such as England and the Netherlands have embraced more centralized models for administering the curriculum. It will be important to monitor the extent to which these inhibit local autonomy. Overall, however, the linear model of the centralized system is inadequate for understanding the system in action and the way its processes promote or impede reform. Second and more significantly, therefore, it is necessary to look at the activities of interest groups. In the examples of subject-based reform in the 1960s and legislative intervention in the 1980s, the activities of interest groups are prominent. University mathematicians were instrumental in promoting change in each of the three countries. Key individuals as well as the groups they led played a leading role in working the system to their ends. The tactics adopted, however, varied from country to country and were always strategically distanced from traditional structures of control and decision making. Freudenthal in the Netherlands wooed government interests to establish his own central agency for developing the mathematics curriculum. Matthews in England worked within a private foundation although with the very public support of DES administrators and the inspectorate. French university mathematicians such as Lichnerowicz pursued independent approaches supported by wide media coverage. In the first subject-based phase of reform university mathematicians wielded significant influence. To achieve influence, however, required acknowledgement of and accommodation to other groups. Alliances had to be created, sometimes involving the central administration or the inspectorate but not always so. Publishing interests were significant in all three countries. These groupings, however, were temporary reflections of a particular configuration of circumstances. As conditions changed, so new alliances were established. Publishers in France were only willing to back reformers working outside government guidelines for a relatively short period of time. A volatility of interaction between interest groups and between groups and government is characteristic of developments in each of the

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countries. Freudenthal, the recipient of major Dutch government finance in 1970, had all funding withdrawn within a decade as business interests rather than professional educators gained influence. The inspectorate in France, bypassed by the reforming zeal of university mathematicians in the 1960s, painstakingly reasserted influence throughout the 1970s. The reforming zeal of Margaret Thatcher’s third administration led to the exclusion of all the significant educational interest groups that had played a significant role under previous Labour and Conservative administrations. The evidence from each of the countries in both phases of curriculum reform points to the importance of interest group strategies for determining the way in which reforms were instituted. Where circumstances are appropriate, for example in a period of constrained resources within a centralized structure, the traditional structure could be embraced. Chevènement’s reforms in France provide an example. In the same system, however, twenty years earlier, it was more expedient to bypass the formal structures to an extent that the study of the formal decrees would give a wholly inaccurate picture of reform. Strategic decisions about how to proceed became crucial to the success of interest group activity. The process therefore of orchestrating (see Fullan 1982) key parts of the formal and informal network of interests within educational systems merits particular attention. Where reform initiatives developed, one group appears to have played a leading role in orchestrating support. University mathematicians were significant in the Dutch and French context in the 1960s. In England civil servants and the central inspectorate were equally influential although working through the Nuffield Foundation network to establish a centrally directed curriculum project. In the 1980s political ‘think tank’ groups closely allied to ministerial or prime ministerial interests have played a similar role. Closer examination, therefore, of these processes is important in developing a richer appreciation of the way in which educational systems promote or respond to change. New parameters will need to be established, and some constructs, however firmly embedded in current understandings, will require substantial modification. Most significantly, given the focus of this chapter, the idea that the way in which events unfold within educational systems is predicated on the formal structural properties of the system have assumed mythical status. Attempts at school reform in Britain can be seen as markedly similar to developments in other European countries. Explanations must extend beyond national boundaries. As Kogan (1983:83) has eloquently pleaded, we should guard against taking ‘centre-local relationships as processes and structures in themselves. They are all transitive concepts requiring objects, namely the work and life of prime institutions, if they are to become meaningful’.

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REFERENCES Altbach, P.G. 1986. ‘A Nation at Risk’: the educational reform debate in the United States. Prospects XVI (3): 337–47. Ambler, J.S. 1985. ‘Neocorporatism and the politics of French education’. West European Politics 8(3): 23–42. Ambler, J.S. 1987. ‘Constraints on policy innovation in education: Thatcher’s Britain and Mitterrand’s France.’ Comparative Politics October: 85–105; Chapter 7, this vol. Anderson, R.D. 1986. ‘Sociology and history: M.S.Archer’s social origins of educational systems’. European Journal of Sociology 27(1): 149–60. Apple, M. 1986. ‘National reports and the construction of inequality’. British Journal of Sociology of Education 7(2): 171–90. Archer, M.S. 1979. Social Origins of Educational Systems. London and California: Sage Publications. Ashford, D.E. 1982. British Dogmatism and French Pragmatism. London: George Allen & Unwin. Ashford, D.E. 1988. ‘In search of French planning: ideas and history at work’. West European Politics 11 (3): 150–61. Becher, T. and Maclure, S. 1978. The Politics of Curriculum Change. London: Hutchinson. Black Paper Two 1970. London: Critical Quarterly Society. Brenton, M. 1982. ‘Changing relationships in Dutch social services’. Journal of Social Policy 11(1): 59–80. Broadfoot, P. 1980. ‘Rhetoric and reality in the context of innovation: an English case study’. Compare 10(2): 117–26. Broadfoot, P., Osborn, M., Golby, M. and Paillet, A. 1988. ‘What professional responsibility means to teachers: national contexts and classroom constants’. British Journal of Sociology of Education 9(30): 265–87. Chitty, C. 1988. ‘Central control of the school curriculum 1944–87’. History of Education 17(4): 321–34. Crozier, M. 1964. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. London: Tavistock. DES 1985. Better Schools. London: HMSO. DES 1987. The National Curriculum 5–16: a consultation document. London. Dix, R.H. 1980. ‘Consociational democracy’. Comparative Politics 12(3): 301–21. Duclaud-Williams, R. 1981. ‘Change in French society: a critical analysis of Crozier’s bureaucratic model’. West European Politics 4(3): 235–51. Duclaud-Williams, R. 1983. ‘Change and authority in France: a reply to Warwick’. West European Politics 6(2): 163–4. Duclaud-Williams, R. 1988. ‘Policy implementation in the French public bureaucracy: the case of education’. West European Politics 11(1): 80–101. Fullan, M. 1982. The Meaning of Educational Change. New York and London: Teachers College Press. Freudenthal, H. 1978. ‘Changes in mathematics education since the late 1950s— ideas and realisation, the Netherlands’. Educational Studies in Mathematics 9: 261–70. Grémion, P. 1976. Le Pouvoir Périphérique. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Haviland, J. 1988. Take Care Mr. Baker. London: Fourth Estate. Hewton, E. 1975. ‘Nuffield mathematics (5–13): a profile’. International Journal of Mathematics, Science, Education and Technology 6(4): 407–30. Hillgate Group 1986. Whose Schools? London. Horio, T. 1988. Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.

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Hörner, W. 1981. ‘The relationship between educational policy and educational research: the case of French curriculum reform’. European Journal of Science Education 3(2): 217–21. Howson, A.G. 1978. ‘Changes in mathematics education since the late 1950s: ideas and realisation, Great Britain’. Educational Studies in Mathematics 9: 183–223. Howson, A.G. et al. 1981. Curriculum Development in Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutin, R. 1974. L’Enseignement des Mathématiques. Paris: Velta. Isambert-Jamati, V. 1977. ‘The role of the press in the French educational debate’. Compare 7(2): 105–111. Johnson, R. 1989. ‘Thatcherism and English education: breaking the mould or confirming the pattern’. History of Education 18(2): 91–122. King, E.J. 1979. ‘Social origins of education systems: a review’. Comparative Education 15(3): 350–2. Kogan, M. 1983. ‘The central-local government relationship—a comparison between the education and health services’. Local Government Studies 9 (1): 65–85. Lichnerowicz 1960. L’Enseignement des Mathématiques. Paris: Delachaux and Niestle. Lijphart, A. 1977. Democracy in Plural Societies. New Haven CT: Yale University. Massey, S. 1986. ‘Public policy-making in France: the art of the possible’. West European Politics 9(3): 412–28. Milne, J.C. 1984. De l’École. Paris: Seuil. Moon, B. 1986. The New Maths Curriculum Controversy: an International Story. Lewes: Falmer Press. Nicholas, E.J. 1983. Issues in Education: a comparative analysis. London: Harper Row. OECD 1972. Styles of Curriculum Development. Paris. OECD 1973. Case Studies of Educational Innovation. Paris. OECD 1975. Handbook of Curriculum Development. Paris. Quicke, J. 1988. ‘The New Right and education.’ British Journal of Education Studies 36(1): 5–20. Ruddock, J. 1976. The Dissemination of Curriculum Development: Council of Europe. Slough: NFER Publishing Company. Salter, B. and Tapper, T. 1981. Education, Politics and the State: The theory and practice of educational change. London: Grant McIntyre. Shafer, B.C. 1955. Nationalism: Myth and Reality. London: Gollancz. Sharpe, L.J. 1983. ‘Review article: dogmatism and pragmatism in France and Britain’. West European Politics 6(1): 129–33. Sharpe, L.J. 1987. ‘The West European State: the territorial dimension’, West European Politics 10(4): 148–7. Sheriff, P. 1979. ‘French administration: sanctified or demystified?’ West European Politics 2(2): 262. Smith, D.M. 1989. ‘Unintended transformations of control over education: a process of structuring’. British Journal of Sociology of Education 10(2): 175–94. US National Commission of Excellence in Education 1983. ‘Open letter to the American People’ in A Nation at Risk. Washington. Van Bruggen, J.C. 1987. ‘Survey of trends in curriculum reform in the Netherlands’ (unpublished mimeograph). Enschede, National Institute for Curriculum Development (SLO). Warwick, P. 1982. ‘Authority and the study of French politics: a response to Duclaud-Williams’. West European Politics 5(3): 286–97.

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War w i c k , D . a n d Wi l l i a m s , J . 1 9 8 0 . ‘ H i s t o ry a n d t h e s o c i o l o g y o f education’. British Journal of Sociology of Education 3: 333–41. Wa t s o n , J . K . P. 1 9 7 9 . ‘ C u rr i c u l u m d e v e l o p m e n t : s o m e c o m p a r a t i v e perspectives’. Compare 9(1): 17–33. Westbury, I. 1984. ‘A Nation at Risk’. Journal of Curriculum Studies 16(4): 431–45. Wilson, F.L. 1983. ‘French interest group politics: pluralist or neocorporatist?’ American Political Science Review 77(4): 895–910. Wise, A.E. 1979. Legislated Learning: the bureaucratisation of the American classroom. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Zeldin, T. 1980. France 1848–1945 Intellect and Pride. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

10 Decentralizing the education system A test for the regions Hélène Hatzfeld

To review the effects of the decentralization of secondary education in France five years after its inception, several approaches are necessary. Two aspects of the decentralization of state education are examined. Firstly it is seen as a matter of public policy, centrally promoted by the Ministry of the Interior, designed to meet several national objectives through statutory regulations as to the division of responsibilities between central and local authorities. The first step was to assess the policy’s implementation through a survey: What would be the time scale for the application of these regulations? What form should they take? What changes would be required? What are the appropriate local agencies? And what variations would be required to reflect regional differences? Nevertheless in transferring certain powers to local agencies, it needs to be asked to what extent genuine local policies would result. Given the legal and financial constraints on those with local responsibility, as well as their own interests and capabilities, how independent could their policies be? Who makes the decisions and how? The fact that decentralization of the education system was brought about through such a prolonged parliamentary procedure also gives rise to several questions: What were the aims of the legislators in passing this law? To what extent did they coincide with those of the government? And consequently, what contradictions and inconsistencies are contained within this law? Hence a second approach, based mainly on the analysis of the parliamentary debates which gave rise to the passing of the law. THE REGIONAL SURVEYS The study is based on a survey carried out between 1989 and 1990 in four regions: Brittany, Ile-de-France (notably Paris), Languedoc-Roussillon and the Nord-Pas-de-Calais. This sample is structured to take account of national diversity.

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Economic and social diversity Whereas the North is characterized by a long industrial tradition, Brittany and Languedoc-Roussillon are influenced by rural traditions. In the Ile-deFrance it is the tertiary sector of the economy which is dependent on education. Educational provision, traditionally strong in the South and in Brittany, has been weaker in the North for a long time. Today the regional education authority of Lille comes second regionally in terms of pupil numbers, but the proportion of the age group taking the baccalauréat is below the national average. Another important economic variable influencing education policy is the unemployment rate: Languedoc-Roussillon has one of the highest rates in France but in the Ile-de-France it is considerably lower than the national average. The choice of regions for the survey also takes into account administrative diversity. Ile-de-France is unique in having three administrative authorities, one of which (Paris) is also that of the capital where the Ministry of National Education and the other ministries concerned are to be found. Added to this is a measure of political difference: Ile-de-France and Brittany are both led by right-wing coalitions (each of very different composition), which contrasts with the Nord-Pas-de-Calais with a socialist majority. However in 1986 when the decentralization process was due to start, Languedoc-Roussillon underwent a political change from socialism to a UDR-RPR-FN coalition. Finally Brittany was included in the survey to take the influence of private education into account. The results of this survey, although not covering every possibility, lead to further questions about the methods of implementation and the effects of a very distinctive public policy. This law offers a relatively flexible framework because it is supported for many different reasons and implemented by different agencies with different and sometimes contradictory interests. To what extent have the regions taken advantage of this opportunity to set up some genuine local education policies, relaxing administrative and financial restrictions and establishing their own autonomy? What role have these different parties adopted? Based on the evidence of the survey it is necessary now to try to define the corresponding models of intervention before considering the more longterm effects of this law. THE OBJECTIVES The law of 25 January 1985 is the result of a long procedure dotted with political and parliamentary events. The Act reveals several compromises between participants with different interests and a wide mutual distrust.

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Who does this cover? First, two ministries: that of the Interior and that of State Education with their central offices, but also their branch offices dealing with local matters and involved in the local establishment. Second, the elected representatives, especially councillors (both regional and general). In addition to these parties directly involved in the decentralization process, we must also include the school principals concerned as well as all the ‘clients’: teachers, parents and students. The former private bills and the debates on the bills of 1985 clearly express a diversity of objectives. Introduced as an amendment to the original Act of decentralization of 1982, the Act of 1985 deals with the transfer of responsibilities to local communities, but at the same time addresses other points: the reform and fundamental revision of the education system and the democratization of state education. The aim of the Ministry of the Interior and Decentralization, which drafted the law, is to devolve certain responsibilities to local communities. This challenges the ‘principles of cultural homogeneity and administrative centralization’ which underly the republican tradition of education. These principles differentiate between what belongs to the State per se and cannot be devolved, and that which the State can relinquish without harm. Thus Pierre Joxe has defined education as ‘an area of shared responsibility’ but where the ‘State naturally retains responsibility for the public service’. This transfer of responsibilities can be compared with the measures taken by Jules Ferry in the early days of the Third Republic: ‘We must establish a system for secondary education comparable to that which the Third Republic instituted for primary education: with the départements responsible for the collèges, the regions for the lycées and the villages for the local primary schools’. In addition to this partial transfer of responsibilities there is an administrative requirement: to devolve management responsibility with a view to improving the efficiency of the education service. The theory and practice is not new but forms a complementary objective to decentralization. This is all the more important as the weight of central bureaucracy can make the system unmanageable. In introducing a study of the different levels of devolution, the School Inspectorate considers it necessary to introduce, ‘rather than a definition of powers, changes to the chain of command within the management of the state education service, without which the education inspectorate would be unable to carry out its legal duties’. This point is particularly interesting. It highlights the contradiction between the interests of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Interior. Devolution therefore has a double purpose: inside the Ministry of Education it is to do with improved efficiency, but outside it is to prepare the administrative structure to take over its responsibilities through other agencies. This proved to be a crucial factor in the implementation of the decentralization programme and in the division of powers.

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FINDING NEW SOURCES OF FINANCE The cost has been the most worrying element of the decentralization process for MPs. The rationalization of central expenditure for education is certainly an objective implicit within the reform. There are three pressing reasons: to accommodate the increased numbers of students and adapt the courses on offer to meet the new demands; to renovate thousands of school buildings, which are either very old (in some cases centuries old), poorly maintained or lacking essential safety equipment (particularly many collèges built in the 1960s according to standards which are now obsolete); and finally, to revive a policy of new building construction, especially for the lycées. ADAPTING STRUCTURES TO NEED The predicted growth in the school population stems from both demographic and political factors. The impact of demographic growth itself is limited, primary education remains relatively stable and the collèges are seeing a slight reduction in their numbers. The lycées however show the opposite trend. The social demand for long-term study is extremely significant. It reflects only partially a response to unemployment. (There are other more deep-seated factors to explain the predicted increase in the numbers attending lycées and the post-baccalauréat courses.) The target defined in June 1985 by Jean Pierre Chevènement, Minister of State Education (that 80 per cent of any age group should reach the level of the baccalauréat) not only acknowledges an existing trend but also goes further by adopting it as a policy. But adapting facilities to need is not just a question of numbers. It also presupposes the development of courses relevant to the employment market of the future; it presupposes planning to indicate the section of education to be expanded, discontinued or changed. A first step was taken at national level with the overhaul of professional diplomas (CAP and BEP) and now demands more detailed local planning. This is one of the instances where local initiative can play a part as envisaged by the law of 25 January 1985. DEMOCRATISING STATE EDUCATION Three different conclusions emerge from the debate on the powers of local education authorities. The first emphasizes improved management by local communities rather than increased efficiency of the state system or the rationalization of state functions. ‘In sympathy with the changes in our society’, declares Alain Devaquet, former Minister of State Education, ‘decentralisation should encourage the formulation of a coherent regional policy…within which education policy would be a central and dynamic element.’

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In this sense, democratization of education is synonymous with local policy making. This presents two points of difficulty: first the competence of the appropriate local authorities to implement such policies, and second the justification for this. The justification rests on two arguments: the elected representatives are ‘closest to the demands which have to be satisfied’ and it is they who are ‘accountable to public opinion’ through the ballot box. This theme, inspired by the principle of subsidiarity, is developed in another concept of democracy in education. This would stress user involvement in the decision-making process. But who are the users? The concept is vague, differs from speaker to speaker and between one suggested amendment and another, between teachers and staff, parents and even students themselves. Finally, the democratization of the education system poses a third type of problem: that of school autonomy. This autonomy is anticipated ‘as far as teaching and education is concerned’ and is limited by the objectives, the curriculum and the exams set nationally. But should it be extended to other areas? Should schools be given real autonomy such as that enjoyed by the universities? Certain MPs have argued for this to be the case: ‘Can one really move towards school autonomy’ one of them worries, ‘when they are subject to detailed control in staffing and teaching management?’ From the point of view of the Socialist government, these objectives, as expressed in parliamentary debate, are highly controversial and cannot really be understood unless placed in a wider context of the control of state education. This is illustrated by the controversy surrounding private education. For many MPs, especially of the RPR and the UDF, behind the decentralization debate lies the idea that it is the whole system that must be reformed and overhauled. So the decentralisation of state education is seen implicitly by some as a lever for more fundamental transformations, the main ones being decentralization of teaching and recruitment of teachers. ‘When speaking of decentralisation in education we obviously mean decentralisation of teaching and not only of funding…. Decentralisation would only really have a chance if the newly acquired local power could be used to determine the curriculum and recruitment of teachers.’ These are the different points of view taken on the law as shown by the parliamentary debates. But it is evident that, more fundamentally, this law tries to address other problems, linked to the operation of the State itself. TO RESOLVE CERTAIN CONTRADICTIONS OF THE STATE SYSTEM The parallel drawn by some Socialist MPs with the era of Jules Ferry is interesting in so far as it goes. Mainly ideological in content, the secular

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republican view does not recognize the fundamental difference between these historical situations. The widespread development of the welfare state, increased availability to the population in general of activities and services for a long time reserved for an élite, and the great increase in the economic and financial burden of the welfare state since the end of the nineteenth century hamper its efficiency. So the aim to democratize education and ensure a minimum level of education, equivalent to that instituted by Jules Ferry, for future generations exposes the contradictions of the systems. What personnel, what structures, at what level, what powers and resources are required to meet the objective set? What will become of the 20 per cent (one in five young people!) not included in this target? How can the State face up to the demands that it helped to develop itself? These are some of the questions that the lycéen movement of autumn 1990 raised indirectly. The way in which the State controls these contradictions in education is not just a matter of politics and economics. More fundamentally, it calls into question the operation of a whole section of the state system. So the law of 25 January 1985 seems at one and at the same time to be the solution of the then Socialist government to remedy the current and future ills of the education system and to improve it in line with its political objectives, and to be the foundation from which very different policies can be developed. These policies can be examined from two different points of view: first, the implementation of public policy, and second, the procedures used to grant autonomy to local authorities. First we will examine the way in which the law has effected the transfer and division of powers. THE LAW: A LAYERED DIVISION OF POWERS The powers are shared out at local level according to a hierarchical and geographical division, known by the Anglo-Saxons as the ‘layers of a cake’. Thus:

• • • • •

the town council has responsibility for primary and nursery schools the General Council for the collèges the Regional Council for the lycées and similar state schools the State retains responsibility for the education service, that is, the training and pay of teachers as well as drawing up the curriculum and its supervision local authorities are responsible for the construction and maintenance of school buildings

This layering of powers is quite close in concept to that long practised by states with federal constitutions: powers considered to embody the unity of the nation (foreign policy, currency, etc.) revert to the central state,

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whereas state governments are entrusted with local tasks (housing, social affairs, etc.). The imbalance between the range of competences granted, and the many significant problems of the authorities with responsibility for resolving them, tends to confuse this division completely and render it ineffective. This difficulty is illustrated by the way in which the regions are responsible for planning the use of amenities, time and space, and the staffing at each institution—expressed in a Schema Prévisionnel de Formation (SPF) —and planning the investment necessary for putting all this into effect—expressed in a Programme Prévisionnel des Investissements (PPI). If the Regional Council rejects the SPF for the lycées it must also reject that for the collèges, who are the responsibility of the départements and as some are on shared campuses they may also involve the town council. THE EXTENSION OF COMPETENCE: A MORE COMPLEX MODEL There are three areas in which the extension of competence appears particularly clear: the field of teaching, higher education and private education. The area of teaching was the first responsibility assumed by the Regional Council even before the law was passed. Five years after the drafting of the very first SPF, there is no doubt that through them an expansion of regional powers is gradually taking place. Indeed the proposals to open vocational routes in lycées and set up new training courses are not just a question of numbers but involve a whole plan of action: mobilization of the necessary technical and human resources, prospects in higher education, adaptation to the employment market, and so on. So some regional authorities, such as the Ile-de-France, have not hesitated to demand real teaching autonomy, particularly the right to award diplomas and to recruit teachers. This extension of competence to teaching relies on a very strong common understanding of the necessity for consistency between the ‘decision-makers’ and the ‘players’. The refusal of the local communities to serve as ‘cash registers’ for the State is so far insufficient for us to be able to speak about ‘local education policies’, but it opens up the possibility. Regional councillors are aware that ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. Linked to this, the extension of competence beyond the limits set by the law is also happening at the level of higher education. Interest in higher education is most significant in the North and in the Ile-de-France. New avenues are opened up with the introduction of post-baccalauréat and BTS classes in lycées; the intention to allow the technological bacs to qualify for university entry, and not just as training leading directly into employment, is

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illustrated by plans to offer new subjects in the first and second years of university. What is more, town and country planning requires the involvement of the region in higher education. Thus the official report on development of the Paris region, drawn up by representatives of the State, the region and the City of Paris, plans the creation of 7 to 10 new universities by the year 2000. ‘We hope to be really involved in the general outline of the development of the region, in the choice of subjects and where they should be available’, announced the President of the Regional Council of the Ilede-France. ‘The regional council, which agrees the SPF, is ready to set up a new university.’ Through this extension of responsibility, every opportunity exists to develop real local education policies, linked to others like employment and development, which are also up for grabs. The third area of extension of responsibility poses a different problem. It appears clearly in Brittany in the way private education is supported. This is almost wholly Catholic in character, and provides schooling for almost as many pupils as state education. Controversies about financial support to aid the building of private collèges which has been provided by some General Councils shows how legislation can be misinterpreted, but also to some extent shows its inadequacy and lack of consistency: This extension of competence by the local authorities tends to make the intended division of powers more complex. The layer-cake model therefore becomes more like a ‘marble-cake’, where State, local authorities and other agencies involved in the decentralization of education overlap in terms of powers and funding, and to some extent compete with each other. On the other hand, within this restructuring of powers, one begins to see the possibility of local policies which are to a degree autonomous. In the end, the way in which (‘decentralisation reinforces Catholic education in Brittany’) illustrates not only the perverse effect of the law, but also a constant and considered process at work. To what extent, therefore, does the law of decentralization leaves scope for local education policies? TOWARDS LOCAL EDUCATION POLICIES? Traditionally it is difficult to speak of French local politics in contrast to what has for a long time been the case in the United States or in Germany. The package of measures, however, taken towards decentralization since 1982, together with the election by universal suffrage of the Regional Councils, have gradually changed the nature of the issue. The decentralization of education may be administratively similar to other sectors, such as health and social services, but it has more political significance; it is very topical with the electorate which maintains a strong interest in the subject. One must, therefore, examine the circumstances in which the local authorities can initiate policy. We

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will define a local political initiative as ‘the ability to take decisions, to provide resources, to control the political and administrative elements’ which goes beyond simply carrying out the instructions of the State. It assumes a degree of flexibility in relation to a number of financial and technical restraints, and it also assumes that there are interest groups towards which the potential beneficiaries of the policy in question acknowledge a certain legitimacy. The financial card It is the handing over of financial powers rather than the formal transfer of administrative responsibilities that is the driving force for decentralization and the increase of regional power. This is due in no small measure to the legislation which ensured that where the regions took on additional responsibilities they received commensurate financial resourcing from the State. Inevitably the level of resource became problematic and regions assumed responsibility and therefore greater autonomy to provide additional funding. The overall resourcing of education, combining central and regional funding, is now significantly greater than it was five years ago and is now financed through taxation and through loans. Education has thus become an essential element of the regional budget. But the effort made to raise additional funds varied greatly from region to region, depending on the need for investment and the political importance given to the development of education. Thus LanguedocRoussillon is the region which spends the least on education, followed by Brittany, while the Nord-Pas-de-Calais spends more than the average, and Franche-Comté holds the record. Financial flexibility in relationships with the State has thus become considerable. A certain autonomy of expertise In the local implementation of a public policy such as education, various technical constraints limit the potential freedom of those responsible for carrying out the policy. These constraints affect the statistics, particularly the demographic ones, which form the basis of investment planning, as well as the evaluation of maintenance or renovation work, or the construction and safety standards for schools. On all these technical aspects, the Ministry of Education has put its services at the disposal of the regions: estimates of school provision are provided by INSEE and Directors of Education, and central or academic technical services, such as the Centre de Conseil Technique aux Collectivités Territoriales. The attitude of the regions towards these technical services varies greatly. Whereas in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais there is close collaboration between the Education Office and the region, other regions, like the Ile-de-France, refused the technical services of the Ministry of Education. The Regional

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Council set up a permanent statistical unit led by a statistician: he depends on the services of the IAURIF (the Institut d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme de la Région Ile-de-France) and conducts a major survey every year. This independence is also marked by the adoption of a system of annual estimates expected to be more efficient than that traditionally practised by the Education Offices. This region has available exceptional expertise which makes it largely independent. Other regions, with less resources, have also acquired a certain amount of room to manoeuvre. The Regional Council of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais has set up since 1985 the Department of Engineering ‘to diagnose, analyse, assess, organize into a hierarchy, classify, construct, expand, maintain, plan and co-ordinate all operations of the Regional Council’. The ability of a local authority to promote its own policy rests in the main on the enthusiasm of the people conceiving it and putting it into effect. A paradox: regional expertise from the State At the regional level, one must distinguish between two types of agent with responsibility for promoting education policy: the elected representatives and the experts. It is obvious that the influence of the elected representatives is of the utmost importance. At two opposite poles are the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Languedoc-Roussillon. In the first case, the role played since the beginning by Michael Delabarre as President of the Education Commission, then as President of the Regional Council is decisive, particularly in the conduct of the negotiations which led up to the SPF. In the second case, the delaying tactics of Jacques Blanc, President of the Regional Council, and the rivalry between district presidents makes the mayor and General Councillors the main decision-makers at their own particular level. As for the experts or administrators, it is important to recognize that the top managers are products of the state education system. In the Ilede-France, the Director of Education, who, after having succeeded three predecessors in 1988, really launched the planning of education, is a former Inspecteur Général de L’Administration de L’Education Nationale (IGAEN); he is supported by a general secretary previously working in state education research. The same situation is to be found in Brittany: since 1986, the President of the Education Commission and the President of Education for the Regional Council are in the one case IGAEN and in the other former director at the Ministry of Education. The position of such people in key posts may be explained in part by the convergence of two factors: the vital need for the Regional Councils to find competent managers able to compensate for the inexperience of the regions in this matter, and the desire of certain government education officials to put ideas into practice very different from their original intention. Two problems result from this: first, to what extent does it

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favour regional autonomy in decision-making and, therefore, the development of regional education policy? And second, ‘how can we hope to see government officials employed for their experience acting differently to what they have done during their whole career?’ Can they be the agents of change or are they sworn to reproduce the ideas and structures of the state education system? Paradoxically, within the narrow confines of the powers given to the regions, it seems that these managers drawn from the top élite may have managed to set in motion a force for change in education, but that is only a first step. The answers to these questions will in the main determine in the years to come the development of local education policies at regional level. In short, the implementation of such policies depends on the attitude of the office holders. The attitude of the office holders: the increase in training requirements If one seeks to decide on the details of local education policies, one cannot simply justify them by citing an ‘education need’ from the national plan. One must ask in more detail if a social demand has been expressed, and if so, of what type, knowing that often the demands are not formulated as such. In this case we cannot say that precise demands for primary education were registered at regional level. The Schemas Prévisionnels de Formation are based on the notion of need. But of which need? How are they assessed? On reading the successive SPF and their updates, it appears that this notion of ‘need’ is, in fact, quite flexible. It already implies a response of both qualitative and quantitative format: type of lycée to build, where it should be sited, number of pupils, etc. But this notion of need also functions as a creator of these needs. Indeed the decision to install a lycée in a town which was lacking one until that point and had to resort to a school bus service, immediately increases the demand for long-term education and creates a higher need for education. ‘We believe that it is need which creates the thing, but it is often the thing which creates the need’, explains the secretary general of the direction of school affairs of one region, paraphrasing Nietzsche. The lycéen movement of autumn 1990 perfectly illustrates the effects of this mechanism. Access to long-term education for many young people, who five years before still saw themselves limited to the prospect of a professional diploma like the CAP or BEP, generates many new ‘needs’: creation not only of new lycées planned by the SPF but other lycées which would relieve the pressure on existing lycées; demand for proper study conditions; demand for rights of expression, to hold meetings, and so forth. It is this area of needs creating the multiplier effect which makes local education policies possible. There is some room to manoeuvre, mainly financial, and to a lesser extent technical, created by the Regional Councils. But they differ greatly, depending on the resources provided by the region and the attitude

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towards education. So there are different ways of implementing the law of decentralization which we will now attempt to describe. DIFFERENT WAYS OF IMPLEMENTING THE LAW As the survey only focuses on a limited number of regions, the following attempt at classification obviously does not claim to be representative of all France. The analysis aims to draw out the most typical points from each example, those which, in theory, seem to be the most significant problems of policy implementation for local authorities. Providing an initial framework for interpretation, this classification needs to be completed and refined by testing it on other regions. What are the criteria of classification? They derive from the earlier information. First the relative speed with which the regions put the law into effect; but also as a consequence, the relative importance of the extra powers acquired. On the other hand, the role played by each local agency is of the utmost importance: in particular, is it the elected political authority, the Regional Council, which plays a decisive role, and to what extent is this influenced by the dominant political complexion of the region? Or has the education establishment retained overall control of school business in general? What is the position of the regional prefect in all this? Finally, the links between agencies must be taken into account: the marginalization, indeed partial exclusion, of some, or the opposite effect of ongoing consultation? ‘AN EDUCATIONAL NON-REGION’ Languedoc-Roussillon is a typical example. In this type of region, the central role continues to be played by the national Education Office, which may even have acquired some new responsibilities. This may be primarily due to the inertia of the Regional Council, and may be called ‘control by default’, even though the first steps were taken to set up an education department in 1989. If the State retains overall control over education policy in this type of region, it is through the branch offices of the Ministry of Education, while those of the Ministry of the Interior and particularly the regional prefect are not involved. Indeed the refusal of the region and the departments to put into effect certain clauses, such as the development of the PPI, means that there is no point in the statutory intervention of the prefect. There are two points to note about the links between local agencies in this case. First there is much conflict: conflict between the Regional Council, the General Councils and the town council, aggravated by the effects of the law on the accumulation of elective mandates; political opposition and personal rivalry between councillors, but also between the staff of departmental and regional services. On the other hand, there are many checks within the system. Indeed the weakness of the Regional Council is compensated by the

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power of the mayors and general councillors. They are at the centre of ‘decision-making’ and play a co-ordinating role (which belongs in principle to the prefects) through informal channels. So, in this example, there is only a superficial debate, effectively excluding mayors of small towns, heads of schools, and union or association representatives from the Academic (or departmental) Councils of the Ministry of Education. The main theme, then, is that of diversification, of gaining advantage through significant building development (such as a prestigious lycée in the village), of the appearance of new forms of ‘clientelisme’ aimed at school heads. This first type of local intervention may be characterized as a form of marginal extension of power deriving from decentralisation of state education. To the officers of the state—here the Ministry of Education—technical competence; to the local councils, the determination of need. This mutual recognition of powers between officers and representatives results in the local adaptation of the central policy and at the end of the day no change. An ‘educational choice’ on the boundary of legality Brittany is an example of this type of region. Here, there is no doubt that, as in the previous case, the national Education Office continues to play a dominant role. This is based on breadth of experience, on the positive defence of the rights of the Education Office against possible interference by councillors, and on strong links with school heads, who in effect share with the Education Office staff common centralizing secular values, preferring traditional educational practices to unfamiliar ones. This especially allows the Education Office to exert influence in the sense of ‘retaining most of the power for the State as far as education is concerned’. In this model, the Regional Council takes an interest, takes political action, in particular providing access to independent planning expertise, and encourages discussion. However, here one should speak of ‘education options’ rather than of a local education policy, with a comprehensive and coherent vision of objectives and resources. Nevertheless, some of the subsidies go beyond what is allowed by law: assistance to private schools seems to be a diversion of public funds. The final point about this example is that it is characterized by ‘tacit consensus’. This does not mean there are no disagreements, but that they never seem to be very significant. The Education Office, the regional prefect or, in some cases, the departmental prefect, exercise an unseen influence for conciliation and arbitration. This consensus rests much on the presence of a strong representative of the Ministry of Education in the regional decision-making process. In fact, the only way differences can be aired is largely formal: that is, through the academic and departmental meetings of the Ministry of Education, advisory meetings whose constitution and practice encourage ‘dramatic confrontation’ not discussion.

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AN EDUCATION POLICY DOMINATED BY THE REGIONAL COUNCIL The third distinct type included in the survey is the Ile-de-France. The main characteristic is strong regional leadership; the intention to implement a real education policy is affirmed and rests on the creation of real areas of independent action. The provision of important financial resources, employing its own expert staff and the use of private consultants, the setting up of a small education department, similar to an ‘Administration de mission’ (project team) and strongly linked to the schools by its origins and its way of working, create the conditions for such a policy. But its only source is the Regional Council and more precisely its executive. Indeed, the second characteristic of this type of local education policy is the almost total absence of dialogue. The services of the national Education Office, although available, were not used, the General Councils and the City of Paris were not greatly involved in the development of the SPF, and the Academic Councils of the Ministry of Education serve no more than elsewhere as places of dialogue. This system of relationships has two effects. It tends to create a situation of real conflict. And above all it encourages the setting up of methods of unofficial and secret negotiation. Fear of clientèlisme between school heads and councillors is voiced in many regions, so too, it seems, as in this case, when an independent regional policy distinctive from that of the State is followed. So we now see school heads using a new skill with greater or lesser determination: that of ‘tendering’, preparing technical and financial specifications for different potential service providers (Education Office, regional, general and town councillors, guild chamber, etc.). Thus various networks of more or less powerful contacts develop, mainly dependent on the personality of the school head and the type of school, within which circulate information, requirements and decisions. The result of the Regional Councils taking the lead is the sidelining of the Education Office staff: unable to adapt to the new situation where the administration and the regional councillors maintain direct contact with school heads, deprived of their traditional activity of planning, they play only a secondary role. On the other hand, the only authority at local level which can exert a counterbalancing influence to a degree is the Regional Prefecture. But this role of restraint, of a check against the Regional Council exceeding its powers or taking decisions which are of a purely electioneering character is limited and more nominal than real. Based on the control of certain areas of uncertainty, where compromise slips in, the role of the prefect, both in the sense of agent of the State and local player, seems to be more a matter of tinkering, of stalling, of ‘looking for ways to change the basics to avoid referring back to the centre’. It is this regulatory practice

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which makes possible the implementation of a local education policy. But to the local agencies, it is seen as a sign of weakness on the part of the State. A LOCAL EDUCATION POLICY BASED ON PARTNERSHIP The fourth model is similar to the previous one because of the influence of the Regional Council and the extent of its financial and technical autonomy. The initiative launched by the President of the Regional Council in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais put the region in a position to develop a local education policy, and this also shows the aspiration of the region to extend its powers. But this example is clearly different from the previous one because of the importance and the nature of the role of the Education Office. This ‘plays the decentralisation card without ambiguity, putting its public service experience at the disposal of the region and at the same time providing the necessary information’; moreover the intervention of the Education Office in the plan of action bears witness to some innovative capability. We end up with a situation of synergy and complementary effort rather than of a division of responsibilities. This model is thus characterized by the integration, in the main, of the branch offices of the state departments with a local network of linked functions. Neither the Education Office nor the Regional Prefecture uses its rights of control and decision-making in an obstructive way. This development of local education policy rests on a more developed and distinctive dialogue than the previous cases. In particular, the academic and departmental councils of state education, although also serving as a forum for some union representatives, appear mainly as places to exchange views. The autocratic tradition of decision-making gives way to a more collective commitment to policy. It seems in this case that this local feature may be partly explained by the different political personalities: the strong presence of the Socialist party among the councillors as well as the part played by the idea of ‘democratic participation’ in most decisions and in the building of a coherent local policy. As only a short time has passed since the application of the law and because such a small number of regions were included in the study, one cannot draw definite conclusions, but some of the effects can be seen clearly. It is with these effects and the questions they raise that we shall finish this study. A DEGREE OF CHANGE? THREE KINDS OF OUTCOME A financial dynamic The financial question reveals the ambiguity of the law. The expected effect, more implicit than explicit, lies in the relaxing of financial costs

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exclusively borne by the State. From this study it cannot be denied, and some of its practical consequences are the object of harsh criticism from teaching unions and particularly officials of the Education Office: local autonomy has increased regional taxes. It is a considerable ‘unexpected benefit’, however, according to the heads, who can finally take on the renovation of buildings or provide themselves with teaching equipment in addition to that provided by the State. But the perverse effects of this regional financial dynamic are clearly perceptible although still difficult to measure. This regional financial dynamic may persist without challenge and so legitimize an increase in the powers of the Regional Councils. In certain regions education can become a political lever. On the other hand, it is certain that not all schools and not all the regions benefit equally from the financial effects of decentralization: to what extent are these disparities accentuated at the end of the day by the new methods of finance? It is still too early to say. It is clear that in the event of crisis, as shown by the lycéen struggle of autumn 1990, the demonstrators turn towards the State: even if Regional Councils and Education Offices have been given the job of making an urgent inventory of needs and priorities, it is the State which set up the ‘emergency plan’ and which decided, after bitter controversy, the subsidies granted to the regions. Sharing and expansion of responsibilities If the division of responsibilities according to a layered model is one of the main intentions of the law, its application is far from as clear. There are many reasons for this, and we have ended up with a situation more complex than expected, with two latent perverse effects. The first is the extension of regional competence in the field of teaching which has already begun. The second effect is the intertwining of competence. This is often criticized as a source of confusion and for diluting responsibilities and favouring bargaining; it hardly corresponds to the traditional administrative rationality in France. But is this model of overlapping responsibility necessarily synonymous with confusion? The example of West Germany which has used this system within its federal structure for a long time, prompts a more qualified opinion. Is it not possible to see a positive element, an incentive to a consensus and harmony between different communities? New roles As a direct consequence of the transfer of responsibility, the Regional Councils have become school planners. But there are some unexpected consequences of this major change of responsibility. These firstly affect the external services of the Ministry of the Interior and in some cases those of the Ministry of Education. The granting of control and decision-

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making powers under the Regional Prefectures and the removal of the responsibility for planning school investment from the Education Offices, has produced negative reactions; for example the reluctance to be innovative, holding back information and blocking files. More importantly, the inability to adapt to the new roles, which are seen as demotions, is expressed by some officials of these services as an ‘existential crisis’. Principals of educational establishments offer examples of other unexpected results. Two roles appear. The first, already largely in existence, is that of ‘editor of files’, a broker able to combine all sources of finance due to his involvement at all levels and to his network of contacts. The second tendency is to look at principals as ‘company managers’, able, for example, to profit from a ‘delegation of ownership’ from the territorial communities. Although some principals view this role positively, the idea of transferring ideas and methods of management from the world of business, generally arouses suspicion and resistance. This effect can only be marginal at this stage. New relationships between agencies The co-operation between Regional or General Councils and external services of the Ministry of Education, as intended in the legislation, is far from being the main pattern. Competition and the activities of local bureaucrats and elected representatives hinder the application of the law. The many impotent representatives are frustrated from carrying out their roles by the negotiating process itself. However, new contacts appear unexpectedly. So, communication between regional services and principals is seen as a positive outcome, communication is often personal, direct and using the telephone rather than a letter. This type of contact shows up the unsuitability of the administration of state education, which is often anonymous, irresponsible, slow and inadequate in responses. But although these close contacts are judged positively today, there is some anxiety that this personalization of contacts will not be sensitive to political requirements or clientelisme in the future. Today, the pressures do not seem to be stronger than before—they are not denied. But this effect is not to be ruled out. A backlash to state education The decentralization of state education is a good example of the effects a law can have on the dysfunctions of a system. This law is, in fact, special: the objectives are not to reform the state education system nor to reform the content and methods of education. The principal changes instituted by this law and its most visible effects are mainly external to the system. This is perhaps why the decentralization of state education is hardly noticed by the public.

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However, one may well ask if there is any possibility of a backlash. By changing the links between central services and the local Education Offices, the law changes an established relationship, which was codified, relatively fixed, and where schools and education services operate largely within a closed circuit. The introduction of new agents—the elected representatives—with their own motives in the application of the law, calls into question the efficiency of the state education system. Managers of academic services as much as the principals and the management of the regions can call objectively into question the efficiency of the state education system. The 1985 law of decentralization of education offers a good example of the application of a public policy. What picture emerges of centralperipheral relationships? If we could have selectively spotlighted the phenomena of ‘peripheral power’ and formal division of responsibilities between statutory agencies and local notables, the implementation of this law would not in the main seem to follow this pattern. Indeed the exceptional skill demanded to link these two areas—leading to regional planning of education—and the political dimension of the education issue, encourages the development of specific strategies responding to the interests (e.g. economic or religious) of particular social groups and at the same time to the electoral constituencies and the range of specific power bases. It is also important to note that the change of decision-making from administrative to political, underpinning the transfer of executive power from the prefect to the elected presidents of the General and Regional Councils, shows more clearly the inappropriateness of the administrative structure vis-à-vis its remaining responsibilities and its new partners. Today, rather than an all-powerful administration, we are dealing with an ‘administration in shreds’. The third consequence relates to the new ‘political communities’ with their two main components: the regional elected representatives, often financially and technically autonomous, and the local services of the Ministry of Education. These are often in conflict. They are, however, working towards the same end, both responsible for developing coherent education policy to be adapted locally. All these factors do allow the drafting of a genuinely local education policy in some cases, and the gradual introduction of ‘methods of government’ specific to each region. These new ‘methods of government’, dominated either by the State or the representatives, are still unstable. Divided in many complex ways between tradition and innovation, the working out of a local dynamic across all the regions remains unrealized.

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APPENDIX Main clauses previous to the 1985 law of decentralization (of secondary education) The State has full responsibility either directly or through deconcentration. It owns the premises and materials of the lycées and the collèges. It ensures construction, equipment, maintenance and operation. It is responsible for:

• •

teaching (direction, curriculum and qualifications) the appointment and payment of personnel.

Through deconcentration: The Education Offices are responsible for:

• • •

personnel management school care administrative and financial management of state schools.

The prefects:

• •

have responsibility for school facilities (including the power to stop the annual list of building and extension work) are the only officials with power to authorize expenditure, second to the external services of the State civil administration.

11 The regions in the educational race Christine Garin

France is cut in two with educational opportunities unevenly spread. In the south, lengthy tertiary training opportunities, and in the north and east, a plethora of short industrial paths. Antoine Prost, the historian, had in 1984 made this issue a popular one. His report on the lycée staked out a battleground for the Left with some powerful recteurs taking on responsibilities for Academies in the disadvantaged regions. And no one was any longer in a position to disregard the fact that a young person educated in the Meuse was three times less likely to stay on than a friend in the Alpes-Maritimes. Or better still, to obtain a bac C it was better to live in Paris or Versailles than in Amiens or Nice. This document published in January 1993 resets the agenda. 1 Educational geography, once perhaps thought of as fixed in its inequalities, is beginning to move. Using thirty-six indicators involving mainly access to training, baccalauréat, regional priorities for careers guidance, the flow of admissions to university and also, analysed for the first time, the standards reached by pupils measured, thanks to the national evaluation tests now in place for two years at 7 and 11, the ministry presents a complete picture of the education system and sends back to the regions an enlarged picture of strengths and weaknesses. Even if, in an excess of prudency, the DEP chose to establish ‘a broad picture rather than a synthesis’ region by region, one can see clearly through this document the development of different educational political stances. More laissez-faire policies in the north, east and west, less so in the south. NO GIANT FOR THE NORTH A dominating tendency immediately appears: beyond the growth in schooling that the secondary and higher education school system currently experiences, divergent geographical approaches to training have increased, rather than decreased. Certainly with an average of 77 per cent of young people staying on to 18 more than 20 percentage points continues to separate Corsica and Picardie from Brittany and the Limousin. But in

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terms of access to post-16 education, the southern push forward is fading away gradually, whilst other Academies, notably those of the north and east are beginning to make giant steps to catch up. In the middle of the 1970s, 30 per cent of a generation finished secondary school, with marked differences between regions: 20 per cent north of the Loire Ardennes, Meuse, Orne, Mayenne, Indre, Loir-et-Cher) —Paris and Hauts-de-Seine excepted—against 40 per cent or more in the southern départements. Twenty years later whilst 60 per cent of young people reach 18+ schooling, the situation appears more ‘complex’ and more ‘scattered’. In a few départements of Brittany, such as the Côte D’Armor (where 68.8 per cent of young people study to 18) or Finistère (67.2%), as well as in Lorraine, the percentage obtaining the bac is nowadays higher than in some départements of the Academies of Bordeaux and Montpellier. Due particularly to increases in technological and professional training, the process of mass secondary education that has been put in place in the last ten years, has been advantageous to the north. DIFFERENTIATED ORIENTATIONS ‘One can see’, argues the DEP, ‘that we are in a process of going from a traditional separation (industry and jobs in the north, professional and university education in the south) to a much more dynamic regional picture. These new baccalauréats which involve professional qualifications allow Rennes, Nancy and Limoges and to a lesser degree Grenoble, Nantes and Lille to secure very good results’, and to increase the number of young people passing the bac. ‘The Academies that haven’t followed this group, namely Montpellier, Nice or even Aix-Marseille and Bordeaux, are nowadays behind where fifteen years ago they had a head start.’ These movements do not simply affect technical qualifications. The Academy of Lille, for example, which is one of those where the professional bac is most settled, happens to be first, next to Strasbourg, for the proportion of people passing the bac scientifique (C, D or C). These bacs are taken as part of the enseignement général (not technical) stream. Even if the enseignement général, which has gained strength in recent years, is firmly settled in the traditional ‘educational and schooling’ zones, the DEP points out that even there too ‘the differences are still getting smaller’. This is also true in the higher education sector where the ‘spectacular expansion’ of higher level courses in the north of France has more than doubled between 1982 and 1990, as we have seen in Besançon, Orléans, Poitiers and Rennes, where the access of bac holders to the higher levels of section de techniciens supérieure has more than trebled. Pre-16, the percentage of pupils going into the third year of enseignement général in a collège has generally improved everywhere in France (an increase of 9 percentage points since 1980). But this is particularly true where the percentages have traditionally been lower, that

The regions in the educational race

Figure 11.1 Geographical disparities in access to the baccalauréat Source: Le Monde 14 January 1993

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is, in Lille, Amiens, Orléans, Nancy and in Corsica. And in Lille, as in Strasbourg, Amiens and Nantes, there has been a dramatic drop in the number of ‘repeated years’ at the end of the second year. The same tendency is noticeable when it comes to orientation at the end of the lower secondary stage. Everywhere, because of family pressures, an increase in the number of people staying on post-16 is noticeable. The academic disparities are much smaller than ten years ago. Schools endeavour to fulfil the ambitions expressed by pupils and their families. Once teachers have examined these ambitions, the percentage admission to the generalist upper secondary goes back on average by 10 points to the benefit of technological and vocational streams. The consequence of this process is to reduce the lack of balance between Academies with different profiles of guidance appearing in different parts of the country. This regional dynamic, following from decentralization, relates closely to local training policies as well as with the more or less laissez-faire of local players in the educational scene. This new dynamism shows up when you compare the ‘predicted’ results of a region (taking into account the social composition of its population) with the true performance of individual schools. This is where in the north—in the Pas-de-Calais as much as in Brittany and in the Limousin—young people’s access to the bac is clearly higher than might have been expected (see Figure 11.1). Against that, in Languedoc-Roussillon, Alsace, Normandy, Aquitaine or Picardie the situation is the reverse. The pupils that are admitted to the schools in these regions could do much better. Are the kinds of teachers employed in these regions making a difference? It is difficult to say for sure and the DEP does not attempt to. You notice, nevertheless, that in the Lorraine and in Brittany, the two regions with the highest standard in schools, more than 60 per cent of the teachers come from the region in which they teach, and they are also, on average, much younger. One teacher in five is less than 30 years old in Lille, compared with in Nice, Montpellier and Toulouse, where only 50 per cent come from the region and one out of five is more than 50 years old. THE LIMOUSIN AND BRITTANY IN THE LEAD Against the standards reached in the national tests at 7 and 11, the comparison between the ‘anticipated’ result (taking into account the social structure of the region) and the results obtained by pupils, the following analysis can be made. There are two extremes, Lille and Bordeaux. Pupils in Lille (and also in Amiens, Rouen, Creteil and Corsica) obtained results in 1991 which were well below the national average. Pupils in Bordeaux, as well as Nantes, Clermont-Ferrand, Limoges and Rennes, secure excellent results well ahead of national averages and ahead of what could have been expected taking into account the social structure

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of the regions. This does not prevent Lille from ‘pushing’ its pupils to take the bac whilst in Bordeaux there is a tendency to slow down this movement. In other words, the north with pupils who might be weaker at the end of their primary school overtake Bordeaux where pupils are quite clearly ahead in French and in Mathematics at the end of their primary school! Whether we are talking about the proportion of school pupils at 18 or the proportion of access to bac or the standard reached at the end of primary schools, two regions come at the top because of their high performance: the Limousin and Brittany. These are two rural departments where obtaining a qualification has been for a long time the only means of upward social mobility and where jobs are very scarce. Threatened by désertification and an ageing population, this small central region of the Limousin has clearly taken hold of training as if it were salvation, and given small number of pupils the education system can provide them with ‘made to measure’ support. How can you explain otherwise the record of a département such as the Corrèze (237,000 population) where nowadays 71 per cent of young people reach 18+, second only to Paris (91 per cent)? You have to note that the pupils in the Limousin are the most expensive in France because of the network of schools with small numbers of pupils who are very scattered. A young person in Picardie only costs 10,500 F. whereas in the Limousin the figure rises to 14,500 F. ‘The nature and breadth of the current changes show the influence of the dynamics of the new political orientations, one of the features of every new region in a decentralized framework’, reports the DEP. ‘As for the departmental data lost in the academic averages this brings unexpected results (Hautes-Pyrénées, Aveyron, the Lozère and even the Lot are regularly among lead départements); a factor which confirms the multiplicity and complexity of the considerations which intervene in the mapping of schooling when you endeavour to explain the “local” configurations of the educational system.’ Brittany, and especially the areas around Nantes, has in the last fifteen years reinforced the advance that it has on the regions of the north and the east. For the proportion of people passing the bac it is in the lead (after Paris) and ahead of the southern regions. The reasons for this are not analysed in the report, but the traditional support for schooling in Brittany, a support which is stimulated by private and state schools, the high density of higher education providers and the necessity created out of rural decline are all factors. PICARDIE IN THE REAR Against this is Picardie, where all the indicators are ‘in the red’: the percentage of school participation at 3 years old, results of evaluation tests,

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staying on rates at 16+ and participation in higher education, as well as the participation of girls in the scientific and technical streams. Picardie accounts for the smallest proportions of pupils in the lycée. And there is no compensation for this deficit by a higher proportion of young people taking up training opportunities. The Academy of Amiens has one of the highest proportions of young people coming out of school without a qualification, the lowest proportion of pupils with a bac and numerous pupils with no qualifications whatsoever. This is because two factors reinforce one another. The DEP demonstrates clearly that a strong tradition of schooling post-16 and beyond does not handicap pupils with low attainment. Quite the contrary. ‘The more people have the bac, notably in the general streams, the fewer pupils emerge without qualifications.’ Ultimately, from one region to the other, the spread of unemployment among young people does not seem connected with the level of pupils coming out of school without qualifications. The percentage of the young amongst the unemployed is high along the curve which goes from Brittany to Franche-Comté, and incorporates Normandy, the Nord and the Lorraine, ‘all regions where the population is comparatively young’. This is also true of the ‘vocational opportunities’ which depend less on training opportunities than on the economy of the region. These patterns—and the report has more information to mine—provide a range of important points for educational policy-makers at national and local levels. NOTES 1

Géographie de l’école. Direction de L’Evaluation et de la Prospective (DEP) Ministère de L’Education Nationale, 1993.

12 A changing focus of power From the all-powerful state to the usercustomer Robert Ballion

The Education Act of 10 July 1989 declares from the outset, in its first article, that ‘state education is conceived and organized for pupils and students’. One is tempted to comment ironically on the need for legislation to say this; beyond the clichés, it is also possible to see expressed here the culmination of a complete reversal of the relationship between the state and education. A COPERNICAN REVERSAL In the language of the state economy, education is a private asset of public concern. The objective of state education, as it is implemented by schools, is to create and encourage certain abilities and aptitudes in the individual pupil. It therefore aims to transform the person entrusted to it and to ensure him or her the command of an asset which society, in its different markets—economic, social and cultural—will positively sanction. This asset is an investment made by the pupil who will derive benefit from it later on. But, in a French society obsessed by the fear of ‘civil war’, of segmentation, of centrifugal explosion, this forming of the individual is not supposed to be directly for his or her benefit but for that of the national community. This position has been unchanged from the ideologists of the French Revolution to the 1959 legislators, through Emile Durkheim. The pupil is perceived as an indirect beneficiary (some forms of training are ‘profitable’, others are not); it is the economic and social system, the nation, which needs variously qualified economic agents, stable social forces and citizens adhering to collective norms. Education has first and foremost to conform with the interests of the community; its content and its methods of production are therefore defined by the legitimate authority for expressing the common interest which the state is, and the teachers, its agents, are appointed to ensure its inculcation.1 This form of relationship, in which the authorities and their representatives knew what they had to do and took care of the interest of

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the user who only had to submit or withdraw, has little by little disintegrated over the last few decades. Since 1968, and pupil and parent representation on the different boards, the right of families to participate in the running of the system has been recognized and has steadily grown: through the remit of boards of governors and school boards on educational matters, the increase in the power of these boards through the law on decentralization and desectorization, that is, the parents’ right to choose their child’s school (which now affects half of state collèges and 30 per cent of lycées) and above all wider and wider control by families of decisions on courses to be followed. At the same time, since 1982, the state has increased its appeals to public opinion to help it define its mission. The major reports of the Savary ministry indicate this (the most well-known are those of Prost on the lycées, Legrand on the collèges, Favret on primary schools and de Peretti on teacher training); those of René Monory in 1987 and Jacques Lesourne in 1988; and the national consultation undertaken in 1989 based on ‘Principles for consideration of the content of education’ worked out by the commission presided over by Pierre Bourdieu and François Gros. Public opinion carries a great deal of weight even when nothing is asked of it; on 24 June 1984 protestors threw out candidate Mitterrand’s proposal for a ‘great unified secular state service’, just as the crowd of lycée pupils and students would make short work of the Devaquet law on higher education. 2 This political vulnerability and this impressive mass of material3 testifies to the fact that as far as education is concerned, the state no longer knows what to do, it no longer recognizes its own right to define the common good, and it expects all the interested parties to show it which way to go. LOST ILLUSIONS AND THE NEW MENTALITY Our modern societies seem to be afflicted with a new ill: while there is almost unanimous agreement on general values and objectives, they are less and less able to find working methods to actualize this agreement. Since the nineteenth century, there had been the illusion of cobbling together (this, according to Lévi-Strauss, is the art of producing a structure from a combination of disparate elements) with a ‘tool-box’ which today is desperately empty. We are subjected to the law of economic order, the independent logic of scientific development, changing social behaviour and the conflict between sub-cultures forced to co-exist. Our powerlessness to thwart them, to bend them in the direction of recognized values, results above all in the decline of the normative public arena in favour of privately made decisions. Only twenty years ago, issues concerning individual professional practice or the organization and running of the school system seemed to be areas where the general goodwill and the means allocated would see things

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through to a successful conclusion. This is because within the educational institution there was knowledge about how to proceed. This knowledge, or at least the belief in its existence, has disappeared and the problems which people were boldly preparing to resolve in the 1960s and 1970s prove twenty years later to be just as prevalent, leaving us more powerless. How can we define the culture which schools will legitimately pass on? What can we do so that the current patchwork will recover some unity.4 And how can we check the endlessly repeated process by which inequality of educational opportunity is perpetuated? Lastly, how can we reconcile the schools’ function with regard to qualifications with that of socialization, when the uniformization of the lycées gives this question great urgency?5 All these challenges, if not overcome, generate a crisis of state legitimacy: is it capable of proposing and even more of imposing common solutions? The attitude of teachers and headteachers faced with this guiding role of the authorities reveals a loss of confidence which manifests itself when the notion of assessment is touched on with them: how can we be assessed when no one knows what is expected of us? This is clearly heard on the users’ side. In the traditional schools, which disappeared in the aftermath of the Second World War, parents and pupils were ‘captive’ users. The de facto delegation of parental authority with regard to school matters was total, based either on cultural submission or complicity—reinforced by the confidence of families with regard to the teaching profession—or on the relativization of the importance of the role of school in determining the social identity of the individual. The working classes expected little of schools; the upper classes considered them a factor, but not necessarily the most important one, in the socialization of their children. The increase in the number of secondary school pupils, the introduction of the ‘middle school’, the ‘common-core syllabus’ (which resulted in an endless succession of reforms from 1959 onwards: the Berthoin reform, but also the Debré law on private education), the ideological debate (equality of opportunity) and the technocratic debate (cost-effectiveness analysis in education), the organization of parents into powerful associations,6 all this would make schools a public issue. Societal critical discourse has, since the beginning of the 1960s, become the only form of representation for schools. Scientific works, but with a wide readership, 7 would bring knowledge yielded by the experts (the work of Coleman and Jenks in the USA, of Girard, Bastide and Clerc in France) out of the restricted circle of specialists so as to make it accessible to a cultivated and informed public with the mediation of magazines such as Esprit and the major weeklies. As its circulation area extends in this way, the message becomes public knowledge taken up and made commonplace by the daily media and through individual relaying by those involved (parents and teachers). Suspicion, control, protest, indictment 8 become the authorized, rational form of individual relationship with schools and it becomes

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fashionable to denounce the latter’s malfunctions. If the ‘protesting’ group of users dominated in the 1970s, it saw coming up in its ranks, or next to them, a different type of parent with whom it was to represent the two classic forms of intervention: protest and withdrawal of support. 9 These parents, whom we have described as ‘school consumers’,10 behave with regard to schools as with regard to any other provider of services: they consider themselves to be customers who can choose, from among the available goods, the one which best meets their needs and expectations. They no longer agree to submit themselves to unjustified decisions made by the schools (for example, the rejection of sectorisation, in which a child had to attend the nearest school) and, in particular, they withdraw from any collective action: thus the level of participation in the election of parent representatives onto collège and lycèe boards of governors went from 45 per cent in 1968 (the year that they were set up) to 37 per cent in 1985, then to 33 per cent in 1987 and 30 per cent in 1989. As the method of producing the truth, which entrusts in the state as a right the task of expressing the common interest, has become discordant,11 we are experiencing the emergence of the collective norm in new forms. NEW GUIDES TO ACTION A ‘society is not bound together by decree’, and the ‘state must be modest’, as Michel Crozier says. Neither the state nor those acting for it have a very clear idea of how to reach the objectives which they are aiming at—to take 80 per cent of an age group to baccalauréat level— by ensuring that the training given makes it possible for young people to fit well into the employment market and guarantees them the conditions for their personal self-fulfilment, contributes to the process of passing on and producing national cultural identity and works toward better social equity. Guides to action will therefore emerge which will at least give the illusion of rationality. TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC OBJECTIFICATION We have to go back to the drawing board, measure, analyse, structure. The whole school system, from central administration to the teacher who has to define in professional terms practice which expresses learning rather than knowledge, is gripped by the demand for assessment. Efficiency is the key word. It is not only a question of measuring it, of extracting from it the factors for devising strategies for improvement. A battery of indicators, techniques for monitoring populations, developing projects, plans for activities, models for systems or organizational analysis, are all tools offered on the market and whose mastery guarantees the enlightened running of the system.

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Two models stand out which can be introduced more or less happily. That of business, of course, and of its experience in terms of administration and management, and that of the Anglo-Saxon trend for research on the ‘efficient school’. This trend seeks to show ‘the one right way’ by finding production methods for the education service which, as far as individual teaching methods and conditions for running the school and its relations with its environment are concerned, proves to be the optimal way of reaching fixed objectives. THE ‘RETURN TO GRASS ROOTS’ Decentralizing legislation grants schools an autonomy which, even regarded as residual—inasmuch as they are still greatly affected by a system of constraints—is nevertheless not insignificant because of the possibilities that it offers and above all the new state of mind which it is helping to create. The notion of school plans, which appeared in 1982 and was extended across the board by the 1989 Education Act, requires each school to come up with an appropriate answer to its problems. ‘School pragmatism’, which we have already seen at work in the ‘Islamic veil’ affair, where schools’ boards of governors were urged by the minister to resolve the conflict ‘according to local circumstances’,12 is not only a way of managing problems, of bringing about ‘local settlements’13 when a national solution is lacking, it is also a method of change. The minister himself expresses it like this: ‘I would like the system to become capable of changing itself without having to be systematically entered from the outside…I would like the remedy to be inside the schools’.14 MARKETING: THE SEIZING OF DEMAND When certainties waver, when the great guiding principles (for example the école unique or ‘intermediate’ school) and the mass slogans lose their obviousness, when there are no longer enough frames of reference or there are too many, when there is a desire to see schools combine the efficiency of a business with the virtue of public service, and when competition and solidarity are advocated, then comes the time for polls, with the dictatorship of ‘audience viewing figures’. The shift from public service to service of the public seems slight; but to pass from one to the other is to change our concept of the common interest: in the first case, the concept of the public good transcends individual peculiarities; in the second, on the contrary, the common interest results from the agglomeration of private interests. Since it is only what is chosen that acquires value, since it is no longer possible to prescribe but only to meet demand, this weakening of the capacity to decide will involve recourse to the sanction of the market. This way of operating, where suppliers compete with each other in the face of

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free demand, still remains very limited in France; in fact, it only affects the more and more widely granted capacity to choose state secondary schools15 and not that of influencing the actual content of education.16 However, in it can be seen one of the forms of decision-making which situations of uncertainty create. The concept of education is formed in harmony with the political foundations of each national society, not only through the way in which the education system is thought out but also in which it is organized and managed. The classic contrast in this matter is that of France and the Anglo-Saxon countries. The state is an authority which is almost independent of the citizens and our centralized country sees the social fabric not as a network of locally rooted relationships but as a group of people which is structured by societal principles (social classes, political families, even ethnic membership); in it education is perceived basically as the way in which society permanently generates itself, imposing upon itself an order which must, from a voluntarist perspective, shape it.17 From the pre-Revolutionary schools of the ancien régime to the state schools of Jules Ferry, school has always been regarded as a place for organic counter-culture; it is a question of protecting children from the ‘world’ and turning them into ‘little missionaries’ who will change it. School was perceived—and certainly still is— ‘as a means of driving into the social body values which were not directly its values’.18 Schools, the system of production of the society by itself, must therefore be in the hands of the state, the authority which in our country is the embodiment of society. If added to this is the fear of ‘face-to-face confrontation’ (M. Crozier) which is so characteristic of the French social temperament, which rejects dual relationships and always appeals to the state as an obligated partner, we understand that civil society constantly summons the authorities—the state—to resolve the problems with which it is faced.19 It sees education as a royal domain.20 In the Anglo-Saxon countries, on the contrary, education systems are rooted locally, which is a historical and political more than a geographical notion. The social fabric is seen as a confederation of small ‘republics’, each one constituting a community of close relations and perceiving the higher levels of agglomeration and, at the top, the state, as minimal and purely regulatory authorities. Education is first and foremost a local matter, not only in its organization but particularly as a form of representation. The local community manages its own problems21 and it can do so because it is not merely a collection of individuals but an entity working at its own level on formulating the common interest. For some years, the state has given up part of its educational prerogative in favour of local communities and the people directly involved (teachers and families). This movement is gathering pace. We are delighted about this inasmuch as this ‘return to grass roots’ guarantees both greater efficiency and increased democratization. But what are these ‘grass roots’?

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Are they a collection of individuals (people or organizational units, such as schools, unions, subject categories and teaching statutes) each putting forward its own particular interests? Or do they organize themselves into communities (the educational community of the school, the institutional community of the schools among themselves) capable of bringing out the common interest? We are not there yet, it seems, and this ‘interregnum’, this time-lag between a state which is disengaging itself and other forms of public expression which are not ready to take over, leaves the field free for determinations whose own logic generates effects which do not necessarily correspond to the common interest. NOTES 1 2

Etymologically, to inculcate means to tread in with the heels. The withdrawal of the Savary law on private education would lead to the resignation of the minister and the government. That of the Devaquet law was to leave in place a prudent minister but did not spare his junior minister. 3 To them should be added the regular polls that the ministry commissions, its analysis of ‘demand’ based on the use of the telecommunications service Edutel, the follow-up mission and the permanent mission for auscultation entrusted to the ‘watchdogs’ (Credoc and Coltemica). 4 See Jean-Marie Dornenach, Ce qu’il faut enseigner, Seuil, 1989. 5 All teachers and headteachers are unanimous: we can no longer continue in a situation where the majority confesses its powerlessness to devise the appropriate form for this change of status. For example, staff meetings to discuss individual pupils’ progress, a farce denounced by everyone, including the schools inspectorate, lives on in its inviolable form. 6 The PEEP [Fédération des parents d’élèves de l’enseignement public] has been in existence since 1926, but the FCPE [Fédération des conseils des parents d’élèves des écoles publiques], which was to give the parents’ movement its dimension as a mass organization, was set up in 1946. 7 Les Héritiers by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, in 1966, and La Reproduction by the same authors, in 1970. 8 For example, in June 1979, the Minister of Education was served with a writ by parents whose child, a pupil at a collège in Essonne, was without a mathematics teacher from 1 February to 6 March 1979. In 1984 Jean-Marie Schléret, the president of the PEEP, stated in an interview: ‘At a time when the introduction of uncertain reform plans is accompanied by an acknowledged lack of resources, the government must understand that its principal obligation consists in honouring the contract which binds it to the users and guarantee pupils their due in terms of teaching or, failing that, resolve to put right the damage caused. If it fails to keep its most basic commitments, the Minister of Education must be condemned by the internal civil service tribunals provided for this purpose’ [our italics]. 9 Cf. A.Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983. 10 Robert Ballion, Les Consommateurs d’école, Stock, 1982. 11 Two examples are revealing in this regard. First of all, the capacity given to families to choose which school their child attends, which would be absolutely justified in a system advocating the diversification of the supply of schools (as Alain Savary wished), appears to be in conflict with the conviction still

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displayed and only present in the set language of schools and their representatives that schools do not have to have their ‘own particular character’. The second example relates to the events of autumn 1989 concerning the wearing of the ‘Islamic veil’. The minister’s response, reinforced by the recommendation of the Council of State, was clear: ‘If, at the end of discussions with the families, the latter do not agree to give up any religious sign, the child must be admitted’ (Lionel Jospin in the Nouvel Observateur, 26 October 1989). The rule is therefore the rejection by schools of the wearing of any distinctive religious sign; unless the parents insist…. To the great displeasure of the bishops denouncing the state’s evasion of its responsibilities, this is the same philosophy which underlay the decision to leave at the local level the task of dealing with the tricky problem of replacing the Wednesday holiday with a day off on Saturday. J.L.Derouet, ‘Désaccords et arrangements dans les collèges (1981–1986). Eléments pour une sociologie des établissements scolaires’, Revue française de pédagogie, No. 83, 1988. Lionel Jospin, quoted by Le Monde de l’Education, March 1990. In 1984, the first experiments in relaxing entry to the first year of secondary school affected only 150 collèges; at the start of the 1989 school year, 2,273 schools, or 47 per cent of all state collèges, were affected by this new form of arrangement, as well as 313 lycées (including all the lycées in Paris), or 27 per cent of the total number. However, we have shown how, very quickly, in schools faced with the external assessment which the possibility of choice by the families represents, educational supply was noticeably shaped by demand. See Robert Ballion, Fr. Oeuvrard, Le choix du lycée, Ministère de l’Education nationale, 1989. See the theme of the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron and in particular their success. Louis Legrand, ‘Une école communautaire’, Le groupe familial, No. 105, OctDec 1984. Our experience has enabled us to observe, for example, that often in schools the unstated aim of setting up a working party is to reveal the inability of the ‘partners’ (teachers themselves and other categories of contributors) to come to an agreement, which confronts the headteacher with his or her responsibilities. Moreover the first quality that teachers expect of headteachers is that ‘they can take decisions’, that they do not ‘duck out’. Who does the child ‘belong to’? This is a recurrent question in the school debate, even if a diminishing one. M.Jacques Pommatau, the general secretary of the Fédération de l’Education nationale, stated to Le Monde on 21 March 1984: ‘The freedom of families to inculcate an ideology in their child is not our conception. I do not think that this freedom is compatible with the child’s freedom of conscience’. Let us return once more to the example of the ‘Islamic veil’. The handling of the problem ‘in the French way’ (intervention by the highest authorities of the state, mobilization of the intelligentsia) has greatly amused our cross-Channel neighbours. One report, given by a weekly, illustrated the ‘English way’ of dealing with the problem: in some towns, the wearing of the ‘Islamic veil’ is allowed, as long as it is in the school colours.

Part IV Structures

Introduction

The Mitterrand years have witnessed significant structural changes in the French education system. Primary education was reorganized in terms of cycles rather than year groups. Five years’ common secondary schooling became the norm. The formerly selective secondary schools, the lycées, settled into being upper secondary schools with a mission to educate four out of five of the population. The baccalauréat was extended to cover a wide range of vocational options as well as the traditional academic base and the technological and commercial baccalauréat introduced in the 1960s. Higher education was expanded to the point where almost every other child in France could think of entering university or some other form of higher education. The historical and political dynamic behind these changes is explored in the following chapters. But demography and demand are also significant markers of an education system. The efforts of the French system on this front during this period are the more heroic for being unsung. During the 1980s and 1990s the French were no longer having to cope with the ‘baby boom’ which had dominated the 1960s with its apogee in 1968. In the decade 1960–70 the potentially ‘educable’ age group—that is to say, those between the ages of 2 and 22—increased from 14.7 million to 17.7 million. Pupils and students accounted for 10.2 million of them in 1960, 12.9 million in 1970. The education system had to absorb in a decade a massive 27 per cent increase. Between 1980 and 1992 the rise in the numbers actually in the system rose—rather more slowly—from 13.9 million to 14.6 million. But it was in its way as significant as the 1960s/1970s change. For the numbers of births fell dramatically in the 1970s. Voluntary attendance, however, increased to a point which must represent saturation and accounted for raising the likely length of education for the generation by two years in a decade. By 1992 almost 90 per cent of the 2–22 age group were in school or higher education, compared with 69.1 per cent in 1960, 72.7 per cent in 1970, 79.8 per cent in 1980 and 86 per cent in 1990. Children had an average of 16.5 years’ education in 1980, compared to 18.5 in 1993.

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Pre-schooling accounted for a part of this increase. The percentage of 3year-olds in school rose from 91 per cent in 1980 to 99.3 per cent in 1993 (MEN/DEP, 1994). But by 1980 the percentage of 4- and 5-year-olds in school had already reached 100 per cent, while the percentage of 2-yearolds has remained constant at around a third of the age group. The biggest change was in upper secondary schooling, where commentators talk of a ‘tidal wave’ breaking on the lycées (Esquieu 1993). Between 1985 and 1990 alone, the lycées were having to take in around 70,000 extra pupils a year—the equivalent of 70–100 new lycées. The rate of access to the first year of the lycée—with a diminishing age group—rose from 38 per cent to 57 per cent in the period. The numbers of those expecting to take the baccalauréat rose from 30 per cent in 1980 to an amazing 60 per cent in 1992, those taking the academic general bac rising from 20.6 per cent of pupils to 35.6 per cent, those taking a technological bac from 9.6 to 16.8 per cent. The vocational bac, started in the mid 1980s, rose steadily to 7.6 per cent by 1992. The CAP/BEP technical qualifications barely held their own with a third of the age group. The ministry statistics suggest that all social classes benefited from this expansion. In the general bacs at the beginning of the decade, the children in the professional classes were more than three times as numerous as those with working class parents. By 1992 the ratio was down to 2.2. Although this decade was a period of economic restraint worldwide, in 1974 the French allocated 6.2 per cent of the GDP to education; in 1982, 6.8 per cent. In 1993 the percentage was 7.2 per cent. The figure has, in fact, fluctuated with political cycles, dropping in the period of right-wing government from 1986 to 1989, due to a policy of constraint on public expenditure and in particular on public service salaries which make up so much of the education service bill. But overall the figure is around the OECD average. The rise observed from 1989 is due to the combined effect of the political priority accorded to education and the slowing down of national growth. The economic consequences of this change have inevitably preoccupied governments—the education system is by far the biggest employer in the country with 1.2 million on the payrolls—and education has to continue to justify the high profile that brings it to the top of the budget league table. Two reasons are advanced by the ministry to explain why total costs have risen by an average of 2.3 per cent per year in the period 1975–93. One is the increase spent per pupil, due to the larger numbers entering upper secondary education and higher education. There have also been better staffing levels in primary and lower secondary schooling (MEN/DEP 1994). Chapter 13 by Jarousse, Mingat and Richard, commissioned from the university centre best known for the study of the economics of education, reveals the ministry’s concern to get best use for its resources. The decade also saw a significant shift in the sources of finance for education, from the centre to the regions and departments. Whereas in

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1980, 69 per cent of the costs were met by the State and 14.3 per cent by local authorities—and just over 5 per cent by employers and 10.7 by households—by 1993, while there had been little change for employers and parents—5.6 per cent for employers, with households down to 9.0 per cent—the State/local balance had changed. The State was meeting 65.3 per cent of the costs in 1993, local authorities 19.4 per cent. In 1993 education cost 8,800F. (£1,053) per head of the population per annum or 30,600F. (£3,660) per pupil. This is the implicit background for the chapters that follow. Once again we have drawn on very different sources to give an idea of the range of registers in which education policy issues are discussed. Part IV includes four chapters comparing the British and French systems, two chapters from researchers working for the Ministry of Education (one a sociologist and the other a team of economists), a famous historian of French education (Antoine Prost) and two people who at the time of writing were senior civil servants (André Legrand and Georges Solaux). The Jarousse, Mingat and Richard chapter is primarily concerned with the effective use of resources; is public funding more effectively used on pre-school education or smaller classes in primary schools? The objective of the Osborn and Broadfoot and of the Sharpe chapters is to compare and contrast cultural approaches as evidenced in the classroom. Derouet points up the paradox that the comprehensive policy—the collège unique —has been finally introduced as market forces take root, and as Rawlsian arguments come to the fore, suggesting that diversity and decentralization may be the best way of achieving the objectives of equality and fairness which were behind the institution of comprehensives. Legrand and Solaux, and Dubet, Cousin and Guillemet, take a critical look at the expansion of the lycées. Legrand and Solaux look at the extent to which the reform can be seen as democratic and effective in terms of human resources arguments. In doing so, they show how the French have imported British ideas that in France go under the name of the ‘new sociology of education’, in fact to the acronym-loving French the NSE. Dubet, Cousin and Guillemet, in looking at the new lycéens, suggests that traditional models have vanished. No longer are pupils defined by roles and fixed behaviour models. They are young people who take from school what they can: ‘Integration and socialization have given way to adaptation’. Armstrong describes developments in special education—with the Education Act 1989 taking a small step toward bringing pupils with special needs into mainstream education. It is in the context of such changes that Bourdoncle describes the critical area of teacher training, where important—and controversial— developments have been taking place since 1990, as France moves to an all-graduate profession. He suggests that part of the logic for the university link-up which was so much resented initially by those defending

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‘standards’ is that the new métier of the teacher needs critical surveillance from the university. But underlying that is the knowledge that as sheer numbers shatter some of the cherished French ideas about status and respect in education, the system has to adapt. In this diversity of themes some common dilemmas emerge. It is not difficult to pick out familiar control and curriculum questions on the place of knowledge, the case for uniformity and for diversity, the place of the child—part of a group or unique? a client or a citizen to be integrated in French society? But as the classroom studies of Osborne and Broadfoot and of Sharpe remind us yet again, when viewed with a foreign eye, the French system is distinctive for its attachment to a national tradition which asserts that the overriding aim of the education system must be to give each child an equal opportunity to develop and fulfil his or her potential. REFERENCES Esquieu, P. (1993) ‘La vague lycéenne: un défi pour les années quatre-vingt-dix’, in Données Sociales (INSEE). MEN/DEP (1994) L’Etat de l’école: 30 indicateurs sur le système éducatif, numéro 4, Ministère de l’Education Nationale.

13 Nursery education for the twoyear-old Social and educational effects Jean-Pierre Jarousse, Alain Mingat and Marc Richard

The French educational system is currently under pressure to extend nursery education to two-year-olds. This pressure is based in particular on the argument that the school environment might be an effective substitute for the home environment, especially when the latter does not appear to give the child sufficient stimulation (families from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and families where the language spoken at home is not French). As regards the functioning of the school system, there have been many cases where a clear divergence has been shown to exist between ‘commonly held’ opinions and objectively measured facts so that it would seem desirable not to confine oneself to opinions. On this question of the effects of nursery school for two-year-olds, it has therefore seemed necessary to look for facts which might support these opinions or, on the contrary, contradict them. SIGNIFICANT LEARNING ACQUISITION IN THE FIRST YEARS OF PRIMARY SCHOOL FOR PUPILS ENTERING AT THE AGE OF TWO Differences in academic performance (‘gross’ results) can be measured by directly comparing the learning of children who have had two, three or four years of nursery education (Table 13.1). Quite clearly, the longer the period of nursery education, the higher the pupils’ level of learning. This is borne out particularly when learning by pupils who started school at the age of two is compared with that of pupils starting at three. While not considerable, the differences are all the same significant. They are of roughly comparable magnitude depending on whether the differences between pupils who started nursery school at two or three are examined at different levels of the school curriculum (at the beginning of CP, at the end of this class and of CE1.1 On entry to CP, the level of learning of pupils who started school at the age of two is 4.2 points higher in the area of cognitive and instrumental knowledge than that of pupils entering at three. It is 3.6 points higher in the area of language and 2.2 points higher in that of attitude towards school work in CP. Differences

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Table 13.1 Average level of learning of pupils on entry to CP and at the end of CE1 according to age on entry to nursery school

Source: IREDU survey of 1,900 children carried out in Côte-d’Or from 1986 to 1989 Note: Learning acquired by pupils entering nursery school at the age of two is, at the cognitive and instrumental level, 104.4 points and that of pupils entering at the age of four or five is 89.0 points. At each of these levels and for each of these dimensions, learning has been standardised with an average for all pupils of 100 and a standard deviation of 15

of the same magnitude are observed in learning in French or mathematics during primary schooling, at the end of CP and of CE1. BUT OTHER FACTORS INTERVENE These factors are interesting but difficult to extrapolate as an educationally justified basis for a policy of extending schooling to two-year-olds. In fact it is not certain a priori that groups of pupils with different ages on entry to nursery school are not different in other respects (sex, social origin, nationality) which would in themselves have a positive impact on learning. If this is the case, the gross effects of early schooling presented above would not be sufficient and it would be necessary to estimate the net effect of our target variable by ‘freeing’ the gross effect observed from the influence of these possible parasitic relationships. From this perspective, examining the characteristics of pupils according to age on entry is a first step. In fact there is a basis for examining this possibility inasmuch as schooling at the age of two only affects a limited proportion (15 per cent of the age-group concerned in this sample (Table 13.2).

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Table 13.2 Distribution of the sample in Table 13.1 according to age on entry to nursery school

Source: IREDU survey of 1,900 children carried out in Côte-d’Or between 1986 and 1989 Note: 45.0% of children in the sample receiving nursery education from the age of two are girls

AGE ON ENTRY VARIES ACCORDING TO NATIONALITY AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND It can be observed that there is no notable difference according to sex but that, on the other hand, differences emerge according to nationality and social background:

• • •

11.5 per cent of children starting nursery school at the age of two are of foreign nationality compared with 17.2 per cent of the total sample. 35.9 per cent of children starting at the age of two are the children of managers (middle or senior) and technicians compared with 26.3 per cent of the children surveyed. 15.8 per cent of children starting at two have a mother in manual work while this group represents 21.2 per cent of the sample.

Finally, these same contrasts are found in housing with a relatively lower frequency of early schooling among families living in council housing. These children represent 28.2 per cent of children starting at the age of two compared with 35.3 per cent for the total population studied (Table 13.3). All in all, nursery education at the age of two affects disadvantaged families less: the gross results (Table 13.1) have to be adjusted to take account of these differences. The data from two existing surveys can be drawn on here. On the one hand, there is the survey conducted by the IREDU in the Côte-d’Or department between 1985 and 1989 on the functioning of primary schools and on the other hand the survey carried out in 1987 by the DEP on levels of learning at the end of CM2.

•

The IREDU survey focuses on about 1,900 children whose level of learning was measured on entry to CP, at the end of the same year, at the end of CE1 and of CE2. In addition, a large amount of information

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Table 13.3 Main social characteristics of pupils according to age on entry to nursery school

Source: IREDU survey of 1,900 children carried out in Côte-d’Or between 1986 and 1989 Note: 45.0% of children in the sample receiving nursery education from the age of two are girls

•

on the children and their families was collected, including declared age on entry to nursery education. In this sample, the majority of pupils (67 per cent) started nursery school at the age of three but 15 per cent started at two. The DEP survey concens a national sample of about 2,100 children. Individual information is a little less complete than in the previous survey but the main family characteristics are available including the declared age on starting nursery school. In some ways these two surveys are complementary.

What can be done with these data? On the basis of these surveys, the impact of length of nursery education on learning at primary school can be examined; thus it is treated as if the effects of nursery school were being limited to the preparation for primary education. Schooling can, of course, be considered to have other objectives; these cannot be assessed from the data available from the surveys cited previously. The use of these surveys makes it possible to inform the question of the academic effects of the length of nursery education with a dual dimension:

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a temporal dimension: observations are available on pupils’ levels of learning on their entry to CP, at the end of CM2; this makes it possible to examine whether the length of nursery education leaves traces and if so, to what extent they will be reduced or persistent at several levels of primary school up to entry to the collège [lower secondary school]. Moreover, as the IREDU survey follows the same children over several years, it allows a longitudinal perspective in which, beyond the levels observed at certain points, it is possible to analyse directly the effects of length of nursery education on the progress of pupils during primary schooling. a differential dimension: the available data makes it possible to assess the average effects of the length of pre-schooling on levels of learning and progress in primary school for the total population and also to examine whether these effects are different in particular groups. Are they more intense for children from socially advantaged or disadvantaged families and for children of French or foreign nationality?

In a concrete way, the main interest lies in examining whether nursery education at the age of two brings a benefit (lasting or not/more important for certain categories of pupils or not) in comparison with schooling at three which will serve as the main reference point. The data available in the two surveys used relates to the academic learning of pupils (at the end of CP, CE1 and CM2) in the areas of French and mathematics; on entry to the preparatory course, the notion of academic learning is obviously less pronounced and the assessment of pupils has focused on (1) cognitive and instrumental learning, (2) the development of language and (3) behaviour towards school work. ASSESSING THE NET EFFECTS OF LENGTH OF SCHOOLING In order to assess the influence, ‘other things being equal’, that age on entry to nursery school has on pupils’ learning, many analyses have been carried out. They focus first on ‘learning’ on entry to CP according to the different dimensions possible in the survey (in the cognitive, instrumental, language and behavioural areas). Thus they examine the question of whether, for children from a given social and ethnic background, early schooling is observable when the children reach primary school. They then concern learning at primary school (at the end of CP and CE1), this time in the areas of French and mathematics. A dual approach has been taken: •

the first analyses the individual scores controlling the influence of social characteristics, that is to say, taking a given home environment. By analysing the scores at the beginning of CP, at the end of CP and at

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the end of CE1 in this way, the extent to which the possible initial advantages of early schooling decline during the course of primary education can be examined. the second is longitudinal and analyses the progress of pupils within successive levels. The statistical analysis of the score at a given level is then made according to the length of schooling and family background variables (as in the previous case) but also according to the individual score on entry to primary school.

In the different sets of analyses considered, the average effect of early schooling on all the children who benefited from it is examined on the one hand, and on the other hand the possible differentiated effect according to background of origin. By doing this, allowance is made for the fact that the possible benefits of schooling at the age of two may be greater in some social backgrounds than in others. NET EFFECTS OF LENGTH OF SCHOOLING ON LEVEL OF LEARNING ON ENTRY TO PRIMARY SCHOOL The results obtained on entry to CP (Table 13.4) for the dimensions of cognitive and instrumental learning and of language show:

•

•

that the gross effects of length of schooling (Table 13.1) on learning at the beginning of CP are definitely due in part to the fact that early nursery schooling is on average more common for children from advantaged backgrounds who reach CP with a better initial level; that early schooling does exert a positive net influence on the learning of pupils at the beginning of CP when the assessment is conducted using given characteristics of family background. However this effect too is far from being considerable. To the extent that the total distribution of this learning has been standardized with a standard deviation of 15 points,2 it is equivalent to about one-sixth of the standard deviation for the dimension of cognitive and instrumental learning (2.5 points) and one-fifth of the standard deviation for the dimension of language (2.9 points).

In terms of behaviour, the analysis focuses on the influence of schooling on pupils’ participation and attention in class. Different sets of figures have been analysed but the published data here limits itself to the influence of schooling on the probability of pupils belonging to the group of children best disposed towards academic work. It is noted that the gross positive influence of schooling on study behaviour is strongly affected by pupils’ social class. The children from advantaged backgrounds prove to be more positively oriented towards academic activities. In a given social environment, the length of schooling in itself no longer makes a significant

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Table 13.4 Gross and net impact (in a given family background) of the age on entry to nursery school on learning at the beginning of CP

Source: IREDU survey of 1,900 children carried out in Côte-d’Or from 1986 to 1989 Note: As far as language is concerned, the gross impact of schooling at age of two is 5.6 points. It is only 4.8 points in a given social background Note on method: For each of the dimensions considered at this level of education, the first line presents the gross effect of schooling (which is, of course, identical to that presented in Table 13.1) and the second line the net effect of the influence of family background (occupation of father, occupation of mother, size of family, nationality and type of housing) *** significant at the 1% level ** significant at the 5% level * significant at the 10% level ns not significant º This indicates differences in the level of learning with reference to pupils having had incomplete (1 or 2 years’) early schooling

difference to the study behaviour of pupils at the beginning of CP. UNCONVINCING IN CP, MORE SIGNIFICANT IN CE1 By observing the influence of learning at the end of CP and of CE1, it is noted that schooling at the age of two leaves positive and significant traces at these two levels of study (Table 13.5). The magnitude of the effect of schooling is of comparable intensity in French and mathematics. When considering a given family background, a structure is observed which it is interesting to note. In fact, at the end of the preparatory course, the net advantage for pupils who started nursery school at two years old in comparison with their peers who started at three, while it remains positive, is extremely

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Table 13.5 Gross and net impact (in a given family background) of the age on entry to nursery education on learning (mathematics and French) at the end of CP and CE1

Source: IREDU survey of 1,900 children carried out in Côte-d’Or from 1986 to 1989 Note: At the end of CP the gain achieved by the two-year-old children in comparison with the three-year-old is 4.1 points in French and 3.1 points in mathematics (gross effect) This data makes it possible to assess the possibly lasting character of the ‘advantage’ from which, on their entry to CP, the children admitted to nursery school at the age of two benefit *** significant at the 1% level ** significant at the 5% level * significant at the 10% level ns not significant º There are differences in level of learning with reference to pupils having had incomplete (1 or 2 years’) early schooling

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Table 13.6 Net impact of schooling on the progress of pupils in CP and CE1 and between the beginning of CP and the end of CE

Source: IREDU survey of 1,900 children carried out in Côte-d’Or from 1986 to 1989 Note: The net gain achieved by pupils starting at two in comparison with those starting at three is +1.1 points in French, -0.1 points in mathematics (taking account of the influence of family background: father’s occupation, mother’s occupation, size of family and type of housing). *** significant at the 1% level ** significant at the 5% level * significant at the 10% level ns not significant º There are differences in level of learning with reference to pupils having had incomplete (1 or 2 years’) early schooling

tenuous. On the other hand, at the level of learning at the end of CE1, the advantage observed this time (2.9 points or one-fifth of the standard deviation) is more substantial and statistically significant for the children who started at the age of two. It seems that the children who started nursery school at two acquired some lasting learning there which was not much drawn on during CP but whose presence manifests itself during CE1. A complementary way of illustrating this point is to examine the progress of pupils during the first two

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years of primary school. The progress of pupils during CP is not affected by the age at which they started nursery school; the scores of all pupils at the end of CP are close, whether or not they benefited from early schooling (Table 13.6). On the other hand, during CE1, pupils who started school at the age of two are clearly shown to make better progress than that of their peers who started nursery school later. These results invite further analysis of the temporal effects of early schooling at a more advanced level; the analysis at the end of CM2 will be presented later in this chapter. EARLY EDUCATION AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR HOME ENVIRONMENT If early education is seen as a substitute for home environment, the hypothesis can be made that starting nursery school at two would be more beneficial to children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds than to others. For example, it is supposed that early schooling can have a greater impact on children from foreign families than on children from French families inasmuch as starting nursery school at two enables the former to acquire notions (particularly with regard to language) that the latter have been able to acquire ‘naturally’ in the family environment. In a broader way, it can also be expected that early schooling is of more benefit to children from a modest social background. Three instrumental measures of children’s ‘social handicap’3 have been constructed to analyse this question: 1 2 3

A first measure contrasts children from working class or lower middle class backgrounds with other children. The second contrasts children of foreign nationality with those of French nationality. The third contrasts children living in council housing with other children.

Analyses have been conducted on the different components of children’s learning at the end of nursery education and on learning in French and mathematics at the end of CP and CE1. None of the results obtained challenges the effects of schooling at the age of two but they all question the specifically beneficial nature of these effects on particular groups of children. Early nursery education leaves positive traces in general, traces which are no greater in disadvantaged backgrounds; schooling at two does not therefore seem to be a real substitute for a disadvantaged home environment. THE RESULTS OF LEARNING AT THE END OF CM2 The data from the DEP national survey (Assessment in CM2 in 1987) makes it possible to identify whether the traces of early schooling are still visible at the end of the primary cycle.

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In gross terms it is observed that the group of pupils starting school at two has, at the end of CM2, a level of learning of 104.8 (Figure 13.1) compared with an average score of 101.1 for pupils starting school at three and 97.7 for pupils starting at four or over. However, these results must be treated with caution inasmuch as there are overall social effects (the children of workers, for example, have a level of learning in CM2 of 96.5 while the average value of the scores of the children of managers is 106.0, almost ten points more). It is therefore probable, as we have seen previously, that there are social differences in children’s access to early schooling. It can be noted that early nursery schooling seems to benefit children from different backgrounds. Working class children gain 7.8 points in terms of their final level of learning at the end of CM2 depending on whether they have had schooling from the age of two rather than only from the age of four; they gain another 4.4 points depending on whether they started nursery school at two rather than at three. For their part, the children of managers attending school from the age of two gain 4.6 and 2.5 points respectively compared with their classmates starting school at four and three. As we have done previously, it is preferable to adopt a multivariate approach leading to the assessment of the influence, ‘other things being equal’, of age on starting nursery school (Figure 13.2).

Figure 13.1 Level of learning at the end of CM2 according to age on starting nursery school and professional category of father (average 100, standard devision=15) Source: DEP survey carried out on 2,100 children in 1987 Note: At the end of CM2, the children of workers starting nursery school at two achieve a level of learning of 102.2 compared with an average score of 97 f o r children starting at three

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Figure 13.2 Gross and net impact (in given family background) of age when starting nursery school on learning (mathematics and French at the end of CM2: national DEP survey Source: DEP survey carried out on 2,100 children in 1987 Note: At the end of CM2, the gross effect of schooling at two in comparison with schooling at three is +3.7 points. The net effect, in a given family background, is identical

As an extension of the results obtained at the end of CE1, the previous data show that age on starting nursery school continues to exert a positive effect on the level of learning of pupils at the end of primary education. The average net difference in terms of learning between pupils starting nursery school at two and those starting at three is 3.8 points4 and affects learning in French as much as in mathematics. This gain of 3.8 points corresponds to a little more than a third of the gross social difference in learning which, in CM2, separates the children of workers and managers. At the level of this national survey, there was an endeavour to test the existence of interactive effects between early schooling on the one hand and the origin and nationality of pupils on the other. Once again, as at CP and CE1 levels examined in the IREDU sample, it was not possible to observe significantly different effects at the end of CM2 in access to nursery school at the age of two according to these two important dimensions of pupils’ background or origin. The influence of age when starting nursery school thus seems quantitatively comparable in the different social backgrounds. At an educational level, it is clear that schooling at the age of two offers an advantage in terms of learning, compared with schooling at three. This advantage proves to be sufficiently lasting for there to remain visible traces of it at the end of primary education. In comparison with their classmates who entered nursery school later, pupils provided with schooling at the age of two start the primary cycle with a higher level of learning and maintain

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(and even increase) this initial difference throughout the cycle (net advantage of 2.5 points on entry to CP, 2.9 points at the end of CE1 and 3.8 points at the end of CM2). Judging by the interest in early schooling, it is useful to underscore the estimated gain of 3.8 points at the end of primary schooling. From the general perspective of the functioning of school, and in the hope of improving its quality, the pertinent question to answer is whether this benefit is ‘equal to’ the corresponding expenditure incurred by this pre-schooling. By way of example, it can be roughly estimated that the average cost of one year at primary school is equivalent to the corresponding cost of a reduction of five pupils per class in all primary school classes. Now this reduction in class size would, depending on the type of analysis used, lead to an average gain of 1.6 points at the end of CM2. Without attaching more importance than is needed to the precise details of this situation, it therefore seems that a strategy of developing nursery schooling at the age of two presents a better ‘cost-effectiveness’ ratio than a reduction in the size of primary school classes. This result is more a measure of the weakness of the advantages associated with a reduction in class size than a definitive argument in favour of developing early schooling. It is possible that other strategies for action on the quality of primary school exist which could be shown to have as good or better ‘cost-effectiveness’ ratios. It is important to bear in mind the relatively experimental nature of the situation examined which is manifested by the fact that our data relate to children who were two years old at the beginning of the 1980s. The effects measured here are partly due to the conditions in which early schooling took place. It is possible that in a certain number of situations children of two were educated with those of three and that this situation benefited them through an ‘osmosis’ effect beyond the specific benefit associated with the early nature of schooling.

NOTES 1

2 3 4

Translator’s note: CP (cours préparatoire) is the first year of compulsory education for children aged 6; CEI and CE2 (cours élémentaire) are the second and third years of primary school for children aged 7 and 8; CM1 and CM2 (cours moyen) are the final two years of primary school for children aged 9 and 10. The distribution of individual learning over the total population has been standardized with an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, in particular to make observed differences between the two surveys comparable. The distribution of individual learning over the whole population has been standardized with an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, in particular to make the differences between the two surveys comparable. While not considerable, this effect is none the less far from being negligible since it corresponds to about one-quarter of the standard deviation of the overall distribution of learning in CM2.

14 Educational homogeneity in French primary education A double case study Keith Sharpe

In establishing a helpful conceptual distinction between variable and fixed elements in the teaching-learning process Broadfoot et al. (1988) describe how different ‘national contexts’ operate on universal ‘classroom constants’ to produce variations in the educational realities actually experienced by teachers and pupils in different societies. In an earlier paper (Broadfoot et al. 1985) ‘such features as strong teacher authority, pupil coercion and group oriented curricula’ had been identified as ‘international constants in the teacher’s role’, whilst the national context had been broken down into three analytically distinct component parts: 1 2 3

Prevailing educational policies and priorities The institutional infrastructure Dominant ideological traditions

In a series of papers published throughout the 1980s this research group has presented powerful evidence of how nationally specific differences in the professional role-conceptions of British and French primary school teachers result in systematically structured differences in classroom practice between the two countries. By studying teachers in four different socioeconomic areas in each country it was possible to show that overall national difference was much more significant than the inter-country variations between regions defined on a social class basis. In responding to questions about their educational aims and objectives, their teaching styles and their professional responsibilities, the French teachers resembled each other more than they resembled their British counterparts working in equivalently affluent or equivalently disadvantaged areas. Clearly, the concept of ‘classroom constants’ is potentially a powerful analytic tool for the study of education. Having a set of precisely described invariable and necessary features of the teaching-learning process, which could act as a kind of neutral template against which actual instances of the teaching and learning in different societies at different periods of time might be measured, would be a great asset. In studying any classroom situation the researcher would then be able to

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disregard the known ‘bedrock’ elements accounted for in the template, and focus on those actions and events which are particular and subject to socio-culturally determined variation. These particularities, once isolated, could then be analysed and explained without the danger of their being confused with inevitable inherent features of any teaching situation which are not amenable to change by intentional policy or unintended effect. At the present time, however, as Broadfoot et al. (1987a) note, there is insufficient detailed evidence on which to base such an accurate and comprehensive description of the limits of variation. Some English primary practice during the 1970s with its strong individualistic emphasis on learner autonomy might make it difficult to sustain even the three features suggested above as ‘international constants’ (Bennett 1976). For this reason ‘there is a pressing need for comparative classroom ethnographies’ (Broadfoot 1985:270) which can provide data on variations in pedagogic practice, insights into the influences underlying such variations and information about limitations on variation. Stenhouse has similarly argued that ‘Comparative education will miss making an important contribution to the understanding of schooling if it does not participate in the current development of case-study approaches to educational processes and educational institutions’ (Stenhouse 1979:9). The research reported here is a direct response to this call made by Broadfoot et al. (1985) for more comparative classroom ethnographies. The findings to be reported from this double case study provide insights into the functioning of a national education system at local level which confirm many of the results of the large-scale study of British and French primary teachers undertaken by the Bristaix research group (Broadfoot 1985; Broadfoot et al. 1985, 1987a, b, 1988). The double case study research strategy was specifically chosen in order to investigate one particularly significant outcome of the Bristaix conclusions, namely that the social class origin of pupils influenced teachers’ pedagogic practices much more in England than in France. Holding socio-economic background of the school catchment area constant, it was found that although there were some differences in the responses of all the teachers surveyed, the differences in the British sample were much greater than the differences in the French sample. In the British case this accords with the well documented heterogeneity of practice at primary level (Bennett 1976; Galton et al. 1980) which reflects the ideology of professional autonomy and a pedagogic philosophy orientated towards meeting children’s ‘individual needs’ (Kellmer-Pringle 1984; Ainscow and Mauncey, 1988). By contrast, the strong homogeneity of the French sample was a striking feature. This suggests that not only is ‘national context’ a more important factor in determining classroom practice than pupils’ social class origin, it is actually also strongly determinative of the extent to which social class variations can exert an influence at all. The British national context seems to allow the socio-economic background to

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affect pedagogic practice more than happens in France. In the discourse of variable analysis it could be said that there appear to be factors in the French ‘national context’ which are capable of overriding the influence of pupil’s home background on classroom life, influence here referring both to actual social-class-related characteristics pupils bring to the classroom situation and to the effect of teachers’ perceptions of these background characteristics. This latter point is, in the context of so much British and American research on the educationally fateful consequences of teacher perceptions of pupils’ home backgrounds, especially important. It would seem that the forces pushing towards homogeneity in French education must be very strong indeed. In order to investigate the ways in which this pronounced homogeneity is created and sustained, two French primary schools in very different socio-economic settings were selected for long-term ethnographic study. Both schools are located in the same large industrial town in northern France, which for the purposes of this research study is referred to as Coeurville, and have similar numbers of pupils on roll. One of the two schools is in an affluent area of Coeurville and has in its catchment area children from small families with predominantly professional parents. The other is in an educational priority zone (Zone d’Education Prioritaire) and is situated on a run-down municipal housing estate on the outskirts of town where unemployment is high. Its pupils tend to come from large families, many with single parents. The two schools were specifically selected to represent quite extreme differences, so that if a significant homogeneity appeared to exist between them it would be likely to exist between other French primary schools with less marked social divergences. The aim in the choice of schools was as far as possible to isolate pupils’ social class origin as the predominant differentiating factor between them. Over a two-year period every class in both schools has been observed for at least one whole day and most for several days; lessons in every curriculum subject have been observed, and a wide range of informal discussions and unstructured interviews with inspectors, advisers, headteachers, teachers, parents and pupils has taken place. It is clear from the ethnographic evidence accumulated during the fieldwork that the two schools do display a very high degree of homogeneity. Indeed, it is difficult to identify ways in which teachers’ pedagogic practice differs to any significant extent in response to their differing clienteles and socio-economic settings. In what follows some of the constituent features of this educational homogeneity will be described and discussed. A possible theoretical framework for analysing the concept of ‘national context’ based on the work of the ‘Bristaix’ group (referred to earlier) will then be presented and utilised to provide explanations for some of these observed features.

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EDUCATIONALLY HOMOGENEOUS FEATURES IN THE TWO SCHOOLS OBSERVED School buildings Despite their different locations and ages, both schools have very similar ground plan layouts. Entrance is direct from the street pavement in both cases into a small hallway, a door off which leads into the headteacher’s room. Neither school has any other communal staffroom for teachers and so at break times in the morning and afternoon the two staffs have to huddle into these rooms to drink coffee. This regular twice daily invasion of what is, at least nominally, their room serves as one regular symbolic confirmation for both headteachers of their position as primus inter pares, as a sort of ‘playing captain’ rather than ‘manager’. This point will be developed further later. In both schools the classrooms are situated along a straight corridor running the length of the school, although the ‘affluent’ school has four extra classrooms in a prefabricated construction in the playground, one of which is used as a canteen. The ‘priority zone’ school shares a canteen situated in an adjacent school and in neither school are there kitchens for food to be cooked on the premises. Both schools have a tarmac playground and the affluent school has a covered section (un préau) for use in wet weather. Neither school has a field nor access to one. The internal décor in both can be described as basic and functional, which adjectives might be equally applied to the toilet accommodation. In the priority zone school this consists of ageing external water closets in the playground with no separate provision for teachers or other adults. Classroom organization Without exception every classroom in both schools conforms to the same pattern. At the front of the class is the fixed blackboard which in many cases is supplemented by added opening flaps and free standing blackboards either side. Children’s desks are set out in rows facing this array of blackboard acreage. In a few cases the rows are slanted to create something of a horseshoe effect, but the essential principle that children sit in rows with a direct view of the blackboard area is always maintained. In one classroom there are blackboards at both ends with desks facing each of them and this is because the teacher has to deal with a mixed class of two curriculum levels. In this case the teacher’s desk is in the middle of the room. In the majority of classrooms the teachers’ desk is at the front to one side, but in some cases it is at the back. Wherever it is located, the teacher’s reported intention is to maximize control of the children and avoid blocking their view of the boards. Indeed, many teachers expressed surprise about even being asked why the classroom was arranged in this way. A characteristic response to questioning on this point was:

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Mais, c’est évident! …afin qu’ils puissent tous voir le tableau. But it’s obvious! …in order that they can all see the blackboard. The majority of classes had between 20 and 25 children, although one class did contain 30 pupils. There were no significant differences in class size as between the two schools. The learning environment The functional nature of the architecture and the internal decoration is supplemented by teachers’ use of space and resources to produce in every classroom in both schools a focused learning environment. Windows in the priority zone school are too high to be seen out of and, with the exception of the prefabricated classrooms, the lower level windows in the affluent school are specially glazed so as to obscure vision. Children’s work is rarely displayed and where it is there is little concern evident with mounting it carefully, attractively or even in some kind of context. By contrast, teacher-made displays cover large areas of wall space in both schools. These are invariably reminders of what has been taught and are effectively permanent records of what were once diagrams or lists presented on the blackboard or on worksheets. They are frequently pointed to during lessons as evidence of what teachers can legitimately expect the pupils to know. The vast majority concern language: lists of words with the same phonic structure or grammar points, such as how to construct the perfect tense, for example. A few cover mathematics issues, but no other subjects. One of the inspectors interviewed explained that: Il faut que les enfants aient des points de repères The children need to be reminded of points to be remembered. There are no stimulus displays (Greenstreet 1985) in the sense of an arrangement of 2-D and 3-D artefacts intentionally designed to provoke interest, enthusiasm and involvement in a particular subject or those relevant to ongoing learning in the class. There are in both schools some maps and some published, printed time-lines put up on walls, but these stand alone without explanation, contextualization or any kind of invitation to inquiry. A striking feature in both schools is the number of completely unrelated posters which teachers stick on walls. These brighten the room, but add nothing to the teaching-learning process. During the two years of fieldwork, the same wall displays were observed for several months and in some cases they remained much the same for the entire two years. Teachers’ lack of interest in stimulating displays was encapsulated in one classroom by the survival into the following April of a ‘Happy Christmas’ sign hung up in the previous November. This focused learning environment can be interpreted as a medium for the transmission of two important social messages which have

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a bearing on the creation of educational homogeneity in France. First, these classrooms forcibly communicate to children their status as passive receivers of important socially valued knowledge. The focal point of the classroom in which they sit for six hours most days is the blackboard to which they must attend with a degree of concentration and application verging on reverence, whilst around the classroom the walls proclaim the vital necessity to remember the content acquired previously. The classroom environment celebrates the role of the teacher as possessor of valued knowledge and skills. The child’s task is slowly and painfully to work through the long trek to mastery of this body of knowledge and skills. Along the way, anything he or she produces is likely to be less than adequate, complete or even interesting and, therefore, not worthy of public recognition. The walls show the ideal end product towards which all must laboriously strive. The need for teachers and pupils to see the odd colourful poster for occasional light relief perhaps underlines the arduous nature of the undertaking into which the child has been conscripted. The crucial point about this enforced passivity for the children in the two schools is that it applies to them all equally. They all face exactly the same situation, both literally in that their classroom environments do not differ, but also personally in that they find themselves confronted with the same socially sanctioned demands for achievement on externally imposed terms over which they have no control whatsoever. The corollary of this is the second important social message. The classroom environment ignores life outside school. It is concerned only with scholastic matters; it reflects only academic curriculum content, which is universal throughout France. It does not represent and, therefore, does not reinforce particularities in the environing sociocultural context. What the affluent area children and the priority zone children each bring from their home backgrounds to the classroom is therefore, at least theoretically, irrelevant. Certainly, the stuff of classroom life is mostly far removed from the immediate spontaneous interests of childhood in any social stratum. The facts of social heterogeneity are, by a mixture of conscious design and unintended effect, in this way masked by the classroom environment. School organization French primary education is organized on a national basis to spread over five years, in principle between the ages of 6 and 11. Each year is named: cours préparatoire (CP), cours élémentaire 1 (CE1), cours élémentaire 2 (CE2), cours moyen 1 (CM1), cours moyen 2 (CM2). At the end of each year teachers decide which of their pupils have reached the required standard and can proceed to the next level. Children not reaching the required standard repeat the year, provided the parents agree. This process is known as redoublement and continues despite having been officially suppressed several times over recent decades. It is possible for children to be advanced one year or retarded by up to two. In both the schools

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studied, children were organized as far as possible in mixed-age classes of a single level in order to create a homogeneous teaching group in which there would be no need for any significant differentiation. Only three classes over the two years could not be organized in this way and these only had two adjacent levels. In most classes, therefore, there was a spread of ages up to a maximum of four years. Although redoublement occurred in both schools, it was much more common in the priority zone where, by the same token, advancing a year was much rarer. By law, a sheet showing the age composition of the pupils in each class must be displayed in the classroom. In neither school were teachers concerned about the possible effect this permanent public announcement might have on pupil selfesteem. While in both schools there was some degree of exchange between teachers (for swimming or craft, for example) individual isolated class teaching was the norm. There were no instances of team teaching and all teachers planned lessons for their classes separately. In both schools there are few opportunities for teachers to discuss their work. The school day is the same: a morning session between 8.45 and 11.45, and an afternoon session between 13.45 and 16.45. More than half of the staff in both schools are off the school premises during the two-hour lunch break. The conditions under which coffee is taken in the fifteen-minute breaks already referred to make fruitful professional discussion all but impossible. Several teachers spoke of their unwillingness in any case to use this time to discuss children or educational matters since they regarded it as their free time. The comment, ‘On ne travaille pas pendant le temps libre’ made by a teacher in the affluent school was typical of many made by teachers in both schools. Beginning in the academic year 1990/91 teachers have been given time in school hours for concertation pedagogique. In both schools this has meant having approximately one Saturday morning session per month without children in the school for staff discussion to take place. In neither school have staff been happy or comfortable with this and much uncertainty has surrounded what the time should be used for. On each occasion staff have dispersed quickly once 11.45 a.m. arrived and the legal requirement had been fulfilled. In line with the findings of the Bristaix study, the teachers in these two schools viewed their professional role in a clearly defined way. For the most part this led them to see as necessary being present in the school only for teaching sessions or to meet other contractual obligations. Their predominant responsibility was seen as teaching the children allocated to them the specified curriculum content for the prescribed number of hours. Timetabling School hours for the whole of France are fixed by ministerial decree. In the first year of the study the total number of hours per week for primary

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Table 14.1 Number of hours spent every week on each of the subjects in the curriculum

Source: Ministère de L’Education Nationale (1985) Note: The twenty-seven hours are spread over nine half-days of three hours each. In France, therefore, the ‘national curriculum’ and ‘whole curriculum’ are synonymous.

schools was twenty-seven, to be spread over nine half-days. In both schools, therefore, there were three-hour teaching sessions a.m. and p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and a.m. only on Saturday. Since the inception of publicly funded education in France, there has always been one free day in the week available to parents to have their children receive religious instruction, as French state schools have always been entirely secular. Ministerial decree also determines the number of hours to be spent every week on each of the subjects in the curriculum as shown in Table 14.1. How these curriculum prescriptions are fitted into a weekly timetable covering the nine half-days is a matter for teachers to decide. They can, however, be required at any time to give an account (to the local education inspector) of exactly how the allocated hours are, in fact, being delivered, and a weekly timetable must be displayed in the classroom, along with a summary of what has been taught in the preceding weeks and terms. In the second year of the study the provision for one of the twenty-seven hours per week to be given over to staff consultation came into operation, although there was no clear indication of which subject(s) would lose time to make this possible. Equally, both schools’ opening hours amount just to the twenty-seven specified yet both have morning and afternoon breaks lasting up to half an hour at a time. When asked, teachers say this comes out of the time allocated to physical education. Every teacher in both schools used a formally organized timetable on subjects. There has been no cross-curricular or thematic work observed in either school over the two years. In practice even more time was allocated to mathematics and French, particularly the latter, than was laid down in official instructions. Teachers in both schools said they would jettison lessons in history, geography, science, music, art, PE if they thought that the children needed more time on what ‘really matters’: such issues as

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computation, calculation, conjugations, spelling, grammar, etc. They frequently perceived this need and did not expect that inspectors would be critical of the practice. At no point in the weekly timetable do the classes in the schools meet together. There are no assemblies of any kind, and no hall or other large space capable of accommodating all the children exists in either school. Teaching and learning styles Because classes are almost invariably regarded as homogeneous groups, teachers prepare the same work for the whole class almost all the time. Pupils are expected to be silent in class, speaking only when spoken to by the teacher. The overwhelming majority of lessons in both schools are taught didactically with the teacher giving some sort of explanation standing at the front, usually with the blackboard as the only visual aid or support, and the children then working through some kind of exercise on the points at issue, with any kind of supportive practical materials being very rare indeed. If not written on the board, exercises are often presented on photocopied sheets, sometimes prepared by the teacher, but more commonly taken from published textbooks for the curriculum level in question. This didactic style extends to all subjects. In craft lessons, children have had to copy models demonstrated by the teacher, making a rocking chair out of pegs according to a set plan, for example; in PE, teachers have been observed acting as exercise leaders whose actions it is the children’s task to imitate. Even in these more creative areas, the focus in the lessons observed has been on pupil skill in reproducing adult standards rather than developing childhood originality and imagination. Poetry lessons, for instance, have always been about learning by heart the works of great poets, not stimulating the children to any poetic expression of their own. Through this didactic approach comes an emphasis on all children being treated equally. In mathematics, for example, it was commonly observed that some form of technique or method would be presented as the way to solve a given type of calculation problem. Children would be expected to use the technique even if for them it was unnecessarily elaborated because they could ‘see’ directly what the answer was. Bright children like this who, even using teacher imposed algorithms, could finish quickly would sometimes have to wait, possibly without anything to do, until the bulk of the class finished. A typical response to children putting up their hands to inform the teacher that they had finished the work set for the class was given in a maths lesson with seven-year-olds: Alors, vous attendez bien sagement vos camarades en croisant les bras et en vous taisant.

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Well then, you wait sensibly for your classmates to finish with your arms crossed and keeping quiet. By the same token, slower children who struggled would be spoken to quite harshly. During exercises, teachers would perambulate around the class checking what pupils were doing, and those going ‘wrong’ could find themselves on the receiving end of loud public criticism and even ridicule. The teachers’ apparent overriding concern was that everyone should jump the same hurdle whatever their differing individual capacities. There were many other clear practical congruences on teaching and learning between the two schools. The set of exercise books teachers used with pupils was virtually the same in every class. There was considerable overlap on textbooks used as source materials for photocopied exercises. Teachers’ and pupils’ handwriting styles were to all intents and purposes identical. Teachers’ own preparation books, in which each day’s lessons would be planned in advance, were all written up in the same way. Teaching techniques such as spot checks on knowledge, skills or understanding using small slates, ardoises, which children had to hold up in the air with their answers chalked on, were observed in every classroom. Again, most teachers used an extrinsic reward system of bons points in which children giving correct responses would be given little pieces of paper which, accumulated in sufficient quantity (usually ten), could then be exchanged for a sweet, a picture card or some little trinket. Pupil behaviour The team of HMI which visited twelve primary schools in the Orléans region during March 1991 observed that: The behaviour of the children in all the schools was generally good. They worked hard and concentrated on the task in hand. They were polite, co-operative and responded positively to work. (HMI 1991:2) Similar findings emerge from the present study. Pupils in both schools generally behaved in well-disciplined ways in the classroom; there were few incidents of real disorder. These did occur in both schools with certain supply teachers. By coincidence, the same supply teacher was at one point employed to take classes for the 50 per cent non-teaching time allowed to the headteachers in the two study schools. She was unable to control classes in either school, and the ‘affluent area’ children were no less set on making her life a misery and enjoying themselves than their priority zone counterparts. A noticeable feature of pupil behaviour in both areas was their apparent enthusiasm for set exercises. It was not uncommon for pupils to cheer when told to get out their books for some particular

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exercise in grammar or spelling, perhaps because they anticipated success within a clearly understood framework. Presumably, because their experience of schooling had been so homogeneous, the children expected to be sitting down most of the day working on fairly narrowly defined, rather academic tasks and had become used to it, even those in the priority zone for whom its secure and predictable character was possibly a welcome aspect in the light of chronically uncertain lives at home. Because teachers rarely left children for long to get on alone, but tended to ‘worry’ around them in an almost ‘sheepdog’ fashion and because most of the time everyone was doing the same thing in silence, all pupils obviously felt a strong pressure to apply themselves to the task in hand. In class children were polite and respectful to teachers, although once outside the classroom in the corridor and the playground all then were capable of very lively and boisterous behaviour towards which their teachers seemed, after the strict discipline evident in lessons, surprisingly tolerant. Children in the priority zone were dressed less well, had on average a lower level of language development and experienced more difficulties in academic work (there was a much higher level of redoublement as noted above), but in school they behaved overall in ways more or less indistinguishable from their more fortunate contemporaries in the affluent area. Teacher attitudes There was a marked conservatism evident in the attitudes of most of the teachers. In the past three academic years not one of the permanent staff teachers had chosen to move year/levels. Some had already been teaching the same course for many years in the same school. Their view of teaching was as unproblematic and ‘axiomatic’ as that reported amongst the Bristaix sample of French teachers (Broadfoot et al. 1988) and their notion of professionality equally ‘restricted’. They clearly had a commitment to doing the best they could for their pupils which meant getting as many of them as possible through to the next level. It consequently makes sense to them to teach the same level every year and it gives a strong sense of security. There was no evidence of any anguishing over different methods or approaches and very little concern with any kind of professional development or updating. There is not a great deal of in-service provision for primary staff in Coeurville and few teachers in these two schools availed themselves of any such opportunities. There were, on occasions, some tensions surrounding relationships with the headteachers in both schools because, while the post carries no official managerial responsibility, being rather more to do with administrative form-filling than with executive decision-making, there are none the less times at which some sort of leadership needs to be shown and this is always liable to provoke feelings of resentment from teachers who feel they are accountable to the state in the person of the local education inspector

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and not in any way to the headteacher. French primary headteachers neither select nor supervise staff and are not responsible for the curriculum they teach. The slightness of this professional elevation is reflected in the meagreness of the additional financial remuneration it brings. All of the teachers, including the headteachers, were strongly committed to the importance of a national curriculum and most viewed with some degree of apprehension the programme of change designed to introduce more flexibility which the French Minister of Education, Lionel Jospin, launched in 1989. The commitment to an ideological conception of equality and equality of educational opportunity resting on a common entitlement irrespective of status, place or individual aptitude seems to be reinforced by practical concerns with children being able to move around France without traumatic discontinuities in schooling experiences, and teachers being able to be sure and confident about what is expected of them. In general, expressed attitudes (both overheard and solicited) to education, to pupils, to colleagues, to headteachers, to inspectors, to parents and so forth varied only very little as between individuals and not noticeably at all as between the two staffs. ‘NATIONAL CONTEXT’ AS A BACKGROUND EDUCATIONAL DETERMINANT The eight areas of homogeneity discussed above arise out of a ‘national context’ which systematically structures educational possibilities and actualities. The three key aspects of ‘national context’ identified by Broadfoot et al. (1985) are perhaps best considered not as isolated elements, but as interrelated components of a complex dynamic network as shown in Figure 14.1. Each of these three components has a momentum of its own exerting an influence on the other two at the same time as being influenced by them. A possible theoretical format for describing this network of interrelated influences is suggested in Figure 14.2. This background set of sociocultural interrelationships can be seen as impacting on teachers and pupils in ways that contribute to the creation and maintenance of the educational homogeneity observed in the two

Figure 14.1 The key aspects of ‘national context’ as interrelated components of a dynamic network

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Figure 14.2 Interacting influences within the ‘national context’

Coeurville primary schools in their very different social settings. The six interrelationships identified within the concept of ‘national context’ will each be examined individually in some detail in order to try to establish how they shape the homogeneous features observed in the two schools. The primary school as an institution embodying dominant ideological traditions The dominant ideological tradition in France is a form of republicanism in which all citizens have equal rights and it is considered morally objectionable to treat citizens differentially. Schools are, therefore, expected to offer every child exactly the same curriculum and exactly the same pedagogy irrespective of who they are, where they live, or even, within limits, whatever abilities they may have or lack. To guarantee this equality of treatment, schools have to be national institutions subject to national regulations and a national system of inspection. Teachers are civil servants whose fundamental professional commitment is to the national education system and the state it serves rather than to the particular school at which they teach. In a very real sense, French primary schools are local branches of this massive national apparatus rather than local educational communities in themselves. This lack of individual school identity is

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evident in the absence of any school uniforms, badges or insignia, in the absence of any assemblies, ceremonies or occasions at which the school comes together for any purpose which might develop what Durkheim (1968) called ‘conscience collective’, and in the fact that children spend the whole day in school without, apart from playtime or school dinner if they stay for it, ever being involved in anything beyond their own class. They attend solely for the purpose of receiving a nationally determined programme of instruction for the year dispensed in three-hour teaching blocks, and the school’s institutional structure and processes are organized to provide just this. Educational policies and priorities reflect dominant ideological principles The major ideological principle of French republicanism is universalism and it permeates the policies, priorities and practices of French primary education. It is systematically taught through a civic education which focuses specifically on the rights, duties and obligations of the citizen, whoever he or she may be. It is implicitly taught in much of the rest of the French national curriculum, particularly in history and French language. It is apparent even in the language of the class teachers who refer constantly to what on does and what on does not do, and thereby communicate to children a much more morally compelling apparent universal social consensus than is carried by the English equivalent, ‘one’. What on does everyone should do, what on does not do is not to be done. At national level it is evident in the policy of central determination of curricula for all educational institutions and central control of educational qualifications. At the level of the classroom it emerges in the intentions of class teachers, reported in the Bristaix study and clearly shared by staff in the two Coeurville schools in this study, as far as possible to get all the children in the class up to the pre-determined level for the stage of the primary cycle for which they are responsible. The concern is not with extending the particular potentialities of each child, but with shaping all children to match a kind of national identikit profile for the year-group. Universalism is the guiding principle behind the structure of teaching careers in France. These begin with a competitive civil service examination open to any with the requisite academic qualification, organized by each académie, which used to take place before the baccalauréat and has gradually moved higher to a point where in 1992 it will be sat only by candidates having a licence, a first degree. Examinees are ranked in order of their performance in the examination, and the places where available in the académie’s training institutions, which used to be Ecoles Normales but become Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres after 1992, are allocated to candidates with the highest marks. Below these a second group of candidates make up une liste complémentaire, who are given the

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opportunity to work during one year as supply teachers standing in for absent teachers or in unfilled posts with the guarantee that they will enter training the following year. Both these groups receive a state salary. All other candidates are eliminated, but can resit the concours in subsequent years if they so desire. Once trained, teachers can apply for vacant posts, but in their early years are likely only to be allocated to supply teacher posts which no experienced teachers have wanted. Every few years each teacher’s performance is assessed and graded by the local IDEN (Inspecteur Départemental de L’Education Nationale—local Education Inspector), who having observed an hour-long lesson gives the teacher a mark out of twenty. By agreement with the primary teachers’ union (SNI—Syndicat National des Instituteurs), this mark can vary only within set limits, according to number of years of service. An officially prescribed complex formula links this already seniority-weighted mark with actual years of teaching experience and qualifications to produce an overall mark called a barème. Each year teachers can submit applications for up to fifty vacant posts. On an appointed day a regional committee made up of officials of the National Education System and union representatives sift through the applications to ensure that every post is allocated strictly according to which applicant has the highest barème. There are no interviews, there are no calls for references and there are no other selection criteria. At no point do personal qualities, characteristics on commitments have any direct effect on the development of French teacher’s careers. Schools reproduce dominant ideological principles and reveal ideological tensions Given its unitary and homogeneous character, it is perhaps unsurprising that French schooling is so largely effective in transmitting the dominant ideological tradition from generation to generation. At the primary level, alternative values are not presented, discussion of religion in any shape or form is (and always has been) banned, and the state-prescribed programmes do not encourage any kind of multicultural awareness. In the two Coeurville primary schools there are several pupils from different cultures, but they are treated in exactly the same way as indigenous French children, with only the language differences really being addressed by teachers and this in terms of the problems it created for them. While the melting-pot metaphor is more commonly associated with American education, French schools are at least as powerful national socializing agencies with an impressive track record in making a diverse array of human material take a specifically French form. One result of this continuity across the nation and across the generations is the consensus that exists on what primary education is for and should consist of. The

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current (1985) programmes and instructions are recognizably similar to the original aims and objectives laid down for elementary schools at the inception of publicly funded obligatory schooling in the early 1880s and reflect the basic concern then and now with lire, écrire et compter, reading, writing and calculation. As the Bristaix study found, there is a remarkable consensus amongst French teachers on what their professional role requires of them, a consensus which arises out of ideological commitment within themselves, not out of effectively enforced and policed legal obligations. The degree of congruency they discovered in French teachers’ personal and professional value orientations bears testimony to the efficiency with which French institutions accomplish ideological transmission. The finding that for French primary teachers role conceptions are ‘unproblematic’, i.e. do not need thinking about because they are experienced as ‘obvious’ even to the extent of failing to understand what might be meant by different teaching styles (Broadfoot et al. 1988), is a further tribute to the potency of this reproductive process. It is surely no coincidence that French sociologists have been so preoccupied with social and cultural reproduction (Durkheim, 1968; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970). It is no coincidence either that French primary teachers are still referred to as instituteurs, a name deriving from their original function of explaining to the people the new institutions established in French society after the Revolution. Durkheim’s (1956) definition of education as ‘the methodological socialisation of the young’ applies with special pertinence to the education system in France, a country which has always had a particular concern, often in the face of territorial threat, to assert the value of its national and cultural identity and ensure both through prescribed curriculum content (especially French language and literature, French history and civic education) and the centralized structuring of its schooling that children grow up with a strong, arguably emotionally charged, sense of being French. Down to the present day, French primary school teachers continue to bear considerable responsibility for passing on an understanding of French social structures and cultural forms. Generalized ideological commitments to the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity have been reproduced through the generations and remain an important taken-forgranted background context for much contemporary public debate about social and political issues. In the case of Bourdieu the sociological interest is not only in mechanisms of sociocultural reproduction per se, but also in the process whereby structures of sociopolitical inequality are also continually reproduced which seemingly contradict cultural values. Just as Keddie (1971), in her study of a comprehensive school humanities department, found at the micro-level contradictory tensions between what teachers said they believed in an ‘educationist’ context and what they actually were observed to do in the ‘teacher context’, so Bourdieu’s work focuses on a similar discrepancy at the macro level between ideology and actual social

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practice. The correlations between social class origin, educational attainment and occupational destination have persisted as obdurately in France as in other western industrialized societies despite its particularly emphatic, world-renowned public commitment to equality and equality of opportunity. Bourdieu concludes that widespread belief in equality of opportunity for all citizens in the Republic, both as a value orientation and as a perceived reality, in fact simultaneously masks and legitimizes the way in which structures of power, status and privilege are actually reproduced from one generation to the next. Ironically, therefore, what appears to be a contradiction is revealed in this perspective to be functional in the process of societal reproduction. The actual operation of institutional processes can expose ideological tensions. One starting paradox derives from the consequences of the system of teaching post allocations above. Since the French primary curriculum is relatively narrow, academic and formal, and requires from children at an early age a willingness to suppress spontaneous interests to grapple with teacher-directed conceptual abstractions, teaching in areas of social and economic deprivation where such willingness is less immediately forthcoming is experienced as much harder work. For this reason teachers tend to try and escape from ‘difficult’ areas as soon as they can, leaving only young inexperienced and older less successful, often more disillusioned teachers in schools whose pupils are in greatest need of good teaching. Children already advantaged by their home circumstances generally have these advantages augmented in this way by receiving what the system defines as the best teaching. This ‘unto them that hath’ effect was clearly visible in the staffing of the two primary schools in the present study. It is received wisdom amongst teachers in Coeurville that there is little chance of obtaining a post in the affluent school before the age of forty because only after that degree of seniority would the barème be high enough. There is no such need to have a high barème for a post in the priority zone school. It is ironic that because of this the education system, for all its universalistic value orientations, can be seen to be reproducing actual structured inequalities in life-chances at the same moment as it inculcates the ideological orthodoxy of equality for all in the Republic. The operation of institutions confirms policies and priorities and sets parameters for change The two Coeurville schools bear witness to the clear priority the French education system accords the transmission model of teaching. Whilst there is an evident concern to keep class size down to relatively low numbers (most in both schools were below 25), there is much less concern with the provision of resources. Neither school has many books, fiction or nonfiction, and material support for practical work in subjects beyond the French/mathematics core is scant or non-existent. In both schools teachers

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rely heavily on photocopied sheets. For the children there is almost no direct access to resources as a stimulus for learning; their daily school experience is that learning comes through the teacher. During the two years it was rare to hear teachers complain about lack of resources. The policy decisions dictating this state of affairs are thus implicitly confirmed by the teachers’ acceptance of it as a taken-for-granted backcloth against which their work is carried out. Even in the affluent school the building is in a state of disrepair, yet living amongst ancient peeling paint seemed not particularly to perturb anybody. There are, however, a variety of ways in which the operation of educational institutions has raised policy issues and set parameters for discussion of changing priorities. The setting up of educational priority zones was itself clearly a response to perceived disfunctions, although the funding and other forms of support given to the priority zone school in this study do not appear to have made a great impact, and a degree of jaundiced cynicism about it is clearly apparent amongst the teachers. Equally, the practice of redoublement in primary and secondary schools has caused anxieties at policy-making levels as research has repeatedly shown that it tends to pre-determine the child’s ultimate educational failure rather than providing an opportunity to ‘catch up’. The extent of it has been curtailed, both by official restrictions (parents must give approval, only certain years can be repeated, etc.) and general exhortation, and the present situation represents something of a compromise between the professional ideology of didactic teaching, the institutional expediency of homogeneous classes and the policy commitment to minimizing the educational drop-out rate. This latter point has now been incarnated in the ambitious policy objective espoused by the French government of having 80 per cent of the age cohort reach the level of baccalauréat by the year 2000. Policies and priorities reinforce ideological traditions but can condition their development and adaption The history of post-war educational legislation in France can be interpreted as a progressive refinement of republican ideology in the context of changing socio-economic circumstances. The Haby Reforms of the mid-1970s, for example, promoted egalitarianism by offering to all the chance to go to the lycée. The current reforms being pioneered by the present Minister of Education, Lionel Jospin, similarly arise out of and, in turn, reinforce fundamental value commitments which are egalitarian and universalistic in nature. It is the relatively recent official recognition that a too rigid system takes no account of the individual child and differing rates of development which has now led to the ministerial demand that teachers adopt ‘une pédagogie différenciée’, work as a team rather than in isolation, and consider the primary stage as consisting of multi-year cycles rather than year courses

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which have to be got through (Jospin 1990). Although this appears to be something of a departure from traditional French educational forms, it is actually an attempt to maintain the same ideological value commitments in changed circumstances, particularly the move to mass secondary and higher education which changes the role of the primary school, and in the light of officially sponsored educational research showing the obdurate persistence of social class inequalities in educational attainment. It is, however, possible that in the fullness of time this emphasis on ‘une pédagogie centrée sur l’élève’ (Jospin 1990) will in its turn condition French educational ideology towards a greater degree of individualism and of variation between schools and regions than has hitherto been permitted. The process of differentiation between schools could be said to have begun with the requirement in the Jospin law that every school produce ‘un projet d’école’, in which is set out a series of statistics showing how the school has developed over recent years and hopes to develop in the near future. Such incipient individuation and embryonic differentiation is apparently acceptable after a decade in which the national government has promoted regionalism and an unprecedented degree of administrative devolution. Policies and priorities guide the functioning and evolution of educational institutions At the highest level of generality the mere fact that there is a strong consensual policy commitment to a unitary national system of education entails more or less inevitably certain institutional formats. The hierarchical pyramid with the Minister of Education and his ‘cabinet’ as its apex working down through the académies with their recteurs to the local education departments and schools is viewed as a necessary structure for its implementation, as is the concomitant vast bureaucracy. This national policy and the huge structure it gives rise to would prevent primary schools from developing an autonomous identity and character even if teachers’ (and parents’) ideological beliefs did not already exclude the possibility. The direct responsibility for the functioning of primary schools lies not with headteachers, but within the IDEN inspectors who, in turn, are answerable to the IAs (Inspecteurs d’Académie). Each IDEN had a circonscription containing a number of primary schools and it is his or her function to take all major decisions concerning these schools leaving only fairly minor issues to the headteacher and staff. In theory, the IDEN’s role is to ensure that official education policies are applied in his/her schools, but in practice, given the limitations of time and resources, it is all but impossible to perform this policing function adequately. The fact, therefore, that official policies are mostly applied, as evidenced both in the Bristaix research and in the present study, owes more to the professional ideology of teachers than to the power of the administrative institutional framework itself to enforce policy decisions.

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The ability of teachers to resist policies which do not accord with their professional ideology has been shown in, for example, the persistence of redoublement and is clear also in the present state of implementation of some aspects of the Jospin law. During the second year of observation the requirement that one hour per week be set aside for staff consultation came into effect. In Coeurville this has taken the form of one three-hour Saturday morning every three weeks. It is clear from this research that teachers attend these staff meetings on sufferance because they have to, not because they perceive any clear purpose in them. One teacher suggested wrily that instead of concertation pédagogique these sessions might be more appropriately termed consternation pédagogique! Given the ‘unproblematic’ conception (Broadfoot et al. 1988) they hold of their role and the absence of team-teaching experience, it is unsurprising that they found little to discuss. Policies and officially determined priorities have to be lived with; teachers may be contractually obliged to attend the trough, but their professional self-conceptions may lead them to resist imbibing anything. There is evidence of some inconsistencies and implicit internal contradictions even within the priorities and policies being articulated by the minister. In the press release about the new perspective for primary schools (Jospin 1990) reference is made to the importance of putting the child ‘au coeur du système éducatif’, giving the child the chance to develop study skills, openness of mind and curiosity, all of which will require teachers to work together flexibly and use new teaching methods such as groupwork. Yet the first article of the law passed (Ministère de L’Education Nationale, 1989) speaks of education as a national priority and schools offering youngsters whatever their social or cultural or geographic origin the acquisition of ‘une culture générale’. It also continues to underline the role of schools in transmitting knowledge. For teachers working within an administrative apparatus with a proven track record in social inertia these latter ministerial observations may be taken as an invitation to follow their own personal and professional inclinations and ensure that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. CONCLUSION The study reported in this chapter has particular relevance to the current policy changes affecting the British education system. Over the past two decades politicians from all the major British parties have generally moved from praising the ‘rich tapestry’ of local variation towards condemning ‘patchy provision’. The imposition of a national curriculum in the 1988 Education Reform Act was intended to make British schools more homogeneous, at least in terms of the substantive content of the education offered. The present study suggests, however, that educational homogeneity such as that so clearly evident in France does not depend on

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the mere existence of a national curriculum, but rather on a whole cluster of interacting sociocultural influences which may be usefully conceptualized in the term ‘national context’ as it has been developed here. British schools are, therefore, likely to remain relatively more heterogeneous than their French counterparts because the environing British ‘national context’ will systematically sustain much greater diversity than is conceivable in France. Indeed, the same Education Reform Act which introduced a national curriculum simultaneously increased local school-based decision-making powers specifically so as to extend the range of distinctively different schools and boost ‘parental choice’. Similarly, the concern for equality can be expected to continue to be viewed somewhat differently in the two countries. In France there is a strong belief in uniform provision. Teachers’ pedagogic practices are largely invariant across the spectrum of pupil’s social class background. It is also worth noting that this same principle of invariance applies to gender, ethnicity and unrelated disability. The notion of a unitary primary educational package appropriate to every future citizen is all-encompassing and deeply entrenched. British primary teachers, by contrast, have traditionally adapted their pedagogy and curricular provision to accord with their perceptions of the ‘needs’ of the individual children in their care (Bennett 1976; King 1978; Galton et al. 1980; Kellmer-Pringle 1984). Now, on the one hand, it is arguable that the established French approach based on homogeneous provision in practice discriminates against children from family backgrounds which do not prepare them to benefit from schooling and that to treat everyone ‘the same’ when they are, in fact, very different is effectively to deny them equality of opportunity. On the other hand, there is evidence that where teachers are free to decide what should be offered to which children they may, albeit unwittingly and with the best of professional intentions, pre-determine the success of some and the failure of others. This point was neatly demonstrated in King’s (1978) study of infant schooling when teachers in one school explained that the children were not yet ready to tackle ‘joined-up’ handwriting, whereas children of the same age in a neighbouring school had been observed using it. King comments: Children defined as not being up to doing joined writing were not taught joined writing, and so were not allowed to demonstrate whether they could do joined writing. (King 1978:134) This observation is peculiarly apposite in the context of French primary education. Children everywhere in France learn joined handwriting from the very beginning of their schooling between the ages of 2 and 5 during their years in the école maternelle. The ethnographic evidence presented here bears witness to the significance of the national context as a powerful determinative influence on the social

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processes of primary education in France. Empirical descriptions of how the two schools in their very different socio-economic circumstances operate in strikingly similar ways have been presented, and the theoretical analysis attempted in the latter part of the paper has tried to offer some explanation of how this notable homogeneity is created and sustained by factors in the broader context of French society. The paper is intended to represent a contribution to the ongoing debate over the relative importance of culturally and historically specific variables, on the one hand, and structural conditions, on the other, in shaping educational forms in a given society (Archer 1979; Broadfoot 1985). Further ethnographic study of educational institutions in a range of different societies is needed to help clarify the issue. REFERENCES Ainscow, M. and Mauncey, J. (1988) Meeting Individual Needs in the Primary School (London, David Fulton Publishers). Archer, M.S. (1979) Social Origins of Educational Systems (London, Sage Publications). Bennett, N. (1976) Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress (London, Open Books). Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1970) La Reproduction (Paris, Editions de Minuit). Broadfoot, P. (1985) Institutional Dependence and Autonomy: English and French Teachers in the Classroom, Prospects, XV(2), pp. 263–271. Broadfoot, P., Osborn, M., Gilly, M. and Paillet, A. (1985) Changing Patterns of Educational Accountability in England and France, Comparative Education 21(3), pp. 273–286. Broadfoot, P., Osborn, M., Gilly, M. and Paillet, A. (1987a) Teachers’ Conceptions of their Professional Responsibility: Some International Comparisons, Comparative Education, 23(3), pp. 287–301. Broadfoot, P., Osborn, M., Gilly, M. and Paillet, A. (1987b) French Lessons, Times Educational Supplement, 3 July, 1987. Broadfoot, P., Osborn, M., Gilly, M. and Paillet, A. (1988) What Professional Responsibility Means to Teachers: National Contexts and Classroom Constants, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 9(3), pp. 265–287. Durkheim, E. (1956) Education and Sociology (London, Collier Macmillan). Durkheim, E. (1968) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (London, George, Allen & Unwin). Galton, M., Simon, B. and Croll, P. (1980) Inside the Primary Classroom (London, R K P). Greenstreet, D. (1985) Ways to Display (London, Ward Lock). HMI (1991) Aspects of Primary Education in France (London, DES). Jospin, L. (1990) Une Nouvelle Politique pour L’Ecole Primaire (Paris, CNDP). Keddie, N. (1971) Classroom Knowledge, in M.F.D.Young (ed.) Knowledge and Control (London, Collier-Macmillan). Kellmer-Pringle, M. (1984) The Needs of Children (London, Hutchinson). King, R. (1978) All Things Bright and Beautiful (Chichester, John Wiley). Ministère de L’Education Nationale (1985) Ecole Elémentaire—Programmes et Instructions (Paris, CNDP). Ministère de L’Education Nationale (1989) Projet de Loi D’Orientation sur l’Education (Paris, CNDP). Stenhouse, L. (1979) Accountability, Educational Analysis 1(1), pp. 3–21.

15A lesson in progress? Primary classrooms observed in England and France Marilyn Osborn and Patricia Broadfoot

INTRODUCTION This chapter draws upon a comparative study of primary school teachers in England and France carried out shortly before the implementation of the National Curriculum and its assessment in English schools. The research had as a central objective the exploration of issues concerning the relative importance of systemic variations for educational delivery. Building upon an earlier, more limited comparative study (Broadfoot 1981) the aim was to ascertain in a systematic fashion to what extent it is true to say that particular institutional systems, together with the cultural traditions from which they derive, represent a major influence on teaching practices and on the conceptions which teachers have of their role and responsibilities. A central concern was to explore teachers’ conceptions of their professional responsibility in two very different national contexts, in France a highly centralized education system with programmes of study and attainment targets laid down for all children and in England a highly decentralized system with apparently much greater autonomy for teachers in matters of curriculum and pedagogy. However, the study was undertaken at a time when rapid institutional change was about to take place which seemed likely to transform the raison d’être of English education to something very similar to the French model. Consequently it provides not only a valuable illumination of the differences between teachers in the two systems and some explanation of the origins of these differences, but also a basis for projecting some of the more likely results of current policy initiatives in England and Wales. In particular, it highlights the way in which these changes are likely to affect teachers’ practices and professional conceptions. RESEARCH DESIGN The Bristol-Aix project, which was carried out in close collaboration with two French researchers, Gilly and Paillet, involved two cohorts of primary school teachers, 360 in each country, drawn from the relatively matched

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geographic areas of Avon in England and the Bouches-du-Rhône area of France; the former encompassing the cities Bristol and Bath, the latter the cities of Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. The teachers were subdivided in each case into roughly equal numbers representing four defined socioeconomic zones, referred to as ‘rural’, ‘inner-city’, ‘affluent suburban’ and ‘average suburban’ in order to provide for comparison intra-nationally as well as internationally. In addition to the major questionnaire survey, carried out in 1984/85, a programme of in-depth interviews and classroom observation was conducted with a sub-sample of teachers in each region in each country. The mixture of quantitative and qualitative methodologies enabled us both to map the scale of difference in perspective of teachers in the two countries and to begin to understand some of the origins of these differences. It is this latter, more qualitative part of the study, based on classroom observation, which we intend to report here. Findings from the questionnaire stage of the study are reported in detail elsewhere (Osborn and Broadfoot 1988; Broadfoot and Osborn 1987, 1988). This research suggested that teachers’ conceptions of their professional responsibility in the two countries were characterized by two very different models of accountability. French teachers had a narrower, more restricted and more classroom-focused conception of their role which centred on what they saw as their responsibility mainly for children’s academic progress. English teachers, by contrast, saw themselves as having a more wide-ranging and diffuse set of responsibilities which encompassed widely dispersed goals relating to responsibilities outside as well as inside the classroom, including extra-curricular and sometimes even community activities, all aspects of school relationships, accountability to parents, colleagues and the headteacher. They also had a strong consciousness of the need to justify their actions to others. At their most extreme, then, a French teacher’s perceptions of his/her role centred on ‘meeting one’s contractual responsibility’ and an English teacher’s on ‘striving after perfection’. Based on what teachers said about their professional responsibility, four distinct dimensions of difference in the national context were identified. These were: (1) the range of professional activities undertaken; (2) the ambiguity of the teachers’ task; (3) the style of pedagogy; and (4) the relative importance to teachers of the process, as against the products, of learning. However, the findings above were based on teachers’ professed beliefs about their teaching. In the latter part of the study we attempted to explore the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about teaching and their classroom practice. As Keddie (1971) has argued, teachers’ classroom practice may often be in direct contradiction to their professed beliefs—a paradox of which they might be quite unaware. Crossley and Villiamy (1984) have similarly put the case for detailed ethnographic studies of classroom practice in comparative research, arguing the need to investigate

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the divorce between the policies and practice of schooling, the gap between rhetoric and reality. Consequently, in order to investigate the extent to which the conceptions reported above were reflected in teachers’ actual classroom practice and to explore more fully some of the interesting themes and issues which emerged from the questionnaire study, we studied sixteen teachers and classrooms in each country in greater depth. The teachers chosen for detailed study were drawn from one or more ‘idealtype’ schools in each of the four socio-economic zones. As well as being interviewed, each of the teachers was observed intensively for a week using a combination of ethnographic fieldnotes and a more systematic, but still highly detailed observation schedule adapted from Powell (1985). Each teacher was also asked to keep a diary of his/her professional activities out of school hours for that week as a means of comparing the breadth of his/ her commitment. Of course there are well recognized concerns about the adequacy of any observation schedule and this must be particularly so for any such use in a comparative context.1 However, in spite of these concerns, particularly about the possible ethnocentricity of the schedule used, in practice we found that the schedule worked reasonably well cross-culturally. French classrooms compared more favourably in certain respects—typically on the less child-centred dimensions, such as application to work by pupils and lack of interruption to the programme of work by discipline problems. Thus the schedule provided a useful general guide to differences between the two countries when accompanied by other forms of data collection. Indeed, we did find that when the results of the observation schedule were compared with the insights gained from ethnographic field notes, there was a remarkable consistency in the data, encouraging us to have confidence in the results obtained. In the summary which follows we shall focus primarily on the qualitative data which emerged from the fieldnotes together with the observation schedule. This revealed striking differences in pedagogy, in classroom organization, and in teacher-pupil relations, which were far greater between the two countries than any of the differences observed within one country (e.g. in schools located in different socio-economic catchment areas). It should be made clear that what is being described in the following sections is typical or commonly observed behaviour in the two countries. Of course, there were French teachers whose classroom practice was closer to that of many English teachers than to that of the majority of their own colleagues, just as there were English teachers whose practice was nearer to the French model, but these were in the minority— enough so as to be fairly remarkable. Particularly evident were different practices of differentiation and grouping, a differing emphasis in the two countries on the acquisition of principles and concepts compared with an emphasis on knowledge acquired through rote learning, and a different value placed on the product of learning as opposed to the process.

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Table 15.1 Dilemmas of teaching in England and France

Adapted from Berlak and Berlak (1981).

In broad outline, teachers in England and France could be distinguished on a number of dimensions relating to classroom practice which corresponded well in most respects with the model of teaching dilemmas put forward by Berlak and Berlak (1981). The Berlaks distinguish between control dilemmas, curriculum dilemmas and societal dilemmas as shown in Table 15.1. The evidence presented in the following sections suggests that the national differences in professional ideology that we have already identified result in consistent and different approaches to the resolution of these teaching dilemmas in the two countries PEDAGOGY Differentiation Particularly striking in most English classrooms was the fact that there were typically three or four different activities going on at the same time. This was very rarely seen in France where much of the teaching was didactic and centred on one activity for the whole class. English teachers were also more likely to divide the class into groups and to use achievement level as a basis for this division and for differentiated

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approaches in their teaching. A much greater tendency to relate teaching to perceived pupil and group need was apparent in English classrooms than in French, because, for the most part, French pupils were typically engaged in the same task for most of the time. In spite of this varied programme of operations, however, the majority of English teachers seemed to move children on from one task to the next when they, the teachers, felt it was the right time—not necessarily at the child’s own pace. There was very little evidence of even this level of individual provision in France or of work being assigned far ahead. Rather, tasks were assigned singly throughout the day. However, in neither country was there much evidence of sustained individual instruction or explanation. Teachers in England, perhaps because of their greater need to maintain individual contact and to supervise groups were much more likely to move around the class looking at children’s work, stopping and helping and giving instructions, whereas French teachers were typically on the platform or on a stool at the front of the class as might be expected for a more whole-class pedagogy. Reading provides a good example of these differences. English teachers tended to hear children read individually while French teachers more commonly had children read aloud around the class. There were also some instances of blackboard work and of mathematics tests which required pupils to practice on slates and then to hold these up so that the teacher could see each child’s answers. However, in some English classrooms, individual reading was not quite what might be thought to be implied by this notion, since the teacher was often doing other things at the same time. Some teachers in England had two children reading aloud at once from two different reading books. This underlines the dilemmas inherent in seeking to apply a child-centred, differentiated pedagogy with large numbers of children. So often there is not enough teacher time to implement a genuinely individualized pedagogy. These dilemmas are also underlined by the practice of assigning work for the day, which is an important feature of teachers’ work in England. The teachers we observed very often used the blackboard to outline the work for the whole day for different teaching groups and announced set times at which groups had to move from one activity to the next. Conformity versus creativity In England the approach was typically found to be much more active and emphasized discovery-based learning. The teacher often appeared to be encouraging the children to think creatively, while in France the effort was more likely to be directed towards leading children to the correct answer. Thus teachers in England were more likely to use questions in a way that built upon children’s responses until the desired result was achieved,

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while French teachers would typically reject a child’s response if it was not exactly what they wanted. For example, one teacher in England, doing language work with a small group asked ‘What are sentences?’ The children made various attempts at an answer including ‘bits of writing’, ‘writing put together’. Teacher: So it’s a piece of writing isn’t it? Strings of what…? Children: Words. Teacher: A string of words that makes sense. If I said to you ‘In the sky’ is that a sentence? Children: No. Teacher: ‘There’s a bird in the sky’ is a sentence, isn’t it? What does it end with? Children: A full stop. In one school in France, the teacher took in children’s books where the children had been asked to write a complete sentence. Teacher

Marc: Teacher:

(looking through books): This is not a sentence, this is not a sentence either, neither is this, this looks, smells and tastes like a sentence but it is not one. It’s wrong. A sentence has to use existing words and in the right order. Marc read us your sentence using ‘champignons’. J’ai mangé des champignons. It’s not wrong, in fact it’s correct, but it’s boring.

The teacher gives more examples of sentences, then goes on to analyse the objects of each sentence. Half of the French teachers observed combined a heavy emphasis on rote learning with some emphasis on pupils’ acquisition of understanding of principles and concepts. By contrast, the majority of the English teachers observed gave clear priority to the acquisition of understanding of principles and concepts, and in some cases there was no rote learning at all with pupils being expected to acquire such knowledge through familiarity in usage. On balance, English teachers appeared to be concerned to encourage creativity and inventiveness. French teachers, by contrast, were more concerned to achieve pupils’ conformity to a common goal. Suggestions from pupils were not often welcomed or used, and were typically much less sought after than in England. Creative writing was consequently an important feature in English schools while in French schools there was more emphasis on grammar and analysis of sentence structure as well as on poetry recitation skills. Children often worked extensively with dictionaries concentrating on definitions of words. However, evidence of genuine open-ended discussion was rare in both countries.

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Process versus product In summary, the pedagogy of many primary classrooms in France seemed to be characterized by an emphasis on the product rather than the process of learning. There was a strong emphasis on reaching the correct answer as quickly as possible. Neatness and attractive, well set-out exercise books and impressive pieces of finished work were highly valued. In England, more stress was laid on the learning process and less on the finished product, with the exception of some fourth-year primary classrooms, particularly in affluent areas where, for at least some of the activities, the teacher was concerned with the production of a high standard of the finished product—perhaps in some cases in anticipation of selective examinations for secondary schools, and of secondary work generally. In French classrooms there was similarly less emphasis on variety of teacher approach, with most points being explained in only one way or perhaps with some little elaboration, whereas in English classrooms there was considerable inventiveness in the approaches used by teachers in exposition. Two-thirds of English teachers observed had aims which included all pupils reaching the highest level of which they were capable, differentiating work according to both level and breadth to achieve this. Although it has to be said that these aims were not always achieved. By contrast, virtually all the French teachers observed had as their main aim to have all pupils achieve the same basic common standard in order to meet the objectives set by the end of the year, pacing the work therefore to conform to that of the middle group. Those who could proceed faster were unlikely to be permitted to undertake work at a higher level. CLASSROOM ORGANIZATION AND TEACHER CONTROL Because of the variety of activities and the individualized pedagogy, queuing at the teacher’s desk was a constant feature of many English classrooms while it occurred rarely, if at all, in France. Consequently there was more apparent time-wasting by children in England and less apparent application to work. Although some teachers in England showed great awareness of queuing as a problem and used strategies to cut it down, there were obvious limitations to such possibilities. Thus while English pupils experienced considerably more feedback of a concurrent kind than their French counterparts, the corollary of this was frequently delay and some pupils getting more help than others, since the system relied upon pupils to take the initiative in seeking the teacher’s help. Most teachers in both countries seemed to be constantly aware of most children in the class with one or two notable exceptions in England and with teachers being most likely to tolerate non-participating children in inner-city schools and in special classes in England. In France, the level of participation of pupils was generally very high and here too we observed

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more constant pressure on the part of teachers to secure pupils’ work and a high degree of pupil effort, while lapses of concentration and lack of pupil effort being unchallenged by the teacher were recorded noticeably more frequently in England than in France. In half of the English classrooms observed and three-quarters of the French, there was a general air of industry, with pupils tackling all available work and appearing to be satisfied and enthusiastic about their efforts. An associated feature of the highly directive pedagogy in France was that almost all the French classrooms observed were more or less totally dependent on teacher control for maintaining work. In a third of the English classrooms there were relatively few signs of direct teacher control, except for occasional interventions where pupils become unable to continue. In French classrooms there was very little evidence of pupils controlling their own work. Virtually none of the French teachers observed permitted such control, except occasionally in providing a sequence of tasks for pupils to do. English pupils, by contrast, were given, in many classrooms, much more freedom over the pacing of their activities on the basis of their given programme of work, although some teachers did insist on changeover of tasks at set times. The typical approach in French classrooms was to encourage pupils to work on their own without helping each other. Sometimes children were told to work with satchels on the desk between them to hide their work from other children. In one classroom, a boy was called to the front to recite his five times table all the way through. The teacher told the others to let him do it and, when he got stuck, became angry at the number of children calling out answers, saying that the first who spoke would be punished. The boy was sent to his place and told that he would repeat it tomorrow, and that if he didn’t know it he would have to write it out. In contrast, most of the English teachers observed encouraged pupils to work co-operatively and to help each other, apart from a few specific tasks for which children were told not to seek help. Associated with this was the much stronger tendency in England for pupils to be free to move around the room, to seek other pupils and resources, even outside the classrooms. Partly in consequence of this, two-thirds of English classrooms were characterized by children talking almost all the time, either quietly or loudly, whereas three-quarters of French classrooms had silence or partial silence as the predominant mode. It was clear that teachers have to work harder at maintaining discipline and keeping children working in England. In France there was an absence of the ‘disciplinary dialogue’ which was a very noticeable aspect of practice in England. For example, in one English classroom a teacher called out, ‘If you haven’t finished your writing in 10 minutes, you’ll have to do it in your own time instead. There are an awful lot of you wasting time, yakking away while others are trying to work’. Similarly, teachers having to work harder at maintaining discipline in England were much more likely

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to use threats like, ‘I’ll have to speak to your mother on parents’ evening…’ in order to get children to finish work. This kind of disciplinary dialogue will be recognized by anyone familiar with English classrooms but it is far less noticeable in France, where there was a marked absence of obvious efforts at discipline by the teacher. Often a mere glance was enough to quell deviant behaviour. The greater formality of teacher/pupil relations in France which we describe in the following section appears to be one factor in the generally stricter control which was so pervasive that it was clearly anticipated by children and thus expected, so making it easier for teachers not to have to exercise control all the time. TEACHER-PUPIL RELATIONS Both French and English classrooms appeared to evoke the same high degree of interest and enthusiasm among pupils but French teachers showed rather less sensitivity to pupils’ self-confidence and self-esteem than their English counterparts. All but two of the teachers observed in England, as against only a fifth of the French sample, showed what might be thought of as outstanding or strong sensitivity to pupils’ feelings. For example, in a class where one small girl (Angela) asked the teacher if she could read out a letter she had received from a ‘fairy’ complete with fairy wings, her teacher said, ‘We’ll see how time goes, Angela. I would have thought it was a private letter’. Later she explained that Angela was already a figure of fun in the class and that she wanted to protect her from children’s laughter about the ‘fairy’. There was also considerable evidence of teachers striving to protect and encourage pupils’ self-esteem in England by using praise both of pupils and their work. Criticism of children’s work and even calling them names was very noticeable in France, with most positive reinforcement being used in the inner-city areas. In practice, teachers in France appeared to take one of two roles, either that of parent or that of dictator. In England there was typically a third dimension—teacher as colleague or facilitator, allowing children to make their own decisions and supporting their learning. It was also common in England for children to be discouraged from commenting on each other’s mistakes, while in France this sometimes appeared to be encouraged by teachers. In one class visited, the teacher went from desk to desk commenting to the whole class, ‘C’est bon’ ‘C’est mauvais’ at children’s work, with accompanying gasps from the rest of the class. One boy was told in front of the others that he had made serious mistakes and that he would probably have to ‘redouble’ (repeat the year).2 Both groups of teachers showed considerable pleasure in the act of teaching, with just over two-thirds of teachers in both countries showing sympathetic interest in pupils and enthusiasm in their teaching. But

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whilst the vast majority of French teachers achieved apparently effortless control, well over a quarter of English teachers observed spent much time and energy achieving this. Perhaps this is yet another reflection of both the greater authoritarianism of the French classroom and the difficulty of providing for a differentiated pedagogy. Most of the French teachers were habitually calm and unruffled in all situations observed, with the remainder showing occasional tension. By contrast, less than a quarter of the English teachers were habitually calm and unruffled, with half being generally calm and occasionally showing tension and anxiety, and a further quarter showing very marked signs of anxiety and insecurity. Some of this may have been due to the presence of observers, but it must be remembered that observations were made over the course of a week and that French teachers were also conscious of the presence of an observer. Teachers in England were much more likely to support their commands or requests with reasoned arguments rather than the force of authority. This was part of the pattern of English teachers typically exercising control through persuasion and the inculcation of self-control as against the French teachers’ emphasis on direction. In terms of fostering responsibility, French pupils were typically given duties to perform and expected to carry them out without supervision, but far less effort was made to inculcate pupils with a sense of responsibility across the board. Whereas nearly half the French teachers studied relied more or less exclusively on extrinsic motivation, virtually all the English teachers placed their main emphasis on the intrinsic motivation of the interest inherent in the task. English teachers were also typically more concerned to emphasize the positive in their approach—to praise rather than blame and were also more likely to speak in a lower tone when addressing individual pupils. By contrast, there was more evidence of French pupils being put into test situations with material being presented as a formal test and also of negative evaluations such as, ‘I’ll take it off your mark’. Perhaps in consequence of this the relationship between teachers and pupils in England was typically more informal than in France, two-thirds of the English teachers observed being approached on social as well as school topics as against one-third in France. One teacher observed in France who referred to the children throughout as ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Mademoiselle’ had a long plastic rod with which to poke them if not paying sufficient attention as well as to point things out on the board. Many French teachers were less extreme and more prepared to have the occasional joke, but their humour was more acerbic than that of English teachers. Indeed it was rare to see the level of relaxed humour, warm relations and informality which characterized many English classrooms.

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RELATIONSHIP WITH PARENTS AND COLLEAGUES These differences were reflected in the attitude of both groups of teachers to parents. Parents in both countries were involved in helping with nonacademic activities, such as cookery and pottery, but only in England were parents observed helping with academic classroom work such as hearing reading. In ‘affluent’ area schools in both countries teachers were very conscious of parents’ high expectations and in some cases this produced hostility to parents. There was much more discussion of parents by teachers individually and collectively in England, especially in the staffrooms of ‘affluent’ area schools, a feature which was itself a reflection of perceived parental pressure. Co-operative work with other teachers and discussion of work amongst colleagues was also considerably more commonly found in England where staffrooms formed the focal point of a common school ‘culture of collaboration’ which was lacking altogether in most French schools (Nias 1989). Staffroom discussion as a whole was much less common in France. Indeed many schools did not have a designated staffroom at all. Where such discussion did take place in France, however, it seemed to be more often a general discussion of children and of standards of behaviour, whereas in England the discussion was more likely to be individualized to particular children, their problems and needs. Staffroom discussion in England was also the source of the typification of some pupils as ‘difficult’ or a ‘problem’. Such typification occurred far less frequently in France where teachers were more likely to generalize their discussion to the whole body of pupils rather than singling out individuals. It appears almost as if the conditions of work which we have already described for French pupils, for example, a relatively formal classroom atmosphere and a discouragement of co-operative work, are a reproduction of the teachers’ own working conditions, for example, relative isolation in the classroom, a lack of a collaborative culture, and fairly formal relations between colleagues. Many French teachers called colleagues ‘Monsieur’ or ‘Madame’, and it was rare to see the informal sharing of conversation, celebration of birthdays, etc. which characterizes English staffrooms at break-time (Acker 1990). This formality may in itself well be a reproduction of working conditions which prevail more widely in French society (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). COMMENT Thus in summary it may be said that a number of the factors which research suggests to be positive features in teaching, such as teacher warmth, sensitivity to pupils, an emphasis on pupils’ positive achievements, and working towards pupils’ achieving self-control and autonomy were all more often observed in England than in France. In England, as we have

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seen, there were a greater variety of activities going on in the classroom, more variation of treatment according to pupil needs, more emphasis on teaching for understanding and more concurrent feedback to pupils. However, these features, which would appear to most English teachers as desirable, seemed sometimes to be achieved at the expense of an orderly calm classroom and perhaps of a good working environment. We have reported more evidence in England of pupils’ avoiding work; of teachers’ not being aware of what was going on in the class as a whole; and more evidence of teacher anxiety and tension. Whereas in France most of the teachers observed controlled the class easily and effectively, this was less true in England, although these observations need to be seen in a context of an average class size in the English classrooms observed of 30 and in the French of 22. Thus ironically enough, English teachers are typically working with an ideology of child-centredness and attention to the individual, in the context of a class size much larger than that of the French teacher who is aiming at whole-class teaching and an undifferentiated pedagogy in which the size of the class is much less significant. As we suggested earlier, the approaches of teachers in England and France may be represented almost as polar opposites in the context of the teaching dilemmas suggested by Berlak and Berlak. However, as Berlak and Berlak point out, the dilemma language, like other languages, distorts and obscures as well as illuminates. A teacher’s every act signifies multiple meanings to him/her and to the children. Thus teaching acts must be viewed as a simultaneous resolution of multiple dilemmas. It is the underlying ideology of teachers, that is to say, their essential beliefs about teaching and the desirable outcomes from it, that determines which of the range of dilemmas inherent in teaching are perceived by them as most problematic. For English teachers, the critical issue, generally speaking, would appear to be how to resolve the practical problems inherent in delivering an individualized pedagogy in the context of a range of external pressures and large class sizes. For French teachers, the dilemma is that of providing equal justice under the law with the assumption of a common cultural base where this is decreasingly the case, given growing differentiation in the social context and individual values. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS The sources of the very different styles of teaching identified here are varied, stemming not only from differing shared experiences in schools in the two countries, but from historical legacies, features of initial teacher training, and other factors. However, it is clear from the way in which teachers in the two countries define their ‘professional responsibility’ that their ideologies about teaching are dramatically different and that the national context of the two educational systems plays an important part (Broadfoot and Osborn 1988).

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French teachers believe strongly in the need for a national curriculum as the basis for equality and unity in their society. More immediately, however, they feel an overwhelming pressure to meet the attainment targets laid down for children by the end of the year. That strong sense of obligation to equip children with the skills and knowledge expected from a particular year grade so that they will not be forced to ‘redouble’ is the source of much of the conformity, the emphasis on rote learning, the didactic teaching methods, and the lack of response to perceived variations in pupil needs identified in our observations. Thus the overwhelming pressure for a primary teacher in France is to make sure that my pupils acquire the knowledge and skills appropriate to the level of the class and to ensure their passage to the next class. Not to do so would be a professional and personal failure. One is always responsible for a child’s failure, whatever the extenuating circumstances. (French teacher) How much greater is likely to be the pressure felt by primary teachers in England struggling to meet National Curriculum attainment targets in the context of an individualized and child-centred pedagogy, with much larger class sizes and with children at greatly varying levels of attainment within the same class. Nor does the teacher in England have the same degree of access to the number and range of ancillary staff, who in France take over some of the work with children which in England would be the role of the classroom teacher. The conflicts for teachers in England, believing as they do in professional autonomy and a differentiated approach to curriculum and pedagogy, are likely to be impossible to resolve without a change in the child-centred ideology which has been at the heart of British primary education over the last two decades. First findings from a new national study (Osborn and Pollard 1990; Broadfoot et al. 1990) suggest that while many primary teachers in England welcome some of the ideas behind the National Curriculum (although not the detailed assessment and recordkeeping), they feel frustration and demoralization over the lack of resources and of staff to implement them. While French teachers at least feel a certain degree of satisfaction at having limited objectives and being able, within reason, to attain them, it seems that English teachers’ loss of autonomy over matters of curriculum is not likely to be replaced by any sense of achievement at having reached attainment targets, unless the resources which are put into the National Curriculum innovations are greatly increased. The problems of attempting to transfer wholesale a set of educational ideas/theories from one country to another are already well documented (for example, Phillips 1989). In this case they are exacerbated by lack of

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Government understanding of the resources needed to match these innovations as well as the need not to ride roughshod over prevailing teacher ideologies. Although at present many English primary teachers are expressing a strong determination not to sacrifice child-centred methods to the demands of the national curriculum and assessment, the lessons from France suggest that such a shift may be inevitable as time-pressure to cover attainment targets and to deal with more formalized recordkeeping and assessment begins to bite. That shift is likely to include a move away from attempts to identify individual pupil needs and respond to them with appropriate learning experiences and towards a concentration on implementing national curricular objectives and responding to consumer pressure. In contrast to the argument put forward by Hargreaves (1988) that having less responsibility for deciding curriculum content will release teachers’ energies to engage in developing new pedagogic approaches, the evidence from France suggests that the package of reform measures now being introduced into English schools could instead result in a shift in emphasis towards the product rather than the process of learning. Associated with this there could be a move towards more didactic teaching and an increasing use of undifferentiated pedagogy. It could even be the case that eventually a policy of repeating the year will become unavoidable. It is hard to see how the imposition of fixed objectives imposed from outside can continue to be compatible with pupil-oriented teaching methods and with the taking into account of varied attainment levels within the same class. The assumption which is found in French education, that both the means and the ends of the educational process can and should be generalized relieves teachers of the burden of choice but in so doing reduces both their ability and their willingness to respond to different local and pupil needs. It is the recognition of this limitation which lies behind current French moves to increase personal and institutional autonomy within the education system. Ironically, some of the most fundamental principles underlying the two education systems are being reversed as France begins to emphasize decentralization and a greater measure of autonomy for individual schools and England moves towards centralization and the compulsory application of national directives. NOTES 1

First, how a teacher is scored can depend on circumstances external to the teacher, such as the size of the class and the classroom, the weather or the type of activity being undertaken in class. Second, some items seem very dependent on the subjective judgement of the observer. Even where several observers are used, it is not clear that an objective judgement can be made. Any profile of a teacher constructed on the basis of these items alone and devoid of any

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contextual detail would be highly misleading. There is a definite need for supportive fieldnotes to supplement any such observation. Third, the Powell schedule which we used is Anglocentric in its imputed positives and negatives. For example, an item on the use of extrinsic/intrinsic motivation seems to imply that the use of extrinsic rewards is totally undesirable, indicating to the child that work is a pain rather than a pleasure. The observation schedule was designed to be used in Scottish classrooms and apparently used child-centred pedagogy as an ideal. In theory, if child-centredness is the reference point, then clearly French teachers who work on the basis of a rather different educational philosophy will emerge in an unfavourable light. Redoublement has been formally abolished since our survey (1989).

REFERENCES Acker, S. (1990) Teachers’ culture in an English primary school: continuity and change, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11, pp. 257–273. Berlak, A. and Berlak, H. (1981) Dilemmas of Schooling (London, Methuen). Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, W. (1977) Reproduction (London, Sage). Broadfoot, P. (1981) Constants and contexts in educational accountability: a comparative study, Report to SSRC (unpublished). Broadfoot, P. and Osborn, M. (1987) Teachers’ conceptions of their professional responsibility: some international comparisons, Comparative Education, 23(3), pp. 287–301. Broadfoot, P. and Osborn, M. (1988) What professional responsibility means to teachers: national contexts and classroom constants, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 9(3), pp. 265–287. Broadfoot, P., with Abbott, D., Croll, P., Osborn, M. and Pollard, A. (1990) Reading the tea leaves, PACE Working Paper, No. 2. Crossley, M. and Villiamy, G. (1984) Case-study research methods and comparative education, Comparative Education, 20(2), pp. 193–209. Hargreaves, D. (1988) Educational research and the implications of the 1988 Educational Reform Act, Lecture given to BERA Annual Conference, University of East Anglia. Keddie, N. (1971) Classroom knowledge, in M.F.D.Young (ed.) Knowledge and Control (London, Collier-Macmillan). Nias, J. (1989) Primary Teachers Talking (London, Routledge). Nias, J., Southworth, G. and Yeomans, R. (1989) Relationships in the Primary School: a study of organisational cultures (London, Cassell). Osborn, M. and Broadfoot, P. (1988) Teachers’ conceptions of their professional responsibility: the role of comparative classroom studies, Caribbean Journal of Education 15(1–2), pp. 46–57. Osborn, M. and Pollard, A., with Abbott, D., Broadfoot, P., Croll, P. (1990) Anxiety and paradox: teachers’ initial responses to change under the National Curriculum, PACE Working Paper, No. 4. Phillips, D. (1989) Neither a borrower nor a lender be? The problems of crossnational attraction in education, Comparative Education, 25(3), pp. 267–274. Powell, V. (1985) The Teacher’s Craft (Edinburgh, SCRE).

16 Lower secondary education in France From uniformity to institutional autonomy Jean-Louis Derouet

The type of education in France that corresponds to the English notion of the ‘comprehensive school’ is referred to as the ‘école unique’. As regards organization, the two concepts are roughly similar: both try to avoid early tracking of pupils and instead keep together children from different backgrounds and of different abilities, which results in the creation of a special kind of school that takes all 11- to 15-year-olds. In France, these lower secondary schools are called ‘collèges’ and the introuction of such schools is called the ‘reform of the collège unique’. In both traditions, this type of organization is closely linked to efforts to democratize education, i.e. creating social unity by giving everybody the same education and offering educational opportunities to lower-class children. Although the forms of organization may be similar; they have arisen from different historical and political traditions which give each one a particular character. In France, the ideal can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was not put into practice until quite late—from 1975 onwards. It was almost immediately overtaken by other changes that pulled the educational system in other directions: decentralization and institutional autonomy, the goal of ensuring that 80 per cent of each agegroup reached the baccalauréat, etc. There then followed a series of policy changes which turned out to be awkwardly timed and which need to be explained. We would argue that the comprehensive ideal in France was formulated on the basis of a notion of educational justice—equality of opportunity via standardized schooling—which was challenged after the political and social upheavals of 1968. The ideal was thus implemented just when it was already becoming outmoded politically. This is why, of all the various measures relating to lower secondary education over the last 20 years, the ones that concern plans for a truly comprehensive school are probably not the most significant. This is also why the collège, which had been the focus of reforms for the last century (Géminard 1983), has now lost this central position.1

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COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOLS, EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND CENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT: THE GRADUAL RISE OF AN IDEAL (1918–1981) In order to understand what happened between 1975 and 1985, the links between the collège unique, equality of opportunity and the centralized organization of the French state must be spelled out clearly. Ever since the French Revolution, the idea had prevailed that the role of the school should be to release children from the limitations of their background, their dialect, their superstitions and their family traditions, and bring them out onto neutral territory where subsequent careers would be determined solely by academic ability. This was obviously connected with there being geographical, professional and social mobility, the sum of which constitutes the nation (Derouet 1991). Any external interference with this neutrality must be avoided, whether it comes from local political figures, from family influences, or from close relationships between teachers and pupils. The school will be all the fairer for being separated from the local context and for being organized in a standardized way based upon principles that are defined for the nation as a whole. This approach is part of a more general vision: Anne Van Haecht (1985) rightly talks about the ideal of the school as the agent of democracy which derived from Condorcet and inspired the educational policies of the European Left, but which has not found equally radical expression everywhere. In France, in the aftermath of the Revolution, a link was quickly established between the notion of equality of opportunity and centralized government. It was essential to combat a feudal view of the social bond which, by linking individuals to their native community, also tied them to its circumstances. National uniformity is the guarantee that education will become much fairer, with standardized progression routes, establishments, teacher training, etc. (Nique 1990; Lelièvre 1990). This ideal was given explicit expression as a political programme early in the twentieth century, when the aim of equal opportunities and a scheme for an école unique were included in the manifesto of the Compagnons de l’Université Nouvelle at the end of the First World War. The scheme was based on the realization that French education was organized in cycles, yet the primary cycle did not stop with primary school but continued with ‘upper primary’ leading to the brevet d’études. Similarly, secondary schooling actually began with the first forms of the lycées. Originally the two types of school were totally separate: it was not possible to go on from the brevet to the second year of the lycée because Latin was not taught in the upper primary schools. There was therefore a clear injustice, made all the greater by the fact that the two cycles drew from quite distinct social groups, with middle-class children attending the first years of the lycées whereas working-class children, once enrolled in primary school, were barred from continuing to the baccalauréat.

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It was against this background that the concept of the école unique was conceived. What was needed was to move from stratification by cycle to a stratification by level which would offer everyone equal opportunities. Gradually the following pattern evolved: primary school (6–10-year-olds), collège (11–15-year-olds), lycée (15–18-year-olds). Various key dates mark the development of this system: the manifesto of the Compagnons de l’Université Nouvelle (1918/19), the reform of Jean Zay (1937), the Langevin-Wallon Plan (1947), and so on. Nevertheless, the system was not fully implemented until the Fifth Republic (1958–). Paradoxically, the decisions of the wartime Vichy government had the unintentional effect of opening up the upper primary school and allowing the brightest pupils to go on to the lycée, in the ‘modern’ streams (i.e. without Latin). This measure was meant to strengthen secondary education and was specifically directed against comprehensive schooling, yet it opened the way to the ‘rampant democratization’ which continued until the early 1960s (Prost 1981, 1986). Otherwise, the notion of comprehensive schooling made no progress throughout the Third and Fourth Republics (1870–1958). A widely held view perceived in it a risk of lowering the standards of secondary education and undermining the tradition of the lycée as purveyor of general culture. This fear was constantly revived by the conflict between the primary and secondary school teachers: which of the two schools and traditions would ‘win’ if comprehensive schooling were adopted (Donegani and Sadoun 1976)? Several reform proposals were rejected as the explosion of enrolments began to affect the schools (Cros, 1961). The changes began gradually, with the Berthoin reform of 1959, which extended compulsory education to the age of 16. That naturally led to the creation of a middle level between primary and secondary. The critical step was taken with the creation of the collèges d’enseignement secondaire (CES) by Christian Fouchet in 1963. These lower secondary schools did not mix primary and secondary-type classes, but they brought together under one roof three separate progression routes: (1) the classic secondary stream, (2) the upper primary, and (3) the ‘transition forms’ which gave practical training to children finishing their primary education. In so doing, the Fouchet reform created a new kind of establishment that catered for all 11- to 15-year-olds, even if they were taught in distinct streams with little possibility of transfer between them. There was a strong link between the various streams and social class, and the first sociological studies showed that educational choice was determined far more by pupils’ family background than by their objectively measured academic abilities (INED 1970). The system was therefore sharply criticized for being a hypocritical cover for maintaining two entirely separate types of education and in 1975 the Minister of Education René Haby, decided to abolish it. The law ‘to modernize the education system’ therefore introduced the collège unique: the separate streams were abolished, all children were to

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attend the same type of school and receive the same education, in mixed ability classes, up to the age of 15 or 16. The reform was to take effect from the beginning of the academic year 1977/78, but encountered practical problems from the outset that discouraged even its most ardent supporters (Legrand 1981). Dealing with mixed ability classes raises questions about teaching methods that have still to be answered; there are simply not the resources to provide properly for the least able children. The situation rapidly deteriorated, and by 1980 had become paradoxical. A survey by the Inspectorate revealed that only half of the lower secondary schools had implemented the reform, i.e. the principals had created truly mixed classes. In the rest, the heads had checked the pupils’ records and sorted them into a hierarchy of classes essentially the same as the old streams (Binon 1980). The reform had therefore been implemented only patchily, yet the collège unique caused a psychological shock that upset the whole educational system. Teachers and pupils had lost their bearings and felt extremely unhappy. Daily life in schools became worse and worse, with vandalism, racketeering and drugs becoming more prevalent and causing parents to become worried. Clearly, putting into practice an ideal that virtually everyone agreed about raised more problems than it resolved, and the issue obviously needed to be rethought when the Left came to power in 1981. What actually happened? Before going any further, we need to retrace the history of this mismatch between a long-held ideal and social reality. GROWING QUESTIONING OF THE IDEAL OF EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY (1964–1984) At the same time as the comprehensive principle was taking concrete shape in legislation and administrative regulations, the underlying consensus on which it was based was collapsing. Comprehensive education was bound up with a concept of educational justice, equality of opportunities, and an approach to providing state education that meant uniformity on the basis of standards set by a centralized government. All of these notions were vigorously challenged by the critical attitudes surrounding the upheavals of 1968. Up until the 1950s, equality of opportunity had never been tested, but from then on sociologists began to develop the tools to investigate the matter empirically: they had established a system of social classification and had available statistical data which enabled them to compare the social status of parents and that of their children, the parent’s qualifications and the children’s school careers, and so on. As a result, the notion of altering children’s chances through their schooling was seriously undermined. The reality, already revealed by the INED studies (1970), was loudly proclaimed by Bourdieu and Passeron (1971), whose views were widely publicized: equality of opportunity is a myth, and the role of the school is

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in fact to reproduce social inequality by converting it into skill differences. Doubtless there are other ways of explaining educational disparities (Boudon 1973), but public opinion seized on the most comprehensive, which was also the most depressing. From the publication of Bourdieu’s Les Héritiers in 1964 onwards, the schools became one of the main targets of criticism, thereby destroying the consensus support previously enjoyed by the ideal of equality of opportunity. The comprehensive principle remained a goal that schooling should strive towards, but the state could no longer hope to organize the whole educational system according to it. Other considerations, which had hitherto been pushed to one side, seemed equally valid, for example the notion of community, which was concerned with a good atmosphere in schools, pupils’ happiness and good relations between schools and their surroundings; or the notion of efficiency, which sought good results, good management of investment in education and the production of well-trained cadres to meet the needs of the economy; or the market principle, which perceived families as ‘consumers’ of education and wanted to run the educational system on free market lines (Derouet 1991). What should be done to restore harmony to the system? The situation in schools after 1968 was sometimes extremely difficult, with student agitation and strikes, and disagreements among teachers. Gradually it became clear that it was impossible to devise at national level a programme involving social change appropriate to every part of the country and every kind of situation. In order to be acceptable, the programme would have to satisfy all these other criteria as well—i.e. the concerns with equality of opportunity, with the school environment, and with efficiency and market forces—which is obviously impossible. The only way to save the system would be to decentralize it, since a plan for schools to have some individuality does not have to cope with the same limitations as a policy at national level. Such a plan is not expected to be perfect in all regards, but rather to identify problems and offer some possible ways of tackling them. This realization slowly emerged in the course of a decade. The idea was there in the report to the Commission des Sages chaired by Louis Joxe in 1972, which proposed granting individual schools the freedom to devote 10 per cent of their timetable and their curricula to activities of their own choosing. While little notice was taken of it during the ministry of René Haby (1973–1978), who went back to a policy of national uniformity, it reappeared with a vengeance under Christian Beullac (1979–1981). As someone from the business world, Beullac knew the value of a clear plan and in 1979 he restructured the rather vague notion of freedom to decide on 10 per cent of the timetable round the specific plan called PACTE (Projet d’Activités Educatives et Culturelles). This paved the way for the schools to draw up their own plans, which was taken up by the next minister.

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These developments were not confined solely to the lower secondary level, but they were crucial for an understanding of how the concept of comprehensive education evolved. The heart of the matter is the principle that governs the education system: should it be standardization or diversification? The comprehensive model was closely linked to the management approach based on national uniformity. What then happens to the collège if this principle is abandoned? The interest, and sometimes also the ambivalence, of the ministry of Alain Savary lies in this search for possible answers to this question. TRANSITION: SAVARY’S MINISTRY (1981–1984) The decade from 1975 to 1985 was transitional: one trend was coming to an end—the notion of the single school, linking educational justice and national uniformity—as another was beginning, that of decentralization, in which justice meant altering the school to suit the needs and resources of its setting. This phenomenon was particularly apparent during Savary’s ministry, immediately after the Socialists took over in 1981. Two things had to be done: (i) sort out the problems of the collège unique by giving it specific (i.e. pedagogical) support so that schools could implement their own plans; and (ii) find a new definition of educational justice to replace the notion of equality of opportunity, which had been the Left’s definition since the beginning of the twentieth century. The response to this situation was a curious reduplication of decisions, with the same measure sometimes proclaimed twice for different purposes. The most striking example concerned the Zones d’Education Prioritaire (ZEPs), i.e. high-need areas which would be given special assistance— obviously a matter of fundamental importance. The measure made it clear that justice could no longer be achieved via uniformity (equal chances for all) but rather by selective inequality (giving more to those with less). Two directives about the creation of the ZEPs were issued, several months apart. The first treated the ZEPs as part of a compensatory policy: the Ministry of Education created additional teaching posts to provide extra help for disadvantaged children. This is a purely pedagogical matter within the remit of the education ministry. The second circular involved a quite different perspective in that it was aimed at mobilizing the whole range of local educational resources—those of the Ministry of Education, but also those of other ministries and local authorities and agencies (music and drama schools, swimming pools and sports facilities, youth centres, etc.) — in order to provide a comprehensive youth programme in a particular area. The idea here is part of a concerted approach to education policy which treats the Ministry of Education as an element in a far larger scheme, and one where it is not in sole charge. The municipality, in fact, is the only authority with the power to administer the various resources in the name

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of the good of the whole community. The reluctance of civil servants to accept this reshaping of their responsibilities is understandable, but a fair number of elected officials saw in it ‘the birth of a different kind of school’ (Best et al. 1984). The same reasoning can be applied, though less spectacularly, to the collèges. The first action of Savary as minister was to ask Louis Legrand, who had been in charge of an experimental project, to produce a report on the subject. The Legrand Report (1982) presented an overview of English and French findings on how to cope with mixed ability classes. These can be summarized under three headings: streaming for the main subjects; syllabuses organized around interdisciplinary themes so that what is taught is more in line with daily life; and personal attention for pupils through use of tutors. All of these are classic proposals of a purely pedagogical character, and their link with the political problem of democratization is in any case far from clear. Gabriel Langouet’s review (1985) of the data produced by Legrand’s experimental work showed that, even if the newstyle collèges have a different atmosphere than do schools with similar characteristics in the control group, the innovation has no observable effect on the evaluation of pupils and therefore on choice of progression route and so, ultimately, on democratization. The Legrand Report mentions institutional autonomy, but in connection with choice of teaching methods and not with teachers having control over the curricula. The school is not regarded as an entity for policy purposes. The decisions taken by the education minister, Alain Savary, and the civil servant in charge of lower secondary education, Maurice Vergnaud, were influenced by the Legrand Report, but were formulated in a completely different context since they were concerned with the issue of school plans which would allow each school considerable freedom to draw up its own programme. As the minister’s ideas were refined and decentralization measures were implemented, the school plan was increasingly revealed as a political move to encourage schools and their communities to reach agreement on proposals for integrated social programmes for young people (Soubré 1982). Furthermore, the very idea of institutional responsibilities introduced the possibility of diversification in a system that had hitherto been centralized and uniform. The law limited the institutions’ autonomy to choosing their own means of achieving the goals set nationally, but this rapidly caused a major qualitative change, since dealing with the means led gradually to a reformulation of the goals, mainly in the most disadvantaged areas (Derouet 1988). The two approaches (Legrand’s and Vergnaud’s) have one thing in common: the concern with social development and hence with school life, i.e. everything that happens at school that is not strictly teaching (break time, canteens, libraries, clubs, the atmosphere of the school) (Soussan 1988). This is an extension of the notion of a common culture—if the

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collège is to be an independent level in the system, not defined merely as a preliminary stage before entering the lycée, its main aim is to inculcate the values that are fundamental to being a member of society. The issue of what should be learned is not overlooked but is circumvented: knowledge of particular subjects is postponed until the lycée, while in the collège the concern will be to consolidate and deepen the knowledge of basic skills acquired at primary school and to foster social development by providing support for coping with the problems of adolescence. This idea —that the collège should pay more attention to social than intellectual development— was to be questioned in the following period, under Chevènement’s ministry. In this regard, Savary’s ministry marked the end of an era, that of the école unique, when the aim was for all children to acquire the same culture and when it was thought that educational fairness depended on uniformity of teaching. The era that then began was characterized by greater diversification, especially with regard to institutional autonomy. From 1983 onwards, all the efforts contributed to reducing uniformity in the educational system and increasing local autonomy. The proposals for schools to have some freedom of action started as a voluntary matter, affecting a minority of collèges which wanted to try out new teaching methods. From 1984 onwards, this became compulsory. The school plan was now part of the regular management process and did not reflect the desire of institutions to develop their own programmes. As decentralization got under way, and parents became more market-oriented, the trend rapidly became unstoppable. THE GOAL OF 80 PER CENT TO THE LEVEL OF THE BACCALAURÉAT: THE COLLÈGE IN THE CONTEXT OF UPPER SECONDARY EDUCATION (1984–1988) It is rather odd to bracket together the ministries of Jean-Pierre Chevènement (1984–1986) and René Monory (1986–1988), since the former was a member of a left-wing government, the latter of a right-wing government, and they disagreed on many matters. Nevertheless they were alike in one regard that is basic to our subject: both wanted 80 per cent of an age cohort to reach the level of the baccalauréat. The idea originally was Chevènement’s, in 1985, but it was under Monory that a feasibility study was carried out to see what needed to be done to attain the goal. The maintenance of this plan, which recast the aims of democratization by going beyond the collège level, was a major turning point in the history of the education system and is the distinctive feature characterizing the period. Through his concern for going back to the old values of schooling and equality of opportunity, Chevènement signalled the end of the period that had begun in 1968. Nevertheless it would be wrong to see in his ministry a

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straightforward return to traditional values and, for the collèges, a victory of secondary over primary schools. It is true that in the media he appealed to nostalgia for a golden age, when schools had self-confidence and no problems—which probably never existed but which was at least conjured up by the American report on A Nation at Risk (1983). The report warned against allowing standards in secondary education to fall during a period of growing international economic competition, and saw this as a danger for the country. Chevènement’s ministry was, however, marked by what is called the ‘querelle de l’école’. A famous linguist, well known to be a friend of the minister, wrote a book attacking those teachers who care more about pupils’ happiness and social development than about knowledge (Milner 1984). This campaign jibed with fears that standards were falling, brought on by democratization and new teaching methods, etc. The collèges were at the centre of this controversy. It was argued that the comprehensive school would never succeed unless efforts were made to establish the minimum skills that every child should have acquired by the end of compulsory schooling (de Landsheere 1987), a responsibility which belongs to the state and cannot be delegated to the individual establishment. When the collège unique was launched, René Haby made some suggestions in this regard, but they were so feeble that teachers rejected the notion of a ‘minimum cultural requirement’. The Legrand Report made no mention of the matter. Chevènement quietened fears somewhat by publishing the curricula at the various levels of education as a paperback book, but that did not really help. A law passed in 1989 (loi d’orientation) set up a Conseil National des Programmes to be responsible for these matters, but the scale and difficulty of its task are such that two years later it has still not made any general recommendations. Public opinion was enthusiastic about the idea of 80 per cent of the age cohort reaching the level of the baccalauréat, although many experts considered that it was far too ambitious a figure. Antoine Prost (1983) had revealed the growth in demand for upper secondary education and made the forecasts that led on naturally to thinking terms of this goal. The sideeffects of the plan are far-reaching. In theory, it does not challenge the principle of the collège unique: 100 per cent of pupils are to get as far as the fourth year of secondary school, 80 per cent to the seventh year, so formally the two plans can co-exist. The reality is rather different. First of all, the collège inevitably becomes the preliminary phase en route to the lycée. It ceases to be in itself a stage of education and instead becomes a preparatory level which must to some extent model itself on the structure, teaching methods and subject areas of the lycée. Moreover, if 80 per cent of pupils are to get as far as the baccalauréat, the qualification cannot stay the same, nor can the ways of reaching it, and it is unlikely that the changes can be introduced only in the last two years before the exams. The feasibility study mentioned above

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relied heavily on the creation of baccalauréats in vocational subjects for those who had studied for the brevet d’études professionnels (BEP). In order to launch what can only be called a progression route, the parting of the ways had to start in the very middle of the lower secondary level, and technical third and fourth years were started in 1985. This decision meant a radical alteration of the comprehensive principle, since at the end of the second year less able children tend to be advised to take these special courses, which it is hoped will remotivate them by offering practical instruction. This change is all the more important because, in most cases, the technical streams are located not in the collèges but in the vocational lycées. In 1988/89, only 6,800 out of the 61,500 pupils in the technical third year were attending collèges. This may be a question of available facilities, but it has serious wider implications. The goal of 80 per cent to the baccalauréat has thus meant, at national level, providing a variety of progression routes in lower secondary schools. This variety does not rule out provision of other alternatives, begun during Savary’s ministry and expanding ever since. In general, Chevènement’s political beliefs were not particularly favourable to decentralization, but the trend towards greater institutional autonomy and diversity had gathered momentum and continued in spite of the minister’s feelings on the matter. A law on decentralization affecting individual schools was passed in 1982 and caused a review of their status. This was not without its problems as the teachers were extremely attached to their ‘extraterritoriality’ which protected them from local pressures. They could, if need be, face some administrative devolution, so that local branch offices of the central Ministry of Education dealt with decisions previously made in Paris, but they were very reluctant to accept any decentralization that would put control of the schools into the hands of local political figures. After much negotiation between the Ministry of the Interior and of Decentralization and the Ministry of Education (Toulemonde 1988), a compromise was found: schools became ‘local public educational establishments’ (EPLE), supervised jointly by the Ministry of Education and the recteur (the regional Chief Education Officer) —of course—but also by the relevant local authority (the municipality for primary schools, the Conseil Général of the département for the collèges, and the Regional Council for the lycées). This supervision must respect the schools’ pedagogical independence, but it is by no means negligible, e.g. the maintenance of buildings and all the main facilities are the responsibility of the local authorities. Perhaps more important, market forces were introduced into the state education system for the first time, whereas previously they had always been deliberately ruled out. In the 1960s the country had been divided into geographical catchment areas and children were obliged to attend their local school. Even if, in fact, the schools were not all exactly alike, did not draw on similar populations or enjoy the same reputations, parents had no

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choice of state school. The fuss about private schools which Savary had to deal with in 1983/84 was highly revealing. The Socialists, when they took over in May 1981, had proposed unifying the whole education system, combining public and private sectors. The proposal raised such opposition that it caused the resignation of Savary: clearly, people did not want any encroachment on the independence of the private schools. The important point in this is the way people’s motives have changed: parents no longer send their children to private schools mainly for religious reasons, but because the private sector offers a range of choice not permitted by the public sector. What people were defending in the demonstrations in 1983 and 1984 was freedom of choice. Robert Ballion’s work (1982) has shown clearly that when a child cannot cope with the ordinary demands of the state schools, the private sector offers an alternative, a possibility of appeal against an otherwise monopoly power. After these experiences, the political attitude to market forces changed. Of course, freedom of educational choice continued to be part of the platform of the Right, which considered any intervention by the state would distort supply and demand (Madelin 1984), but the idea began to grow more acceptable on the Left as well. Introducing some competition into education means acknowledging the rights of the ‘consumers’, giving them a voice in how the system is run when previously they had had little influence over it. As a result, the first steps were made to loosen up the rigid catchment areas: within an area, parents were given a choice between several schools, a measure that affected the collèges in particular since the lycées, with their progression routes, offer different services whereas the collèges, in principle, all offer the same one. In order to win a market, they are encouraged to develop their differences on the fringe, e.g. computing facilities and technology options, extracurricular activities, the atmosphere in the school and the counselling, etc. Sociologists had long highlighted what American studies call ‘a school effect’: with the same populations and resources, different schools produce different results, especially as regards future school career opportunities (Paty 1981; Derouet and DerouetBesson 1989, Duru and Mingat 1985, 1988; Dubet, Cousin and Guillemet 1989). Until recently, parents were unaware of these differences, but gradually they have become more knowledgeable and act accordingly (Ballion 1986). This competitive angle has put a completely different light on the policy on school plans and given it new implications. The opening up of the catchment areas was started in a limited and experimental way by Savary, but the public demand was so enthusiastic that the crack was forcibly widened further and further. Early studies show that there are major problems as the disparities between schools increase and there are fears that ultimately there will be a two-tier system with first- and second-class schools (Ballion 1989). The government is aware of the danger, but the

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pressures of demand are so strong that it is impossible to turn back: the market has become one of the driving forces of change in the education system and a powerful factor distinguishing one school from another. CONCLUSION: THE NEW ROLE OF THE COLLÈGE, DIVERSIFICATION AND LOCAL SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS The process of change is both confirmed in and made explicit in the 1989 Education Act of the present minister, Lionel Jospin. The law does not expect an improvement in the functioning of the education system to proceed from (or only from) consistent application of nationally set standards, but rather from people on the spot taking suitable action to deal with problems identified locally. Educational policy is increasingly conceived in terms of a contract between parents and schools, between schools and their environments, etc. The state’s role is more that of supervisor than director, which is a major innovation in the French context. What are the effects of these changes for the collèges and for democratization of education? Perhaps it should be noted first that the lower secondary level is, for the first time in history, suffering from demographic decline. There were about 3.2 million pupils im 1989/90, which is 100,000 fewer than in 1987. This fall in numbers is slowing the growth of technical third and fourth years and partially explains the loss of interest in the colleges just when the lycée enrolments are soaring. The most conspicuous phenomenon, in fact, is the proportion of pupils staying on for a fifth year of secondary education. In four years, from 1984 to 1988, there has been a 10 per cent increase, from 40 per cent of the age cohort to 50 per cent. More striking still, with pupils who have passed the BEP able to stay on at school and take the baccalauréat, or some other qualification, there are more pupils entering the sixth than the fifth year— obviously, parents and pupils have taken the slogan about 80 per cent seriously (Esquieu 1989). The colleges are naturally contributing to this expansion, even though an increase in the proportion of pupils repeating years seems to be the price for widening the access to longer schooling. In 1980, the Ministry of Education selected a sample of 20,000 pupils who represented one-fortieth of the pupils entering the first year of public and private lower secondary education. For every ten of these, seven reached the fourth year and five the fifth year without interruption, but only half the pupils finished compulsory schooling without repeating. When we look at the sample in more detail, we see the limits on the concept of the collège unique. Children’s school careers are extremely diverse and the variations are strongly linked to social class: after the end of compulsory education, 47.7 per cent continue at school for a fifth year, 23 per cent take a fifth year at a vocational lycée, but 14 per cent had ready been sent on to the vocational lycée after two years of lower secondary, and just over 12 per cent had

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been in the pre-vocational or pre-apprenticeship classes which can still be found in the collège unique (Duthoit 1990). Similarly, the data available so far on the technical third and fourth years show that they channel the majority of their pupils towards the BEP, so that they too constitute an independent progression route from the end of the second year onwards. Admittedly parents are satisfied with this situation and in other circumstances the pupils would probably have taken a certificat d’aptitude professionnelle (CAP) (Hornemann 1989). These flows are visible and quantifiable, but it is much harder to assess the changes in teaching that have taken place. Without doubt, in comparison with the 1970s, the schools have quietened down. If there are indeed some ‘tough’ schools, they are to be found in neighbourhoods where there are more general social problems, and the schools have only a tiny impact on the overall situation. Without doubt, too, teaching has taken on a local flavour. Even though teachers distrust anything that might undermine the unity of the state system, there is a growing awareness of the specialness of each school and its intake. This leads to there being, in line with the spirit of the law, local modifications to the education provided. These changes are not necessarily of the type envisaged in the comprehensive tradition embodied, for France, in the Legrand Report. Ten years on, and after considerable costs in human terms, it nevertheless seems that the Legrand Report’s recommendations are starting to be implemented. One of the main objections raised to it was that it threw out phrases like ‘differentiated teaching’ and ‘tutorship’ without there being any clear notion of what was involved in practice. The difference between the Legrand (1982) and Meirieu (1985) Reports is quite striking in this regard. The basic options are the same, but the ideas in the second case are translated into proposals for more specific measures for implementation and evaluation. Are these proposals responsible for the changes occurring, or are they happening merely because of the need to cope with difficult situations? The educationists’ ideas are indeed being put into practice, the most obvious example being the problem of dealing with mixed ability classes and helping slow learners. The Legrand Report offered a simple solution to this problem: to stream children for the main subjects. While this solution perhaps made it possible to organize teaching more efficiently, it raised other problems. It is well known that once groups have been formed, they tend to stick together, the pupils in the slow stream remain slow, etc. In 1982/83, this idea was thoroughly reworked so that the streams became geared to current need, and therefore temporary, and above all concentrated on particular activities, especially for reading. ‘Children can’t read’ at the end of primary school had become a widely held view, and people blamed the new teaching methods. An evaluation conducted by the Ministry of Education in 1989/90 showed that this view is somewhat exaggerated, but in fact almost a third of children do have reading

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difficulties which hinder them at lower secondary school. A special effort is therefore being made in many schools, either as direct assistance or less formally in reading and writing workshops. The idea of tutoring has also developed. Teachers had reacted negatively, fearing that they would be given responsibilities for which they had not been trained, and so did some parents, who worried about teachers interfering in the children’s private lives. Instead of tutorship, with its strong psychoaffective connotations, ‘methodological help’ was suggested, which is restricted to a more traditionally scholastic domain. Working methods are indeed the issue where there is the greatest gulf between the tradition of university-style freedom, which expects students to work by themselves, and the actual situation of these children and their families. There is, therefore, a tremendous proliferation of new methods, ranging from a revival of supervised homework to workshops in personal study and even schemes outside the schools, organized by the local authorities. One other initiative has been extremely successful. In certain schools with very high rates of repeating, the idea has developed of spreading the first and second years of lower secondary education over three years. A circular in 1988 authorized this system in exceptional cases, but it has spread at a slightly alarming rate. It is not at all clear that these three-year programmes are conducted using appropriate methods or that they really help pupils to continue successfully into the proper third year. If all too often the children tend to wind up in a BEP stream or a technical stream, all that has happened is that a slow stream from the beginning of lower secondary has been revived. It is harder to know what goes on in the classroom. The notion of differentiated teaching within the class—i.e. putting children of varied abilities in the same room and having them do different things in line with their capacities—is not being put into practice. The collège appear not to have hit upon the techniques which primary school teachers seem to have had, and some still have, in one-room schools. At a deeper level, if one asks what holds lessons and schools together nowadays, there is little doubt that it is the discipline provided by learning a certain number of mechanisms relating to tasks and the pressure of being given grades. These ‘assembly line’ methods (‘pédagogie industrielle’: Derouet 1987) are widely accepted and easily implemented; they share certain aspects of comprehensive education, in particular the concern with pupils’ activities, but the spirit is utterly different. What conclusions can one draw about these efforts to establish a system of comprehensive education in France, i.e. the fifteen years of the collège unique and the ten years of the reform of the collèges? First, there are obviously limits to what can be achieved voluntarily. While it is true that a higher proportion of children are staying on at school and the lycées are broadening their intake, these phenomena should not be taken as evidence of real democratization, since there are still social inequalities as well as

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practices which depart from the comprehensive principle and cater to different groups. Moreover, it is not clear that the ‘single school’ has played a decisive part in bringing about these changes. Antoine Prost (1981, 1985) has shown that the trend towards democratization began its dramatic rise well before the collège unique was started. A considerable number of working-class children were reaching the lycées after successfully completing post-primary courses (cours complémentaires) or general lower secondary education in schools that offered them teaching geared to their needs. Some people have wondered whether the fact of making more sophisticated demands on children from the first year of lower secondary school may not have had a destabilizing effect upon them. As for the increase in the numbers reaching the lycées, we have seen that it is the result of the policy of aiming for 80 per cent reaching the baccalauréat, which in fact conflicts with the principles of comprehensive education. The notion of a common culture remains a basic concern in a country worried about the problems of integrating a large immigrant population, but it also has to accommodate the needs of the labour market and consequently must put up with serious infringements of the principle of a ‘core curriculum’ for all children up to the age of 16. The most striking change, however, is from a centralized system to one that is in the process of devolution. It is too early to discern the consequences and the political importance of this, but there is definitely an opportunity for democratization in the idea of diversifying the system and creating the possibility of dealing with children as they are and wherever they are. In this regard, some of the ZEPs have produced very interesting results. Is it sufficient to say that both decentralization and diversification are alternative ways of achieving the objectives of equality and fairness that were behind comprehensive education? The first studies of what has happened since the catchment areas were opened up show that this trend is being overwhelmed by another, and market forces often prevail over what is felt to be in the public interest. There are growing disparities between the most sought-after schools, which pick the best pupils and attract the bulk of the money (with the blessing of the local authorities), and the mass of schools that are dumping grounds for lower class children (Ballion and Oeuvrard 1989). An idea is emerging of direct parental control over schools, bypassing the state and the principle of equality (Madelin 1984), which would mean that the Ministry of Education could be abolished. There is an urgent need to be clear about which changes bring education into line with local needs and which ones lead to abandoning any notion of public service in favour of market forces. The principles of justice have become more diverse. The collège can no longer be related only to the principle of equality of opportunity: it must also take into account other concerns, such as integration into the community, economic efficiency and, with the new consumers’ rights, some measure of competition (Derouet 1990). How can all these be combined?

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It will require, first, a guiding hand that prevents competition from going too far and provides a clear framework for parents and teachers. The key factor, however, is the expertise of the people concerned. Surely schools will merely reflect the balance between the local passions and pressure groups, or will those involved be able to negotiate and implement plans which retain a link with general political principles suitably adapted to local circumstances? It is mainly on this ability to sustain complex structures that the future of the collège and indeed the whole education system depends. NOTES 1

Derouet’s ideas of the collège unique and the nature of equality and justice in education are developed in detail in Derouet (1992; Chapter 1).

REFERENCES A Nation at Risk: the imperative for educational reform (1983) (Washington, DC, Government Printing Office). Ballion, R. (1982) Les consommateurs d’école, stratégies éducatives des families (Paris, Stock-Pernoud). Ballion, R. (1986) Le choix du collège: le comportement éclairé des families, Revue française de sociologie. Ballion, R. and Oeuvrard, F. (1989) Le choix du lycée (Paris, Ecole Polytechnique). Best, F., David, M., Favret, J.M., Franchi, A.M., Guyard, J., Piednoir, J.L. and Serusclat, F. (1984) Naissance d’une autre école (Paris, La Découverte). Binon, J. (1980) La réforme dans les collèges. Report of the Inspection générale to the Minister of Education (Paris). Boudon, R. (1973) L’inégalité des chances. La mobilité sociale dans les sociétés industrielles (Paris, A.Colin). Bourdieu, P. (1964) Les Héritiers: les étudiants et la culture (Paris, Minuit). Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.C. (1971) Die Illusion des Chancengleichheit (Stuttgart, Klett). Compagnons de l’Université Nouvelle (1918–19) L’Université Nouvelle, vol. 1, Les principes; vol. 2, Les applications de la doctrine (Paris, Fischbacher). Cros, L. (1961) L’explosion scolaire (Paris, CUIP). Derouet, J.L. (1987) L’orientation industrielle de la pédagogie. L’exemple de la rénovation des collèges en France, in Anne Van Haecht (ed.) Socialisations scolaires, socialisations professionnelles. Actes du colloque de l’AISLF (Brussels). Derouet, J.L. (1988) Désaccord et arrangements dans les collèges: vingt collèges face à la rénovation, 1981–1986, Revue française de pédagogie, 83; English translation: Disagreements and accommodation in the colleges, Western European Education, 22, 3 (fall 1990). Derouet, J.L. (1990) Les établissements scolaires comme entreprise composite, in L.Boltanski and L.Thevenot (eds) Justice et justesse dans le travail (Paris, PUF). Derouet, J.L. (1991) École et justice. Éléments pour une théorie politique du monde scolaire (Paris, AM Métailié). Derouet, J.L. and Derouet-Besson, M.C. (1989) Cohérence et dynamiques des établissements scolaires. Etudes sociologiques. Actes du colloque de Tours, 25– 26 avril 1989. INRP Groupe d’Études sociologiques, CDDP de Tours (Tours).

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Donegani, J.M. and Sadoun, M. (1976) La réforme de l’enseignement en France après 1945. Analyse d’une non-décision, Revue française de sciences politiques. Dubet, F., Cousin, D and Guillemet, J.P. (1989) Mobilisation des établissements et performances scolaires. Le cas des collèges, Revue française de sociologie, 30. Duru, M. and Mingat, A. (1985, 1988) De l’orientation en fin de cinquième au fonctionnement du collège, Cahiers de l’IREDU (Dijon), 42 and 45. Duthoit, M. (1990) Modes de fréquentation du collège: bilan quantitatif des scolarités d’un échantillon de 20000 élèves, Éducation et formations, 23. Esquieu, P. (1989) Les progrès de scolarisation, allongement des études et accès croissant au lycée, Education et formations, 19. Géminard, L. (1983) Le système scolaire. Le collège au centre des réformes (Paris, La Documentation française). Hornemann, J. (1989) Les classes de troisième technologique en 1988, Éducation et formations, 19. INED (1970) La population et l’enseignement (Paris, PUF). Joxé, L. (1972) Rapport de la commission d’études sur la fonction enseignante dans le second degré (Paris, La Documentation française). Landsheere, V. de (1987) Des compétences minimales pour l’enseignement secondaire, Perspectives (Paris), 17–1. Langevin, P. and Wallon, H. (1947) La réform de l’enseignement (1947), reprinted in: Le Plan Langevin-Wallon de réforme de l’enseignement (Paris, PUF, 1964). Langouet, G. (1985) Suffit-il d’innover? (Paris, PUF). Legrand, L. (1981) L’école unique: à quelles conditions? (Paris, Scarabée-CEMEA). Legrand, L. (1982) Pour un collège démocratique, Rapport au Ministre de l’Éducation nationale (Paris, La Documentation française). Lelievre, C. (1990) Histoire des institutions scolaires (Paris, Nathan). Madelin, A. (1984) Pour libérer l’école. L’enseignement à la carte (Paris, R.Lafont). Meirieu, P. (1985) L’école, mode d’emploi (Paris, ESF). Milner, J.C. (1984) De l’école (Paris, Le Seuil). Nique, C. (1990) Comment l’école devient une affaire d’État (Paris, Nathan). Paty, D. (1981) Douze collèges en France (Paris, La Documentation française). Prost, A. (1981) L’école et la famille dans une société en mutation 1930–1980, in Histoire générale de l’enseignement et de l’éducation en France, vol. 4 (Paris, Nouvelle librairie de France). Prost, A. (1983) Les Lycées et leurs études au seuil du XXIe siècle, Rapport du groupe de travail national sur les seconds cycles, chaired by M.Antoine Prost (Paris, Ministry of Education). Prost, A. (1986) L’enseignement s’est-il démocratisé? (Paris, PUF). Soubré, L. (1982) Décentralisation et démocratisation des institutions scolaires, Report to the Minister of Education (Paris, Ministry of Education). Soussan, M. (1988) Vie scolaire: approche socio-historique, Revue française de pédagogie, 83. Toulemonde, B. (1988) Petite histoire d’un grand ministère, l’Éducation nationale (Paris, Albin Michel). Van Haecht, A. (1985) L’enseignement rénové, de l’origine à l’éclipse (Brussels, Université Libre de Bruxelles).

17 The educational renovation of the lycée Continuity or change? André Legrand and Georges Solaux

The demography of lycées has changed greatly over thirty years. The number attending lycées (421,900 pupils in 1960) increased to 1,570,000 in 1990. Over the same period, the number of pupils doing the baccalauréat rose from 60,000 to 385,000. In the years 1985–1990 alone numbers increased by 350,000. Educational structures have not changed for ten years. This is not for lack of trying. In the early 1980s Claude Pair, then Director of Lycées in the Education Ministry, commissioned Antoine Prost to carry out a report, resolutely placed in the future and entitled ‘The lycées and their studies on the threshold of the 21st century’. Two unsuccessful attempts at lycée reform were made by Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 1985 and René Monory in 1987. With time running out to adapt to a new population and to the economic and social demands of the end of the century, Lionel Jospin in 1991 proposed ‘an educational rénovation of the lycées’ which has just been made the subject of the first official publications.1 Why should we speak about a renovation rather than a reform? Will the measures currently proposed simply be the existing ones with the dust removed? To show the extent of the changes proposed, it seemed useful to compare the 1991 definition of future lycée organization with the great reforms to the education system since 1960, to determine whether continuity or change will prevail. Before dealing with the elements of comparison, (i) a brief reminder of the unchanged measures and a description of the method used is necessary; (ii) the education renovation of the lycées will be analysed politically (the democratization of education); (iii) economically (the theory of human resources); and (iv), sociologically (the place of the actor). THE OBJECT AND THE METHOD OF ANALYSIS The ministerial declarations2 show that the educational renovation of the lycées attempts to meet the following fundamental objectives: first, to adapt the lycée and the education it provides to its new public, and second,

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to provide ongoing careers advice between the collège and the lycée. Renovation has been both structural (organization of cycles and sets) and pedagogic (modular education and curriculum). By their reforms the lycée is organized into two cycles, the cycle de détermination comprising the general and technological seconde and the B.E.P. course, and the cycle terminal comprising the lower and upper sixth form.3 Three different courses lead to three baccalauréats of the same name: the general course, the technological course and the vocational course. This structuring of the lycée introduces three new aspects to the upper school of French secondary education: the lycées and the vocational lycées are jointly affected by the renovation; the cycle de détermination of the lycée follows on from the cycle d’orientation (transition classes) of the collèges, which assumes a new link between these two establishments; the inclusion of lower and upper sixth classes in the same cycle means that now, the lower sixth can only be repeated at the request of or with the agreement of the family and the adult students.4 The baccalauréat series are reorganized and regrouped into ‘wider, more coherent sets’.5 Article one of the decree of 17 January 1992 states the different sets affected.6 For example, the eight former general sets (A1, A2, A3, B, C, D, E, D’) will now be replaced by three—the literary set, the economic and social set, and the scientific set. NB: The texts organizing the timetables and the lessons for these baccalauréat series have not yet been published. The pedagogic innovation consists of, first, three hours of teaching in modules7 for the general and technological fifth form and the vocational fifth form. This measure, presented as a way of making the educational framework more flexible in French, the first modern language, mathematics and history—geography (taught together in France) in the general and technological fifth form, is designed to ‘help pupils, it is…the basic response to their differences, the most urgent response, the response which can be applied to the present system in the shortest time…it represents a new freedom for teachers’. We take examples from modular education in the classes de seconde. A second aspect of the pedagogic renovation concerns the new curriculum planned for the fifth and lower sixth forms in June 1992 and for the upper sixth in June 1993. For the fifth and lower sixth forms, this new curriculum will apply from the beginning of the school year in September 1993 and in 1994 for the upper sixth. The curriculum will not be dealt with here. We look at these changes in terms of three broad themes: the principles of the democratization of education, the theory of human resources and the place given to the actor in society; themes which have deeply marked education policy and social science research over the last thirty years. This form of analysis has the advantage that renovation can be placed in its original historical and social context.

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This method is inspired by the British approach known in France as the ‘new sociology of education’ (NSE), as described in Ecole et culture by Jean-Claude Forquin 8 and ‘Les savoirs scolaires, enjeux sociaux des contenus d’enseignement et de leurs réformes’ by Viviane IsambertJamatis,9 though we can only apply it in a limited way. The sociology of the curriculum (or NSE) is a ‘way of thinking of education which emphasizes the importance of the contents and the way in which these contents are organized’ (Forquin 1989:22). We can look at the official course (formal curriculum), usually syllabuses and timetables or organization of careers guidance or reality—the study of behaviour in the classroom or educational outcomes. But the approach here will be limited to the formal curriculum, that is to say the information contained in the lycée regulations published since 1959. THE THEME OF DEMOCRATIZATION Three great reforms have affected the whole system of initial education since 1959: the Berthoin reform, the principles of which are stated in the decree of 6 January 1959,10 the education law of 11 July 197511 and the loi d’orientation (the law governing higher education) of 10 July 1989.12 The first article of each of these legislative or statutory texts shows that the objective to democratize education is a national priority. The decree of 1959 states that ‘compulsory public education ensures equal conditions of education for all children’. The law of 1975 planned ‘appropriate steps to encourage equality of opportunity and make education available to everyone, according to their abilities’. Finally, the loi d’orientation of 10 July 1989 states that ‘the public education service…contributes to equality of opportunity…the schools, the collèges, the lycées and further educational establishments help develop equality between men and women’. Although the theme of democratization is present in these three texts, is it just a case of continuity? The objectives undertaken certainly show continuity, but it should be noted that each of these texts is limited to a specific area. The purpose of the decree of 1959 was to open the collège to the greatest number of pupils possible and a novel feature, a cycle d’observation (first and second year) in the collège, the law of 1975 affected the collège as a whole with the policy of one school for all (the term comprehensive is not used in France). By 1989 the aim was for 100 per cent by one means or another to get at least to the end of the fourth year. The effects of the economic crisis coupled with this expansionist policy has caused a considerable increase in the social demand of lycée education. For this reason, between June 1985 and June 1991, the rate of students going up from the fourth to the fifth year, rose from 52.3 per cent to 61.7 per cent, an average annual increase of 2.6 per cent. During the same period, even greater than that of the fourth year of the

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Table 17.1 Changes in the first year entry rate to the final year of the general and technical lycées

Source: DEP/MEN 1991:112

collèges, the rate of pupils going up from the second year to the third year general course rose from 63.2 per cent to 74 per cent; when the third year technological course is also considered, this rises to 81.6 per cent. This shows that the number of pupils moving up to the cycle d’orientation has increased considerably. The increase in the rates of those moving up to the fifth year can be seen in the mixed population of the fourth year of the collège. The greater social diversity of the pupils going on to the lycée is evident. These factors are shown by the great increase of first year pupils entering the final year of the general and technical lycées (apart from the vocational baccalauréat).13 (See Table 17.1.) Other information provided by the Direction de l’Evaluation et de la Prospective shows that 40 per cent of pupils born in 1966 and 54.4 per cent of pupils born in 1975 moved up to the fifth year. It is anticipated that 57.4 per cent of pupils born in 1985 will move up to the fifth year in the year 2000. Over the same period, entry to the first year of the BEP for these generations was 20 per cent and 26.8 per cent, and is anticipated as 29.6 per cent in the year 2000. It is worth noting that in 1989, 81.2 per cent of an age group went on to study in a lycée or a vocational lycée after the fourth year (54.4 per cent in the fifth year and 26.8 per cent on a BEP course). This increase in the numbers entering the upper school of secondary education shows a genuine democratization of access to lycées. But what Table 17.2 Final year entry according to social origin

Source: DEP/MEN 1991:115

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Table 17.3 Final year streaming according to social origin

Source: DEP/MEN 1991:115

about democratization of access to the qualifications? The results of the sample group of 1980 show that there are considerable differences in final year entry according to social origin: 88.7 per cent and 83.7 per cent of the children of teachers and senior managers respectively move up to the upper sixth, compared to only 25.7 per cent and 28.6 per cent of the children of unskilled workers and service staff respectively. However, the differences between the sample groups of 1973 and 1980 are considerable. The most disadvantaged social groups show the greatest increase and the gaps are reduced (see Table 17.2). So, access to the final year is certainly becoming more democratic, but it is a slow process: it should also be noted that final year streaming is very unbalanced as far as social origin in concerned (see Table 17.3)14 Finally, there are noticeable differences between boys and girls. The latter represents 56.1 per cent of the lycée population: 82 per cent of the literary streams (A), 61.4 per cent of B, 36.8 per cent of C, 54.1 per cent of D, 4.1 per cent of F and 94.2 per cent of G. These facts shows that access to upper school is becoming more democratic and it remains a priority. This democratization of access to the lycée is accompanied by a change in the lycée population. The cultural and academic diversity of the pupils now entering the fifth form is greater than would normally be expected of an age group. The aim of democratization and its success therefore depends on the methods set up to manage the diversity of pupils. At present, ‘today’s lycée has no satisfactory solution to the diversity of pupils’ (Ministerial press conference of 22 April 1991) and ‘the increasing diversity of pupils is an irreversible trend which calls into question the structures of an institution originally intended for a limited population’ (ministerial declaration before the Conseil Supérieur de l’Education of 21 June 1991). The composition of the lycée population has changed and the areas of concern of democratization and management of diversity, which have been constant in secondary education since 1959, are now noticeable in upper schools, especially the lycées.

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Modular education was conceived as a result: ‘modular education is a solution to the diversity of classes…it takes into account differences between students’.15 Some of the points of the memorandum16 are useful to remember. The fifth year concerns four subjects: French, mathematics, a modern language and history-geography. The four subjects have the same weekly timetable (1.5 hours with a teacher) and all the students profit from the modular timetable (either 45 minutes a week for each subject or 1.5 hours a fortnight). All students follow modular courses. Encouraging pupils to learn work technologies, work in teams, use new approaches to learning and develop the ability of self-assessment are some of the educational principles of modular education. Modular education never concerns a whole class, groups are formulated according to the needs of the students, and several teachers of the same or different subjects can organize joint modular courses. What are the general observations that can be made from these descriptions? First, it seems that a decision was made to deal with the diversity and not just to reduce it. Tools and methods of working must be given to the pupils who need them without depriving pupils who are successful of the resources of public education. Modular education will enable these pupils to broaden their field of knowledge and develop new approaches or methods. With every student inevitably benefiting from three hours of modular education, diversity will be dealt with and eventually reduced. This is an element of democratization as it must increase the chances of those groups, mainly from less fortunate social categories, who have previously been unsuccessful. Modular education also represents an area of freedom for teachers which should allow them to focus on the skills and abilities of pupils rather than on their knowledge. Modular education should, in fact, be organized around the pupils and their needs. This implies one relationship with knowledge for the pupil and another relationship with the teacher. The underlying target seems to be the entire teaching relationship; the pupil is placed at the centre of the mechanism, his or her individuality is recognized and dealt with within an educational and disciplinary framework. The continuity of the democratization process should not conceal the educational changes introduced by modular education in the lycée. The emphasis on the problem of managing diversity has gradually taken over from concerns with the lower secondary school, the question which dominated the period 1959–89. This increase in the percentage of children in full-time education in the upper school of secondary education,17 and it requires new procedures. The replacement of six hours of classteaching with three reinforcement modular hours is a new aspect of the French education system, a break in the form group approach and the traditional approach to knowledge. This break affects both the general lycée and the vocational lycée, and as these two types of school are combined under the

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renovation, the second theme of our analysis, the theory of human resources, can be studied. THE THEORY OF HUMAN RESOURCES The conference on the policies of economic growth and investment in education18 organized in Washington in 1961 marked the introduction of the theory of human resources into the political and economic strategy of the United States. On the macro-economic level, education is analysed as a decisive element of growth, an investment comparable to capital expenditure. Technical progress and material investment alone are not the only reasons for the increase in production and wealth. Therefore school and education are included in the field of economic science and the costs and profitability or economic effectiveness of education are calculated. On an individual level, everyone will calculate ‘the cost and the benefits, weighing up the cost (direct or indirect) of an extra year in education and the increase in revenue that can be expected…employers will be ready to pay for extra human resources until production increases’.19 In future, education will explain individual behaviour and economic change. The theory of human resources, based on observation, was very successful until the early 1970s. The beginning of the economic crisis of 1973 showed that educational progress was not sufficient to stop the increasing inadequacy of school education in relation to the employment market. At the time, the theory of human capital was challenged by some criticism.20 In the early 1980s it was boosted by the introduction of new technology in production processes. OECD publications are full of this notion: ‘Gradually, it is becoming clearer that human resources are as important to the economic and social infrastructure as productive investment, because they are essential for the development and the use of resources and technology’.21 The decree of 6 January 1959 on public education reform already develops the connection between education and economic development. It states that ‘the unanimous opinion, sensitive to the increased demand for all tasks, however modest, is that a more thorough education is indispensable. It is only through an exhaustive assessment of our intellectual resources, still incomplete and too often misleading, that we will put an end to the wastage of human potential from which individuals as well as the nation itself suffer’. The loi d’orientation (the law governing higher education) on technological and vocational education 16 July 1971 22 shows that continuing education enables everyone to acquire ‘knowledge and all the intellectual or practical skills which lead to their personal development and to cultural, economic and social progress’. The loi-programme (act providing framework for government programme) on technological and vocational education of 23 December

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1985 is even more detailed: ‘technological and vocational education contributes to the general improvement of knowledge and levels of qualification. This is a determining factor in the modernization of the domestic economy’.23 Jean-Pierre Chevènement classes the school debate in the sphere of the ‘economic battle’. 24 Schooling and investment in education will provide young people with ‘the means to be resourceful participants in the industrial and economic world’. As a result the vocational baccalauréats were created and the target of ‘80% of an age group taking the baccalauréat in the year 2000’ was set. Article 3 of the law of 10 July 1989 holds that ‘the national target is for an entire age group to reach a minimum level of the certificat d’aptitude professionnelle (CAP) or the brevet d’études professionnelles (BEP) and for 80% to reach the level of the baccalauréat within ten years’. It is therefore a question of ensuring that all young people obtain a qualification. With this target, Lionel Jospin concentrates on those with difficulties at school and those excluded from the education system. The purpose of education is not simply to prepare pupils for the baccalauréat; it must also enable the lowest groups to acquire skills which will facilitate their subsequent professional and social integration. ‘The school must not neglect any student. If 80% of an age group are to reach the level of the baccalauréat, this should not mean that the 20% unable to reach this level are deprived of a satisfactory education and qualification.’25 So the objectives for the education system in 1959, 1971, 1985 and 1989 are largely convergent and genuinely consistent. However, gradually the simple education target to improve the level of knowledge became a comprehensive target to ensure qualifications for everyone in 1985 and 1989. And while the general and technical lycées and the vocational lycées (ex-CETs and ex-LEPs) have changed independently with each reform, the evolution of the two schools since 1989 has been linked and co-ordinated. So the education objective, which is similar to the social objective, has changed over the last thirty years. There is a break in the continuity. The texts on the lycée renovation concern both general and vocational lycées. The vocational course, leading to the CAP and BEP then to the vocational baccalauréat, is shown as a course of lycée education (art. 2). Although each course has a different cultural significance, all three lead to a certificate of equal dignity, that of bachelier. The subsequent analysis of the social evolution of each type of bachelier determines whether cultural differences are due to simple differentiation or a real hierarchical organization. Whatever the case, it seems that the educational renovation of the lycées definitely includes the introduction of the vocational lycées. Labourers, technicians and future managers are now trained in the same unit—the upper school of secondary education. Initial training in upper schools, the foundation for human resources, seems to be standard in the French education system. This standardization is directly evident at the level of the BEP and the CAP.

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The first year of the BEP is now called the ‘vocational fifth form’ and modular education is planned as in the general and technological fifth year. The two years of the BEP form the vocational cycle de détermination at the end of which the student can either start working or continue studying in the upper sixth d’adaptation or for the vocational baccalauréat. The cycle de détermination which gives the student the qualification of BEP can be taken as a level V intermediate qualification. Forty-three per cent of second year BEP students go on to further study (24 per cent do the technical baccalauréat, 13.5 per cent enter the upper sixth d’adaptation, 4 per cent enter other upper sixth classes and 1.5 per cent the mention complémentaire); in June 1985 this was the case for only 18.3 per cent. The increase is amazing; it shows the speed of introduction of the vocational baccalauréats, whose first year numbers rose to more than 60,000 between 1991 and 1992 although they only began in September 1985. So the status of the BEP has been completely changed by courses created as support. This observation largely explains the introduction of the BEP in the cycle de détermination of the lycée. Although the CAP is only mentioned in the texts on the educational renovation of the lycée, it seems useful to stop there. According to the terms of the loi d’orientation of 1989, the CAP is now the basic diploma of the vocational qualification; this is the meaning of the target mentioned above of ‘an entire age group to reach a minimum level of the CAP within ten years’. Careers guidance at the end of the second year has been gradually disappearing since 1982, and as a result, there has been a noticeable reduction in the numbers of third year students preparing for the CAP; in size of the three years reduced from 162,000 in 1982 to 150,000 in 1985 and to 25,000 in 1991. This diploma is mainly prepared through apprenticeship (178,000 apprentices for the three years of the CAP in 1991). The gradual disappearance of this course is incompatible with the purpose of the loi d’orientation which aims to ensure a minimum level of the CAP for everyone, so this course will certainly be revitalized before long. However, there are limitations to the creation of new courses leading to the CAP. First, this course should start after the fourth year of the collège because ‘due to the diversity of courses, all pupils enter the fourth year’26 of the CAP and it will have to take into account the fact that it is the pupils who have the most difficulties at school who will take this course. Finally, due to new technology and subsequent changes to the organization of work, the areas of employment where this level of qualification still has a meaning will need to be identified. The circulars of 28 January 1991 and of 20 January 199227 organize the reception and counselling of students having difficulty in the cycle d’orientation of the collèges. The CAP is shown to be a normal course of study for this group and the minimum qualification with which a student should leave initial education. The renovation of the lycées seems to be a policy continuum but it also represents a break with the objectives of the present reforms. It is

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continuous because its target to ensure that everyone reaches a minimum level of the CAP is consistent with the need for the ‘exhaustive assessment of hidden intellectual resources’ planned in the reform of 1959. But it diverges from the reforms because it presents a complete picture of upper schools of secondary education in which the vocational lycée and the lycée are united for the first time ever to make a single upper school. The 1959 reform introduced the CET (the precursor to the vocational lycées) into the education system and the educational renovation of the lycées does give true upper school status to the vocational lycées). After having analysed the macro-educational facts linked to the problem of democratization and the search for ever greater human resources, it is time to look at an even wider aspect of education: the individuals, the participants. THE PLACE OF THE PARTICIPANT The loi d’orientation of 10 July 1989 holds that ‘the student is at the centre of the education system…that each young person gradually makes his or her own career decisions…and that the lycée allows each student to carry through his or her personal plans…no one can make their decisions for them’ loi d’orientation, article 23. Further on it is specified that ‘it is the responsibility of the teachers, along with the principal of the school and his or her colleagues, to define…an education plan…and a plan of introduction’. This approach on the part of the school puts the individual participant (the student or the teacher) and the collective participant (the education team and the education community) in a new position originating from the recent social conceptions developed by ethnomethodology and the theories of social action. These sociological trends tend to show that ‘the social reality is not “fixed” but is the day-byday product of the activity of the member and that this activity is not productive activity in the material sense; it is all the routines and everyday events which make up the daily life…of the participants such as taking classes or attending a lesson’.28 And ‘while being conditioned by a situation the individual participant helps to produce this situation.29 The educational renovation of the lycées seems to be inspired by these conceptions. The role of the collective participant is defined by a text prior to the lycée renovation. This is the decree of 30 August 1985 which was amended on 31 August 1990 and on 18 February 1991. This text introduced the 1983 law of decentralization and the loi d’orientation into school management. The responsibility of the education teams (art. 32) is defined around two poles: education management and the organization of careers guidance. The education teams are responsible for ‘encouraging communication between teachers, especially concerning the development and implementation of the introduction plan 30 and the co-ordination of education and teaching methods, ensuring the assessment of pupils and

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organizing help with their personal work’. Modular education, which was dealt with above, is a part of these responsibilities. The dimension of ‘autonomy’ of the education teams was included in the lycée renovation, the principle of which was educational organization, so they were better able to respond to the needs of individual pupils. Modular education is an area of education which is affected both by the needs of the pupils and by the solutions of the teachers. The originality of this measure lies in the link between the individual participant and the collective participant. But the pupils’ development is more important than their current education and needs and the education teams ‘provide advice for students so that their schooling and their career choices go well…in collaboration particularly with education and careers counsellors’. From the pupil’s point of view, careers guidance is of fundamental importance as the academic and vocational choices he or she makes greatly determine later life as a pupil, student and adult. Now, the loi d’orientation makes it the lycée’s responsibility to allow the students to follow their personal plan. The notion of careers guidance, developed as part of the educational renovation of the lycées, stems from these measures. It is a notion which clearly requires the continuation of the cycle d’orientation of the collèges and the cycle de détermination of the lycées as part of the guidance process. The continuation of advice between the two cycles depends on the pupils’ ability to make consistent choices. At the end of the fourth year they must make two choices. First, they opt either for the general and technological course or the vocational course; second, if they choose the general and technological course they must decide on the two options they want to follow in the fifth year, or if they choose the vocational course they must specify the vocational subject in which they wish to specialize. So advice on which courses to take, provided at the end of the fourth year, is very important because the pupil must drop some subjects in order to keep to a strictly limited number. The limitation in the number of options of the general and technological fifth year corresponds to this principle of choosing options, especially since those chosen can affect the type of baccalauréat that the student wishes to do at the end of the fifth year. The memorandum 92–092 of 25 February 1992,31 organizing advice on courses for students under the educational renovation of the lycées, is particularly detailed on this subject. So it seems that the most effective advice on options is based on a personal plan followed during the fourth and fifth year. There are three examples of pupils who have chosen the general and technological course: the pupil who has a plan, the pupil without a specific plan who wishes to keep his or her options open, and the pupil who, at the end of the fifth year, sticks to the choices made in the fourth year. If the plan is literary, the student can include in his or her options a second modern language and a classical language or the arts: the pupil of

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the economic and social stream continues with the economic and social science option and a second modern language; those who have wanted to do a technological baccalauréat since the fourth year will continue studying the technology of automated systems in common lessons and industrial automation as an option, etc. If his or her plan is not confirmed, the economic and social science options and a second modern language give the pupil the possibility of following the general courses; the combination of the technology of automated systems option and a second modern language keep all the possibilities of the general and technological courses option open, etc. Finally, at the end of the fifth year, the pupil can change his or her plan as a timetable of lessons will be offered in the subjects that he or she would not have studied in the fifth year. The course guidance aspect of the educational renovation of the lycées therefore involves active participation from pupils in their development because they are required to consider the supply of education when making their educational choices. The notion of course guidance, developed under the educational renovation of the lycées, is similar to the theory of human resources, which says that education decisions are the result of a cost-profit analysis, and to the cognitive movement of psychology. Jean Perrot, in his essay on the supply of education,32 assumes the rationality of the individual, ‘that is, he always tries to maximize his use …this maximization of use happens at the points of change of the education system’. The pupil, who has produced his or her educational value, gathers information on the courses and on the supply of education. The decision is then ‘the result of choosing between obtaining the most benefits possible and the greatest probability of success’. Michel Huteau has studied the development of attitudes and preferences towards professional occupations from the point of view of cognitive psychology.33 He comes to much the same conclusion. The ‘subjects’, as he calls the pupil, is now34 put in the position of choosing the direction of his own education, must gather and consider information on himself and on school courses, before making choices similar to those mentioned above. If we now go back to the decree which sets out the new lycée arrangements, we see that the pupil is given his or her personal information by the education team, who ‘carry out an assessment over the final year’. Remember also that the education team, whose role has been extended to careers counsellor, is now responsible for advising pupils on their choices (art. 32 of the decree of 30 August 1985 amended); ‘according to the assessment, the information provided and the results of the dialogue …the parents of the pupil or the adult student request advice on which courses to follow….’ The regulations seem thus to be inspired by current thinking in the domain of cognitive research and rational choice theory, as described above. The pupil has the key role, he or she is at the centre of a system in

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which the teachers are given new responsibilities as counsellors and providers of information. With the help of the careers counsellor, they are now required to talk about the school, the courses it runs, and the significance of their subject in the different streams and in society in general. So information on courses to follow focuses on the structure of the subject and is the result of a broader understanding of the subjects in the world of education and beyond. Here, the proposed changes to the system seem to prevail over continuing with the pre-existing system. The role of the individual ‘actor’ and the collective ‘actor’ takes on a new significance in the regulations. Without promoting individualism, the educational renovation of the lycées stresses the ability of individuals to deal with the world around them with a view to making choices which are as rational and economically sound as possible. CONCLUSION Modifications to the upper school curriculum, drawn from an ideological change in the conception of the end-of-century lycée, do not seem to be included in the educational renovation of the lycées. However, this analysis of the structural transformations (i.e. cycles and sets) and the steps taken on education (i.e. modular education and ongoing advice on courses) present in the different texts so far published do not lead to the conclusion that the existing lycée and the lycée of tomorrow will remain unchanged. In looking at democratization, human resources and the place of the participant, we show the renovation to be a comprehensive and progressive process of modernization of structures, content and procedures. The continuity-change analysis could not have been carried out on the new curriculum nor on the baccalauréat, which is still of major importance and very influential on education. What will become of it? Furthermore, this renovation is the outcome of taking responsibility for all pupils while still respecting each one as an individual. The policy of 100 per cent of an age group reaching a minimum level of the CAP comes from the need to educate all pupils. However, modular education and advising on courses to follow, based on a personal plan, focuses the teacher’s attention on the individual. The pupil, a collective and impersonal being in the official texts, acquires an identity and a personality in the proposed steps towards individualization. The social and the individual, the macroand microscopic dimensions are dealt with jointly. Studying the application of the renovation in this way determines whether the theory corresponds to the practice, whether the actual curriculum is the same as the official curriculum, and whether there is a balance between the social and the individual. Inevitably our analysis suffers from being undertaken too close to the events studied. An educational renovation is a continuous process. Time is an important element when it comes to establishing new ways and

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customs, because basically we are talking about a culture for the lycée. NOTES 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23

There have been further lycée and baccalauréat reforms under Lionel Jospin’s successor François Bayrou. But this article, written for a career counsellors’ review, is included primarily as a glimpse of French senior civil servant thinking. ‘Press conference of 22 April 1991 and declaration before the Conseil Supérieur de l’Education of 21 June 1991. Fifth, lower sixth, upper sixth; in French, seconde, première terminale; in glossary, second grade, first grade, final grade. Article 7 of decree 90–184 of 14 June 1990. B.O.E.N. No. 27 of 5 July 1990 p. 1493. Ministerial declaration before the Conseil Supérieur de l’Education of 21 June 1991. See Journal Officiel of 19 January 1992. Module here means reinforcement sessions, rather than the normal school course in which the prime object is to work through the national curricular programme. Forquin, J.C. (1989) Ecole et Culture, Brussels: De Boeck. See by the same author ‘La nouvelle sociologie de l’éducation en Grande Bretagne; orientations, apports théoriques et évolutions (1970–1980)’. Revue française de pédagogie (63)1983. Isambert-Jamati, V. (1990) Les savoirs scolaires, enjeux sociaux des contenus d’enseignement et de leurs réformes, Paris: Editions universitaires. Decree 59–56, 6 January 1959, on the reform of the public system of education. Loi relative à l’éducation Journal Officiel du 12 juillet 1975 et B.O. no. 29 du 24 juillet 1975. Loi d’orientation sure l’éducation B.O. numéro spécial 4 du 31 août 1989. See Repères et références statistiques sur les enseignements et la formation, edition 1991, p. 112, Direction de l’Evaluation et de la Prospective of the Ministry of Education. Ibid., p. 115. Dispositions pédagogiques de la renovation des lycées. Document from the Department of Lycées et Collèges of 21 June 1991. Second Memorandum No. 92.164 B.O. of 4 June 1991. See on this subject Cherkaoui, M. (1982) Les changements dûs au système éducatif en France 1950–1980, Paris: P.U.F. Conference on the policies of economic growth and investment in education. Washington 16–20 October 1961. Paris OECD (1966). Mingat, A. (1977). ‘Essay on education demand. State theory’. University of Bourgogne (p. 62). See on this subject Eicher, J.C. and Levy-Garboua et al. (1979). Economie de l’Education. Paris: Economica. Le devenir de l’enseignement et de la formation professionnelle. Paris: OECD (1983). See also Rapport sur l’enseignment et la formation professionnelle. Paris: OECD (1980) and L’enseignement dans la société moderne. Paris: OECD (1985). Law 71–577 of 16 July 1971. J.O. of 17 July 1971 and B.O. of 26 August 1971. Law 85–1371 of 23 December 1985. J.O. of 26 December 1985 p. 15110 1st article.

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24 J.O parliamentary debates of 8 October 1985 p. 2769. 25 Appendix of the eduation loi d’orientation of 10 July 1989: ‘Mission et objectifs fixés par la nation’ B.O. No. 4 special of 31 August 1989. 26 Accommodation of all pupils in the cycle d’orientation. Memorandum of 28 January 1991. B.O. No. 4 of 1991. 27 Circular organizing the integration of fourth year classes. Memorandum of 20 January 1992 B.O. No. 4. 28 Berthelot J.M. (1991) La construction de la sociologie. Que sais-je? Paris: P. U.F. (p. 102). 29 Touraine A. (1984). Le retour de l’acteur. Sociological Essay, Paris: Fayard (p. 36). 30 See on this subject Lecompte J.M. and Nestrique A.M. Le projet: une démarche pour l’établissement CNDP-Hachette (p. 19). 31 Memorandum 92–092 of 25 February 1991. B.O. No. 10 of 5 March 1992. 32 Perrot J. (1982) ‘Essay on the supply of education. State doctrine’. University of Bourgogne. 33 Huteau M. (1982) ‘Les mécanismes psychologiques de l’évolution des attitudes et des préférences vis-à-vis des activités professionnelles’. L’Orientation scolaire et professionnelle No.2 (p. 107). 34 Lautrey J. (1982) ‘Le cognitivisme’. L’Orientation scolaire et professionnelle No. 2 (p. 95).

18 A sociology of the lycée student François Dubet, Olivier Cousin and Jean-Philippe Guillemet

This chapter succinctly presents a study of the lycée experience carried out at the request of the Direction de l’Evaluation et de la Prospective of the French Ministry of Education. The chapter concerns itself with a sociological investigation carried out using findings from groups in eight lycées which were organized hierarchically into a grand lycée of the VIe district of Paris and Lycée d’Enseignement Professional (LEP) institutions in the Paris suburbs. We have also carried out approximately one hundred interviews with pupils and approximately forty with teachers. This sample is by no means representative but one can consider that it presents a plausible picture of pupils’ experiences. For a long time in France the important factor in the sociology of education was that it was a sociology without actors. The pioneering and major works concentrated on the flow of students, on the accumulated effects of behaviour, on the functions of the school and on the ‘laws’ of the selective system rather than on the way in which the educational actors built their experience or their ‘consciousness’ as one would have said using the old language of the sociology of work. In a similar way to those who deduced that working-class consciousness came from the ‘condition’ that capitalism imposed, the experience of pupils was thought to have come from the logic of the system. The problem of inequality of opportunity has been and remains the central theme of the sociology of French education but pupils have often been viewed only in terms of the factors which determined their pathway through the system. One cannot, of course, reject these works and the questions that underlie them. However, they do imply a type of conformity and appropriateness on the part of the actors to the system, which in turn overlooks behaviour and reduces the subjectivity of pupils either to the tactics of reason or to consolation or insignificance. The specifically educative and socializing role of the school can therefore be ignored and reduced in this context to the acquisition of a position or even to the more or less advantageous internalization of an educational culture conceived as an organized and stable entity. In so far as the education system diversifies and becomes larger when it increases its hold on young peoples, and also in

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so far as strategies and projects are numerous, it is important to study the educational experience of pupils themselves, to ascertain the cultural orientations and relations which underlie them, in order to know not what social actor creates the school but what social actor is created at the school and how. WHAT IS THE LYCÉE EXPERIENCE? It is tempting in the sociology of education to conceive pupil behaviour in the light of theoretical models, which are derived from general representations of the school systems and notably from the production and reproduction of inequalities. The education experience is therefore reduced to the central principle of explaining and analysing this model. Overwhelmingly, pupils’ behaviour, their choices, their subjectivities, their social nature and their ability to adapt are conceived as the expression of a socialization which is attached to a social position. Pupils are marked by their class background which corresponds more or less to the cultural expectations and latent role models proposed by the educational institution. The environment of the educational experience is defined as a conjunction of social culture, class culture and educational culture. Pupils’ attitudes stem from the distance between these two cultures and the systems of dispositions which they engender and require. ‘The haves’ follow the game of connivances and innuendo which organizes the experience of pupils predisposed to administer the conjunction of two close cultures. Educational failure, on the other hand, is explained by the distance between these cultures and by the internalization of the difficulty to succeed caused by this distance which can sometimes be so great that British sociologists have been able to contrast the educational culture and deviant subculture of pupils from working-class backgrounds.1 Here the problem of the relative boom of lycée populations mainly comes down to the confrontation of new expectations and dispositions with the educational cultural model closest to that of the dominant classes. However, can we truly consider, in this context, the pupil as a social actor? It appears that this cannot be the case in so far as the behaviour of the subjects appears totally determined by the game of social position. More precisely, everything comes down to this game of position, where the behaviour of the actors seems necessary, where the education experience has no logic of its own and where subjectivity is simply an effect of social position. Against this representation of the pupil, current thinking in methodological individualism considers that the pupil is the subject of a market where educational rewards and the resources of the actors, who are thus perceived as strategists and consumers, cross. Instead of reinforcing cultural attitudes that already exist, pupils are strategists who optimize their investments and costs, choosing the best path to take at each of the

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crossroads that they come across in the educational system. 2 The experience of the pupil is that of an economic agent facing the relative scarcity of rewards on offer, of qualifications and social position, of inflation and of competition, which define hierarchies and ways forward. If the social actor exists here, he or she is reduced to a strategist position, and the specifically socializing and educative function of the school is brought back to a principle of interest or more frequently ignored. It is clear that these two models correspond to two antinomical and theoretical frameworks; to two interpretations of the school However, they are also, perhaps, associated with two ‘ages’ of the French educational institution. The first considers the school as an institution which is organized around a dominant, central, cultural model, close to the classical image of the lycée; the second conceives the school as a series of paths and crossroads. This is more in keeping with the present state of the education system, the school being seen less as an institution of socialization in the Durkheim way than as a market of educational rewards; the study of the relationship of competition eclipses the study of the object rewards of this competition.3 There are not only two theoretical frameworks concerning the institution in the market, but there also exist two definitions of the role of the school. One must mention what has been called ‘the new English sociology of education’, which has been inspired by symbolic interactionism and by ethno-methodology, and which is more sensitive to the idea of the educational experience.4 The original point of this perspective, however little unity can be accorded to it, is the analysis of interactions in the classroom and notably relations between teachers and pupils. Studies show how teachers attribute roles to, and label, pupils and how these in turn resist and react to these varied interactions. Conceived, however, as a series of relations, the educational experience seems no longer to possess its own proper unity and central principles and, the majority of the time, this brand of sociology has considered the experience of pupils as a sub-system of the first viewpoint that has been examined here: that of the cultural conjunction. The idea of educational experience implies that it not only considers the pupil as an individual facing a certain situation and certain constraints, but as an actor constructing his or her own experience through cultural choices and orientations, developing strategies and the meaning behind such strategies in a system of social relations. It is of importance to single out the central dimensions of this experience, those which the actor must administer and articulate. The first of these dimensions is the future plan. Each pupil has to maintain a utility rapport with the school which is linked to a future plan. The studies and the work have to have a sense in relation to the image that the pupil has of his or her future; this plan can have a vocational dimension or, on the other hand, it can also be limited to a school context,

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for example the ambition to go up into a higher class. The plan can be experienced by the pupils as if it were their own or as if it were that of a quasi-family destiny in which the studies stand out as being self-evident. From this point of view, the absence of a future plan, owing to the problems that it causes concerning student motivation, is the concern of the same logic of action, that which implies inevitably that studies have a sense and a utility. Their drawback is perceived as quasi-pathology. A pupil, however, cannot be solely defined by a plan since he or she experiences the conjunction between the project and the organization. A school is effectively also an organization, which defines roles, behaviour, status and necessary channels. Generally the conjunction of this plan and of the organization is formed through selection and measurement of educational performances. Each pupil is a member of a social organization and of a youth community in which the capacity for integration is greater or lesser; in which role definition is more or less restricting; and in which autonomy is greater or lesser. Finally a pupil is also a cultural actor. Acquired knowledge is limited to an educational framework or goes beyond it, and although it proposes an image of oneself and of the world, it does not reduce itself to a simple means of grading without content. In any case, pupils are able to construct several subject choice paths with regard to this knowledge; they are able to choose an instrumental logic where the evaluation of knowledge controls their learning; they are able to submit this learning to the sole pedagogical relation (‘we work for the teacher’), and finally can develop an intellectual relationship towards certain subjects. Whatever this may be, to the best of one’s knowledge, it shows the educative function of the school and the development of a certain type of social actor. If one is to imagine the point of view of the actors, the educational experience hardly possesses any unity, since each of its dimensions is in conflict with the others. The personal or social plan, with its responsibility to be useful, is not always in harmony with the logic of the organization and of selection. Often, the school appears like an obstacle to this plan, and the pupil must constantly readapt his or her ambitions and wishes to the opportunities which have been made available and to the resources which he or she possesses. Furthermore, tension arises between the necessities of integration and selection, on the one hand, and the cultural objectives of teaching, on the other. This comes into play in specifically educational relations as it does, for example, in youth culture within the lycée. As soon as the relatively integrated and harmonious world of the ‘good pupils’, the ‘haves’ of the system, from ‘good schools,’ is left behind, a world in which there is a harmonious balance between the utility of study, its cultural function and the educational integration of the pupil, where ‘style’ becomes central, the educational experience appears to be much more fragmented, varied and chaotic. Therefore it is of importance to study the logic of the actors, as well as the way in which they construct

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their experience and are constructed themselves. The pupil is faced with a future plan, with an organization of study and with a cultural activity in which nothing indicates that they form a system and that they define an appropriate role to conform to. In the case of the pupils in the new lycées, their behaviour can no longer be deduced directly from the system. The more one distances oneself from the ‘heart’ of the education system, the mechanism which integrates the functions of the school, the more it becomes necessary to study the experience of pupils and the logic of their actions. In this way it appears less like a unified system. Everything occurs there as if selective logic, the ability to adapt to the environment and the educative role of the school comes together at the lycée without really becoming integrated. The actors therefore find themselves obliged to construct their experience, and are no longer able to be carried along by the ‘laws of the system’ or their own strategic interests. TYPES OF PUPILS PRESENT IN THE LYCÉE POPULATION In an extremely superficial way, one can say that three types of pupil can be found according to the institution, the social group from which the pupils come and the areas of study that are on offer. Evidently such a classification ignores the multiplicity of pupils that were found during our study but for reasons of convenience this has been simplified. ‘Good pupils’ from ‘good lycées’ If we exclude the Parisian grands lycées which are dominated by preparatory classes and are able to be almost totally selective and recruit from upper-class families, the ‘have’ style seems residual even if it remains at the heart of the representations. Upper-class affluence, the certainty of success, the caste attitude and the development of an intellectual distance no longer seem to determine the behaviour of the majority of lycée pupils. The majority of ‘good pupils’ from ‘good lycée’ traditional town-centre lycées, maintain a more instrumental and tense approach to their studies. The bac is not considered either as a passport to young adult freedom or as a first rung on the mobility hierarchy. Enrolled in a sort of educational fatalism and with family obligations to succeed, studies are like a game where the risks of failure are higher than the chances of winning; everything takes place as if it were imperative to obtain qualifications which are not worth a great deal. Professional plans and true scientific or literary vocations appear extremely rare. The age of choice will appear after the bac, and educational plans are tightly linked to the subjects studied at school themselves; it is important to advance to a higher class. Pupils develop a logic of postponing, in which real questions will occur later and in which real life will begin afterwards with the advent of higher education.

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This lack of long-term planning must be seen in relation to selection procedures. If the Parisian grands lycées remain partially organized around the opposition of cultures and of literary and scientific stereotypes, consequent upon the international setting-up of good literary classes in the A1 branch of the bac capable of rivalling the C bac, none of this remains in the majority of institutions. The hierarchy of subject areas determines educational qualities rather than the likes of students. From subject area C to subject areas A2 or A3, according to the institution, the educational virtues of students are determined and ‘true scientists’ as well as ‘true literary experts’ are in a minority. A constant tension is therefore created between the affirmed likes and the subjects studied, which are attributed rather than chosen, in spite of the feeble denials from students. This tension, largely created by the teachers who condemn and perpetuate it at the same time, and which is associated with the absence of precise professional plans, brings a very utilitarian relationship to study, completely dominated by a principle of effectiveness, even cynicism. Despite the presence of teachers who are judged exceptional owing to their talent and enthusiasm, pupils choose above all the effectiveness of the teacher at the expense of his or her capacity to stimulate intellectual interest and his or her ability to strike up a friendly relationship with the class. Pupils, therefore, present themselves as virtuosos of effectiveness, of adequate adaptation, of showing themselves to be interested in a return on their investment according to coefficients, and of the capacity to respond to diffuse expectations. Lycée pupils present themselves as rational entrepreneurs, efficient due to the fact that they distance themselves and are detached, refusing to commit themselves beyond what is really necessary. According to the pupils, if studies can have a role in the formation of personality, an educative role, it is through the miraculous combination of an extraordinary teacher, and even more so through the youth life offered by the ‘good lycée’. Each class is organized into clans, founded on their likes, styles and aspirations, with each one of them appearing as a true haven of personal and intellectual life. It is there that the pupils practise what one of them calls ‘the art of conversation’, part of youth culture found during lulls in the school day and practising, to differing degrees, a sort of ethic of non-compromise with life and school culture, as if the personality of the school had to be preserved. Whereas in the grand lycée life revolves around competition and performance, the great majority of pupils aim to be average and to have minimum adaptation and commitment to the school. These strategies of adaptation, marked by disruption and dispersion, are all the more clear since the majority of lycées have a very weak integration capacity. The lycée proposes a succession of lessons but hardly exercises any social control. On the contrary, pupils perceive the institution as extremely liberal, sometimes anarchic, which permits pupils to have

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autonomy, freedom in clothes and hairstyles, and a love and social life free from constraints, even if the price of such liberal attitudes is the absence of participation. According to pupils, it is a far cry from the barrack-style lycée and more like a bureaucratic institution which offers personal freedom, thus there are hardly any problems with discipline or with pupils misbehaving, instead absenteeism and lack of interest are the biggest problems. It is true that in the majority of establishments studied, the CPE and the administration show themselves to be accommodating and curb any out-of-hand confrontations between teachers and pupils. In a similar way to upper-middle-class families encouraging their children to sacrifice personal and youth freedom in favour of an acceptable educational performance, the establishment exchanges educational effectiveness for an unconstrained youth culture. The new lycée pupils This term embraces those students from less prestigious bac subject areas, notably sections G and F, who frequent the new lycées often built in working-class suburbs. These pupils invariably have parents who left school early, and account for 80 per cent of students who study for the bac. Whether they have professional ambitions or not, whether they hope to move into higher education or not, these pupils are in a paradoxical situation. They have certain similarities to scholarship-holders in so far as the fact that they are continuing their secondary education places them on an upwardly mobile track in their family’s eyes. They will often be the first members of their family to take the bac, and this is particularly true for children of manual workers and immigrants who make up large sections of this population. These pupils, however, in spite of being on their way up socially, are on an educational downslide. Constrained to choose subject areas and institutions defined by pupils and a great number of teachers as ‘rubbish tips’, they experience feelings of shame and of being devalued when they look at themselves in terms of the norms of educational excellence. They are not even able to console themselves thanks to the former prestige attached to literary subject areas. Ending up in these subject areas following an uneven schooling, they are often older and feel trapped by a qualification which closes more doors than it opens. The cultural model encourages these pupils to rely on particular subjects: accountancy, business studies, etc. However, these subjects are, from an educational point of view, devalued since they are studied by the weakest students. General subjects survive without pupils being able to perceive their usefulness. They understand them as replies to questions which have never been asked and often as a way of perpetuating failure. Without being able to have a valued intellectual interest at their disposal, these pupils are tempted to bring real life into conflict with the abstract form of studies. This real life is even more real when pupils are older and

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often live like young adults, working to keep themselves or to earn pocket money. Although the devaluation of the qualification makes it an unprofitable investment it remains indispensable. These attitudes, contradictions and paradoxes lead pupils to depend heavily on their teachers. Distanced from intellectual interest, largely unable to develop efficient strategies, they perceive themselves as being very reliant on the teachers and their personalities. Whereas ‘good pupils’ from ‘good schools’ rely on the effectiveness of teachers, the new lycée students are above all reliant on their teachers’ personalities. Lessons appear like a succession of interpersonal relationships where the teachers’ criticism vies with gratification and encouragement. These new lycée students develop a sort of ‘magical’ thinking, ‘if we want to do it we can,’ and they constantly fluctuate between feelings of hope and despair. Given that they are often conformists, they do not manage to control the game that is assigned to them efficiently. This unhappy dependence usually finds expression in contempt and humiliation, in institutions with low attendance rates, amongst teachers often disappointed with teaching weak pupils, and in pupils with a sufficiently difficult school record to have little faith in themselves. Even pupils from LP institutions, in adaptation classes, who feel they have rescued themselves, are invariably unable to withstand this depressive climate. As these new lycées are liberal institutions unrestricting in character, youth culture develops as strongly as in ‘good schools’. However, this youth culture is never responsible for forming a delinquent community but it simply exists outside of life and of educational culture. A far cry from the demands of work, from continuity and from unwanted, abstract school exercises, youth culture is formed around ‘real life’, or in leisure time or when students socialize. This, according to students, gives them a more positive image of themselves. These lycée students often perceive the distance between school and life in the same way as workers would when comparing the factory to this life. The lycée professionnel (LP) pupils Although the recruitment of pupils is socially more homogeneous than in the new lycées, the LP world seems split, and the social experience of pupils can be understood as the expression of this split.5 The first split sets up an opposition between academic and vocational teaching. Not only do pupils have to deal with two types of teachers with very clear cultural styles, but they also feel as if they are in two schools. In spite of considerable efforts on the part of teachers, academic teaching maintains a traditional pedagogical relationship, where the physical constraints of silence and discipline remain strong and where the attention is concentrated on the teacher. On the contrary, vocational teaching allows

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pupils to move about in the classroom and centres attention on the task rather than on the teacher. Whatever their attainment, pupils do not manage totally to overcome this duality. The second split opposes CAP and BEP pupils, devalued in comparison with those preparing a vocational bac or a skilled BEP. The first pupils end up in an LP institution for a lack of anything better, without professional plans and often hostile to the school. Their experience is above all dictated in terms of youth sociability and often by the delinquent community. The LP institution does not manage to socialize the pupils in terms of its own norms, and the classes and teachers are judged in terms of the place which they give to this sociability. As there is no discipline and as the teachers try to adapt to the best of their ability to this society which eludes them, the LP is often a continuation of the life of the suburb, of the gangs and of feelings of marginalization. Unlike the former technical colleges which socialized students for a working-class job culture and industrial discipline,6 the LP offers entry to young people who have no hope of mobility and for whom school often leads only to failure. The teaching is perceived as a plethora of encounters with different personalities who are receptive or not, depending above all on their capacity to impose discipline. For their part, teachers hardly talk about the pupils in intellectual or strictly educational terms but define them first of all in terms of psychology and behaviour. Coming from a long selection procedure which operates in devalued CAP and BEP classes, pupils from fields of study which prepare a vocational bac or good BEP have a totally different experience from the previously mentioned pupils. They are better able to combine the two educational cultures, seemingly because they encounter qualified vocational training teachers, PLP 2s, who are acceptable in the two cultural worlds and experts in technical matters. Professional pride is also reinforced by the fact that the sections preparing the vocational bac are the students most valued by the institution. All things considered, these pupils feel that they have managed to ‘come through’ and are placed at the summit of the system of vocational teaching, with a positive self-image enhanced by their technical skills and abilities. Their experience must be contrasted with that of pupils of the G section who are on the bottom rung in terms of classical educational markers. Moreover, these relatively older pupils behave like young adults, already entering into working life by means of training courses. The educational experience of pupils of the LP, therefore, appears to be balanced between two poles constituted by a youth sociability, which is badly integrated into the educational framework, and by professional training granted to a sort of professional élite. This does not stop this world from being more sensitive than the others to the employment market, and whilst the first group of students think in employment terms, no matter what the job is, the second group think in terms of a profession.

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Although it seems without doubt somewhat excessive, one could say that the LP institution oscillates between the social treatment of youth unemployment and the training of qualified professionals. THE PUPIL AND THE SCHOOL Beyond these marked differences between the varied composition of school populations, it is possible to build up a general picture of the lycée experience. Essentially organized around a process of selection which leads young people to adopt certain strategies that are strongly influenced by instrumentalism, this experience finds expression in the dissociation of cultural life and of the school, by the institution’s limited capacity for socialization and by the separation of the person and system. The expansion of the educational system has created a diversification of subjects with subject areas being organized in terms of a hierarchy. Every pupil knows very well that, today, all the different bacs do not have the same ‘value’. By distributing different educational positions, which are unequal, school is perceived as an enormous ‘sorting office’, a giant ‘selection machine’. The path of the lycée student is indeed punctuated by crossroads, at which the system evaluates and sanctions the performance of each person by a subject choice or an exam. Selection permeates the experience of these young people so strongly that the theme constantly dominates the first meetings of the groups of pupils and the interviewers. Furthermore, the pupils always begin by affirming the absence of hierarchy between subject areas. The different subject areas are presented as different but equal and each person declares that he or she has chosen his or her specialization. This discourse, which is the fruit of the process of reduction of the psycho-social discord, also reveals the sociological plan, the unanimous refusal to break the fragile community of pupils. However, this is broken very rapidly, and the lycée students always talk about the themes of selection and hierarchy, sometimes doing so in a painful way. Indeed, apart from the première S and the terminal C, the pupils do not choose their specialization, and those who find themselves studying the most highly regarded field of study often are not doing so by choice. Above all, they try to make the ‘least bad’ choice possible. Furthermore, lycée pupils are in agreement over the hierarchy of study areas. This is invariably as follows: C, D, A1, B, A2, A3 (there are hierarchical variations depending on each institution, notably between A and B subject areas), the various F sections, then the G ones, with some considered better than others, and finally the bacs pro and BEP subject areas, also organized into a hierarchy. The only divergence is on what importance to attach to the E bac, in so far as technical studies do not always enjoy a good image. Furthermore, the pupils know perfectly well what the keys to the selection process are and they know that this starts from the collège depending on the choice of language in year 6 and year

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4, and the importance of German, Latin and Greek. If the majority of them do not succeed in the selection process, they try to adapt to it. Also, a very clear image of the hierarchy of educational institutions is superimposed upon the hierarchy of subject areas. There are good and bad classical, good and bad technical, and good and bad vocational lycées. As a pupil often does not choose his or her subject area, the same is true of his or her lycée. The more one goes down the hierarchy of subject areas and the less choice on offer, the more the attitude ‘we go where we are accepted’ rings true. Moreover, parents of the best students, often with the passive complicity of administrative bodies, unhesitatingly manage to avoid lycées which are used as ‘dumping grounds’ for the pupils of the district where C section bacs cohabit with G sections. An identical bac does not hold the same value in all institutions. The acknowledgement of these hierarchies is often distressing for pupils, since selection is objectively built on personal educational shortcomings. Within the same class, the teachers, study programme and coefficients are identical for everyone. Therefore, every pupil in theory has equal opportunities. Consequently a bad subject choice is perceived by the pupil as the consequence of a personal incapacity to have ‘reached the sufficient level’. The logic of selection is furthermore largely linked to the dominance of certain subjects. The fact that mathematics and physics have greater importance has been unanimously denounced, even more so since these subjects claim to evaluate pupils objectively. As for selection procedures, they are unpleasant and autocratic experiences conducted through a staff meeting which the majority of pupils consider a court and a masquerade of justice. ‘Everything is decided in advance and the pupil is never right’ sounds an excessive reaction but is one which is often shared by parents, teachers and the administration. Nobody seems to monitor this inflexible selection and everybody criticizes it. The selection process creates a clear separation between the concern for educational effectiveness and intellectual interest. Excluding those favoured by the system, pupils do not detect the cultural and educative content of their training, since it is necessary for them above all to be ‘assured’ in order to try to gain access to the most prestigious subject areas. As it is important to work in the most efficient and productive way possible, profitability supplants interest as the educational criteria. The most selective subjects, for instance mathematics and physics, are furthermore the least interesting and the least prestigious subjects in the eyes of the pupils. Above all, it is therefore the importance of the coefficient which determines the amount of effort provided by pupils. Pupils often behave as small time entrepreneurs, anxious to maximize the relation between the cost and the profits from the work carried out. ‘We do not make much of an effort in certain secondary subjects in order to give our all in other more important ones.’ Pupils peak before the staff

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meetings which decide on their progress in order to give a good picture of themselves. Instrumentalism is so strong that when second year pupils are just about certain of their future field of study, they consider it useless and sometimes unfair that they have to continue studying subjects which they will drop the following year (in the first year). This feeling is also shared by G section pupils concerning philosophy and by pupils of vocational lycées concerning subjects of general education. In this context, where it becomes imperative to succeed in subjects which ‘matter’, cheating and copying from classmates are widely considered acceptable strategies, as long as this does not change the performance differences between pupils in the same class. ‘Cheating to go from a mark of 8 to 10 is all right, but cheating to go from 8 to 15 is not fair.’ Instrumentalism naturally limits the development of a lycée intelligentsia. Indeed, intellectual passions and interests mainly take place away from school, and the lycée experience is enjoyed better if there is little interest attached to the aforementioned. Relations with teachers are thus solely seen as a series of random encounters, as matters of personalities. In some ways it is only by chance that the teacher interests the pupil. Furthermore, the lycée pupils and teachers mutually encourage this separation between effectiveness and interest. Pupils think that teachers no longer have any vocation, whilst teachers consider that pupils only think in terms of examinations and what fields of study to take. The case of the scientific subject areas is the best example of the negative effects that the system brings about. If pupils in the C section constitute an educational upper class, they do not constitute a scientific upper class. They are in section C since it is the most advantageous subject area and the one that opens the most doors. Students study C to gain access to literary classes which prepare them for entrance to the grandes écoles, HEC, IUT or BTS courses, but rarely with a view to studying scientific subjects long term. The dominant feature of the lycée experience is the dissociation from the personality and from the school. In this sense, school is no longer important in the socialization process; in other words, the school no longer plays the role of the institution constructed on cultural values producing social roles which the actors later reproduce in society. Indeed, outside the classroom, the school no longer tries to control pupil behaviour. Their clothes, their hairstyles, their behaviour and tastes are considered strictly private concerns. ‘Barrack-style lycées’ belong to a bygone age and the lycée has become a place of freedom where social control is extremely weak. ‘Couples’ hold hands and kiss, students can smoke, classes are no longer compulsory and students can leave the premises between lessons to relax in the ‘milk bar’ or café of their choice. The lycée, however, has not become a democratic place in so far as this freedom does not include rights. ‘We have freedom but not rights’, the lycée pupils say, and everybody knows very well that freedom not

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protected by law remains a freedom that does not go far enough. Indeed, the absence of rules prohibits any negotiation with the administration or teachers if conflict arises. If the pupils deplore this situation they nevertheless do not have the wish to get involved and participate in the system. Furthermore, activists from the FIDL encounter many difficulties in trying to mobilize lycée pupils over their rights. They do not want to become involved, because real life is elsewhere, in books, at the cinema, amongst the gangs of friends or even at the Saturday night disco. Outside the classroom, the lycée has very little influence on the behaviour of young people, so much so that their ability to integrate socially is weak. Pupils go to the lycée but never truly become lycée pupils. The outside world conditions behaviour. The lycée transmits knowledge and selects pupils, but it is no longer a place of education in the Durkheimian sense of the word. Besides, this system of organization does not construct one educational establishment but dual establishments, with lessons and selection carried out by teachers, and liberty reduced to finding expression in the playground. This weakness of social control perhaps constitutes the best way of accompanying educational selection. If the rules of functioning outside the classroom were identical to those of thirty years ago, it is indeed likely that the system would collapse. However lycée pupils have to pay a high price for this liberty which can be seen as indifference and anonymity. Apart from a small group of friends, pupils do not know each other and the lycée becomes like a ‘selfservice café’. If the personality of the individual is still formed during school life, it is no longer the school itself that forms it. The school develops individuals more than social actors but develops them ‘in spite of itself’ by granting them a lot of space and autonomy. Three principal reasons seem to be at the root of this phenomenon. First, the school has probably destroyed its image of being egalitarian and upholding universal values by becoming the principal agent of selection. The school has been an institution of socialization, to the extent that selection was alien to it and based on social rather than educational criteria. Second, as teachers have emphasized, the school no longer has a legitimate cultural monopoly. There are numerous cultural sources, and the school has become a simple tool in a knowledge market which is more and more competitive. Perhaps the school is at last simply adapting itself to society’s evolution. Indeed how could it organize itself around a strong cultural project when society no longer proposes this undisputed model of a legitimate culture? This basic presentation of the educational experiences of lycée pupils leaves a number of questions unanswered. One of these is relative to the formation, or more precisely the absence, of collective action among pupils who are often discontented and at the same time detached. Although the situation of pupils is sometimes materially difficult, the future appears gloomy for many, and selection and the pedagogical

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relationship seem to cause endemic contempt, pupils adapt and draw back. They do not respond to efforts at ‘mobilization’ from a core of activists and rather than forming and having structured demands, they are more prone to ‘outbursts’ which quickly fall away, with a feeling of general ‘discomfort’. Similarly, the pedagogical relationship which is at the heart of the educational experience should have been examined more specifically. Let us simply note that teachers often develop certain behaviours which are similar and complementary to those of the students. One can identify the same sensitivity to criticism and the same distance from the role, notably in the clear separation of occupation and status, and of the personal definition of the occupation and of the bureaucratic and limited perception of the teacher’s place within the organization. Finally, the role of establishments and the specific strategies and arrangements which each of them develops and constructs in order to respond to its situation in the educational ‘market’ and within the system of its internal relations should have been mentioned. What emerges from this study is that the lycée can no longer be considered an institution which is controlled by a cultural model, and which has values and a central organization, as is the case with Jesuit schools or lycées de la République. From the point of view of the pupils, which it is important to examine, the school seems like a place where three logics that are relatively independent and unrelated come together: a logic of adaptation to the environment which responds to educational demand; a logic of selection and of internal hierarchical organization; and a logic of education and culture, played out in a pedagogical relationship perceived as risky and permitted by the institution in the youth culture at school, but which does not dominate the experience of pupils. Also the pupils appear as young people and individuals who go to school and take from it what they can, rather than as lycée students, defined by roles and by fixed behaviour modes. Integration and socialization give way to modes of adaptation which are more or less favourable. One should certainly not judge these brief remarks and observations from a pessimistic point of view, as if the school is in crisis, and as if the decline of an institution of socialization could only bring about suffering and a predominance of egotistical interests. The lycée welcomes individuals who transform themselves according to processes which it hardly controls, rather than welcoming children which it makes into adults according to a cultural model and a pedagogical style supervised and accepted by everyone. The school deals with contradictory demands with varying degrees of good luck. By leading pupils to live like people with a constrained commitment to its ‘game plan’ it adapts to the social and cultural transformations of our society rather better than is often realized.

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NOTES 1 This concerns the work of Pierre Bourdieu. For delinquent subculture, see D. Hargreaves et al. Deviance in the Classroom, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975; P.Woods Schools and Deviance, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1981. 2 This perspective is illustrated in France by R.Boudon, L’Inégalité des chances, Paris: Armand Colin, 1973. 3 This is, for example, the analysis of M Cherkaoui on the emergence of the selection by mathematicians, Les Changements du systeme éducatif en France, Paris: PUF, 1982. 4 For a critical and complete presentation, see J.L.Forquin ‘La “nouvelle sociologie de l’éducation” en Grand-Bretagne: orientations, apports théoriques, évolution [1970–1980]’, Revue Française de Pédagogie, 63, 1983, pp. 61–79. 5 On the heterogeneity of LPs, see C.Baudelot et al. ‘Les élèves de LP, anatomie d’une population’, Revue Française des Affaires Sociales, Dec. 1987, pp. 79– 98. 6 The LPs are distinguished from CETs studied during the 1960s by Claude Grignon, because the CETs welcomed a relative élite with a lot of young people entering directly into apprenticeship. The IP receives all the pupils who have not been able to gain access to other subject areas. See L’Ordre des choses. Les fonctions sociales de l’enseignement technique, Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1971.

19 Special education in France Felicity Amstrong

The right to education is guaranteed to everybody in order that they may develop their personality, achieve a higher standard of initial and continuous training, participate in social and professional life and exercise their rights and duties as citizens. The acquisition of a general culture and a recognized qualification is guaranteed to all young people whatever their social, cultural or geographical origins. Educational integration of young handicapped people is to be encouraged. (Loi d’orientation sur l’éducation’ 10 juillet 1989 (article 1))

INTRODUCTION This chapter looks at some aspects of provision in France for children and young people with disabilities and difficulties in learning in the light of recent legislation. First, it briefly describes the historical background and recent legislation relating to special education. This is followed by a discussion of the range of structures which exist to serve different categories of disability. The final section focuses on some recent changes in primary education. It is not an easy task to write about ‘special education’ in France. First, there is the problem of terminology. There are important differences in the way in which disabilities are understood, categorized and labelled in different cultures, and there is the additional problem of finding a match in English to the terms used in French which do not carry characteristically Anglo-Saxon values and meanings. Second, and linked to this first problem, the structures and institutions which serve the various categories of disability are different from those in the UK or elsewhere. Third, not all provision is made within the national education system. Some young people attend hospitals or institutions controlled by the Ministry of Social Security rather than schools. It is therefore difficult to talk about ‘special education’ as if it were a unified service. Lastly, there has been legislation passed in Parliament in recent years which is designed to bring about

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radical change in the educational provision for children and young people with disabilities or difficulties in learning. However, other features of the education system have remained and exercise a conservative role on new initiatives. Teachers are often reluctant to abandon long-established practices and traditions, and curriculum reform in schools has been slow. In addition, institutions and practices outside the education system continue to deliver services to children and young people who are seen as having medical or psychiatric problems rather than educational needs. This means that legislation designed to bring about changes in the education of all young people with disabilities and difficulties in learning is not fully effective. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Educational provision in France for children and young people with disabilities or difficulties in learning has its roots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was usually provided by church institutions. As in many other countries, the schools that were established were linked to particular disabilities. Schools for ‘deaf-mute’ pupils were set up by the Abbé de l’Epée and institutions for blind children and young people by Valentin Haüy during the eighteenth century. During the same period Jean Itard conducted experiments to investigate the possibility of educating ‘wild children’, and these attempts are portrayed in Truffaut’s film L’Enfant sauvage. During the nineteenth century investigations were carried out which were designed to establish differences between ‘idiocy’ and ‘madness’. This was a novel concept at the time, as historically little distinction had been made between ‘les fous’ and ‘les handicapés mentaux’. In his book Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason Foucault describes how the practice of shutting away people who did not fit into society came about. As leprosy disappeared in Europe during the sixteenth century, the structures and institutions which had existed to care for lepers, at the same time as excluding them from contact with the rest of the community, fell into disuse. They gradually came to serve the same function for those who were seen as social misfits, such as vagrants, dissolutes, ‘les idiots’ and the insane. The old leper houses were among the first institutions to receive and contain these misérables, and their purpose was both to ‘save’ those whom they held and to protect the rest of the community from them. It could be argued that these twin strands of salvation and protection are still present at the close of the twentieth century in segregated schools and institutions so common in France and elsewhere. Although the latter part of the nineteenth century saw the growth of psychology and psychoanalysis, an understanding of children who were regarded as infirm or retarded was founded on medical knowledge rather

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than social and psychological factors. There were early attempts to educate children described at that period as enfants idiots in hospitals at the end of the nineteenth century. By the early part of this century, the practice of placing children regarded as ineducable in psychiatric hospitals where they received little education was well established. At the same time, a number of special schools—often with a medical orientation—were set up for les enfants arriérés (‘backward children’). The medical view of learning difficulties became an established part of the French system and is a further theme or strand in educational provision today. A third strand which runs through the French education system is the principles of liberty, fraternity and equality which issued from the 1789 revolution, and were reasserted by the Paris Commune in 1871. But the French Revolution also gave birth to centralized government and found its natural bedfellow in a bureaucracy which eventually reached as far as the smallest village in France. The safeguarding of the principles of equality and liberty were, paradoxically, seen as largely dependent upon the existence of a strong centralized state machine which offered protection against the restoration of the feudal practices of the ancien régime. In education this view found expression in the standardization of institutions, curriculum, assessment and teacher training (Derouet, Chapter 16, this volume). The centralization of education was not, of course, immediately complete. It needed a century to reach maturity. In the early part of the nineteenth century local notables offered their services in a number of civic duties including the inspection of primary schools. They were in effect ‘volunteer bureaucrats’ (Gemie 1992). In addition to formal schooling under the state umbrella, there were a number of other systems of education including the schools for blind and deaf children and the Catholic schools. All kinds of people set themselves up as teachers without any qualifications and there appeared to be little expectation that they should apply for authorization from the local notables’ committees which were well known for their inefficiency (ibid.). So the French education system, renowned for its centralization and bureaucracy, in fact developed in a fairly piecemeal fashion with few controls in the early stages. Historically special education in France did not develop as part of a statecontrolled system (Galton and Blyth 1989), and this accounts in part for the uneven and varied character of its development. Provision for disabled children and those with learning difficulties developed separately but alongside the national system of education, but there were unplanned instances when ‘special’ and ‘ordinary’ became mixed. For example, the local village school in the early part of the twentieth century was probably more ‘inclusive’ than village schools are today. The village school was there to serve the local community and any child who could get to school and sit on a bench could join. Religious establishments for the deaf and the blind were not always accessible, and the village schoolroom reflected the diversity of the local population. In

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larger schools especially, children with learning difficulties or disabilities were easily absorbed and became invisible in the rows of pupils of varying ages who made up classes of sixty or more. The enfants idiots remained at home or were interned in hospitals. Some children went to residential institutions run by the Church. Children with no families resided in orphanages where they received a basic education. Yet, in many ways, elementary schooling was more inclusive then than it is today. RECENT LEGISLATION During the period 1950–70 a large network of médico-éducatifs establishments for children regarded as retardé (backward) were set up as a result of parental pressure groups and on the initiative of educational associations and local municipalities. In the 1960s the demand grew for the development of strategies to prevent disabilities and learning difficulties, along with the demand for greater social and educational integration of des handicapées. This reflected the social climate of the time in which greater equality and justice and a break with the rigid hierarchical structures in society were demanded. In June 1975 ‘the law of orientation in support of handicapped people’ was passed which laid the foundations for greater participation in all aspects of ordinary community life. Although this law confirmed the right of all children and young people to an education which would meet their individual needs, it did not take concrete steps towards dismantling the complex network of special schools and other institutions for a large number of children and young people with disabilities or learning difficulties. The Jospin law of 1989 addressed many issues relating to education. An important part of this law affirmed the intention of making the education system and progress within it more accessible to a greater number of children and young people. But unlike the 1981 Act in Britain, the loi Jospin did not focus on children and young people with disabilities and difficulties in learning but on all pupils. The many changes which are planned to take place are being introduced gradually through a series of government circulars and it will take a number of years for them all to be fully implemented. CATEGORIZATION, SYSTEMS AND CHANGE There is not one system of special education in France but many systems, which provide a range of settings, treatments and learning opportunities according to the category of disability or perceived degree of learning difficulty. These systems are controlled by different government departments and voluntary bodies. This lack of homogeneity, shared

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history and centralized planning works against the development of one coherent education system which might meet the needs of all children and young people. It is not only structural differences which divide sectors but also differences in ethos and practice. Hospitals and institutions whose primary role is to provide treatments and care do not have the same view of the needs of their patients as schools do of their pupils. An estimated 1.38 percent of the total school-age population are educated in establishments provided by the Ministry of Social Security, although the teachers employed in those establishments are employed by the Ministry of Education. Many of these establishments are not called ‘schools’ but have some other name such as external médico-professionnel (loose translation might be ‘non-residential medical/vocational training centre’). This kind of establishment is usually funded by the Ministry of Social Security and will offer a certain amount of formal ‘academic’ teaching and some training in basic vocational skills. There is no obligation to follow a prescribed curriculum or allocate a specified number of hours to lessons. This is how one directrice described the organization of students and the curriculum in her establishment: In this school we can plan our time as we like, although we do draw on national programmes of study which are used in ordinary schools. There are forty-nine children here, aged between 14 and 20 years, and they are divided into five sets according to attainment and ability. They spend half the day in lessons and half receiving training in workshops or in recreational activities. The curriculum for these young people is almost entirely focused on developing ‘basic skills’ in reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic and occupies approximately twelve hours a week. The vocational programme offers four areas of training: gardening, housecraft, building maintenance and crafts. In addition, students have opportunities for sport, creative activities and field trips, and although they have no contact with local schools, they participate in local youth groups and clubs. There are close links with local firms, where students are frequently placed on work experience. All these young people have been assessed as having learning difficulties but some have additional physical or psychological problems. There are many different types of special establishment in France and this variety reflects the many categories of designated ‘handicap’. The following section will look briefly at how children find their way into different educational settings.

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ASSESSMENT PROCEDURES Early identification Nearly all children aged 3–5 and 36 per cent of two-year-olds in France attend a nursery school, and most of these are government-funded and run. The main objectives of nursery education are the early prevention and identification of learning difficulties, developmental delay and handicaps, compensation for cultural disadvantage and the equalization of educational opportunity (Goutard 1993). Although there are some segregated nurseries and centres for children with disabilities, it is government policy for all children to attend ordinary nurseries if possible. During the period of nursery education children are observed and monitored, and children who have disabilities or are expected to experience difficulties in learning at school are identified. In addition to nursery teachers and support assistants, psychologists and teachers with specialist training work in nursery as well as primary schools to identify, assess and make recommendations for future provision for children who have disabilities or who experience difficulties in learning. The nursery phase of education in France thus plays an important part in monitoring, assessing and categorizing children before they start compulsory schooling. This means that many children never reach the reception class of their local primary school. District Commissions District Commissions are responsible for co-ordinating assessment of children who are experiencing difficulties at any stage in their education and for making recommendations concerning intervention and provision. Nurseries and schools have a responsibility to inform parents if their child is experiencing difficulties and always before their file is sent to the District Commission. The Commission is responsible for drawing up a document called an ‘evaluation’ which outlines recommendations concerning the child’s future provision. This may include extra support at school or the transfer to a special unit or establishment, not necessarily controlled by the Ministry of Education. Parents are not obliged to accept the recommendation of the Commission and may insist that their child attends an ordinary school provided that the school is satisfied that this will not present a potential danger to themselves or other pupils. In practice, parents usually accept the recommendations of the Commission. MEETING NEEDS IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS Since September 1991 a range of innovations have been introduced in primary schools, although the speed and character of implementation

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varies according to the resources and the commitment to them of headteachers and governing bodies. An important change is the new emphasis on responding to the needs of the individual child and the recognition that children learn at different rhythms and in different ways. In the past, pupils who did not reach a particular level by the end of the school year had to repeat a year and it was not uncommon for children to spend two or more years in the same class. The system of redoublement has been changed and primary and nursery education has been divided into cycles of three years, often with the same teacher keeping a class for the complete cycle. The first cycle spreads across the last two years of l’école maternelle and the first year of primary school, ensuring continuity. It is also possible for children to repeat a year at the maternelle if it is thought to be of benefit to the child. Although each cycle is planned to spread over three years, a cycle can last from between two and four years depending upon the ‘rhythm’ of the individual child. The shortening or lengthening can only take place once during the primary stage of a child’s education (Le Monde de l’Education September 1991:22–23). In the past, children who were experiencing difficulties in learning in primary schools were often taught in a separate class by a teacher who had received a specialist training. Since the 1989 law, children in reception classes are being supported in classrooms by these specialist teachers, who work collaboratively with the class teacher in preparing and teaching the lesson. With the recent emphasis on reducing segregation in primary schools, there are plans to phase out segregated classes. Special help networks Special help networks (réseaux d’aide spécialisée, known as RAS) are usually based in one primary school in an area but serve a group of primary and nursery schools. These networks are made up of special teachers, rééducateurs, specializing in psycho-pedagogy or psychomotricity, and an educational psychologist. This group meets regularly to discuss progress and intervention relating to individual pupils and works closely with class teachers and heads of schools. Parents and other professionals, such as speech therapists and social workers, are not invited to these meetings, although a member of the network may liaise with them. Difficulties and intervention strategies are identified after observation of the pupils and discussion with the class teacher, and a member of the network with an appropriate specialism will take responsibility for working with the pupil on a weekly basis, usually in one-to-one withdrawal sessions.

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CLASSES FOR EDUCATIONAL INTEGRATION: THE ‘CLIS’ The Jospin law also introduced ‘classes for educational integration’ (CLIS), which are special classes attached to ordinary schools for pupils with physical disabilities, auditory or visual difficulties, or—in some cases — psychological difficulties. The CLIS are not for pupils regarded as having serious difficulties in learning. One criterion for admission to such a class is that the pupil should be able to benefit from the experience of ordinary school life. Although these classes are for ‘educational integration’, pupils who belong to them are taught separately for much of the time by teachers who are specialized in a particular disability. There is little evidence yet of a move towards the reorganization of schools and the reform of the curriculum so that students with disabilities can be included in ordinary classes as a matter of course. SPECIALIST TEACHERS In France teachers who work with pupils with disabilities or difficulties in learning are called professeurs spécialisés (specialist teachers). In order to work in any branch of special education, they must be fully qualified teachers with two years of experience in ordinary class teaching and have followed a one-year full-time course in a particular branch of disability. Teachers are specially trained in a particular area such as physical disability, autism, hearing impairment, visual impairment, emotional and behavioural difficulties, etc. These strict demarcations in training tend to sustain the stratification in provision for different groups of pupils and may well work against inclusive education in the future. CONCLUSION There has been a growing determination to provide a more inclusive system of education at the primary level in France. There is evidence of this in recent legislation and attempts to introduce structural changes and new teaching techniques in primary schools. These changes will require teachers to adopt a more differentiated approach to their teaching and to place greater emphasis on the needs of the individual child. Research suggests that primary teachers in France see their goal as bringing all children up to a specified level of achievement, rather than meeting the individual needs of children for their social, personal and intellectual development (Broadfoot and Osborn 1991). In addition, teachers in France are not used to collaborative teaching. There is also evidence that teachers are reluctant to introduce new approaches to teaching. Research carried out at the University of Toulouse-le-Mirail suggested that reception class teachers were strongly resistant to adopting modern methods of teaching children to read through the use of story books, ‘book corners’, etc., preferring

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traditional methods such as learning, lists of letter sounds, copying from the board etc. (Garin 1993). This conservatism could delay the implementation of change at grassroot level. While there is a clear and unchallenged commitment by recent governments to promote the integration of a greater number of young people into ordinary educational settings, the uneven and separate development of different structures has created a particularly complex system. While some of these structures remain outside the control of the Ministry of Education it will be difficult to bring about changes which will lead to greater and more equal participation in education for all. REFERENCES Broadfoot, P. and Osborn, M. (1991) ‘French lessons: comparative perspectives on what it means to be a teacher’, Comparative Education: Lessons of crossnational comparisons in education. Vol 1, Derouet, J-L. (1991) ‘Lower secondary education in France: from uniformity to institutional autonomy’, European Journal of Education 26(2).; See Chapter 16, this volume. Foucault, M. (1989) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge. Galton, M. and Blyth, A. (1989) Handbook of Primary Education in Europe, Exeter: David Fulton. Garin, C. (1993) ‘Le ba ba des maîtres’, Le Monde 4.2.93. Gemie, S. (1992) ‘What is a school? Defining and controlling primary schooling in early nineteenth century France’, History of Education 21(2). Goutard, M. (1993) ‘Preschool education in France’, in T.David Education Provision for our Youngest Children, European Perspectives, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Le Monde de l’Education, September 1991, pp. 22–23.

20 From the schoolteacher to the expert The IUFM and the evolution of training institutions Raymond Bourdoncle

Many European countries long experienced, as some still do, a division of teacher training between teacher training colleges and universities. This division reflected the compartmentalization of the school system into two competing 1 and hostile 2 networks, primary and secondary education. Gradually, in some countries, these networks have been brought together and made complementary—France is now moving into this phase of development: between October 1990 and October 1991 all teacher training systems, primary and secondary, will be assimilated in ‘Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres’ (IUFMs). This long-standing division was based upon modes of professional socialization and very different teaching institutions for primary and secondary school teachers. For the former (the instituteur), training was moral as well as intellectual and was aimed at turning the schoolteacher into an educator of the people. Secondary teachers (professeurs) were expected to become people of culture by the study in depth of a discipline. The creation of IUFMs establishes modes of socialization which express a completely different concept of the teacher, as a professional expert in transmitting knowledge, whether he/she teaches at a primary or secondary level. But historic conceptions persist because of their ancient roots, and established corporate support. What difficulties will arise from the confrontation in the same training premises of the advocates of these differing conceptions? Will France experience that evolution towards more rationality which Weber3 predicted and that Bell4 observed in English teacher training institutions? Will there be a transition from the dual traditions of a ‘charismatic’ (essentially moral and emotional) education and of the induction into a cultured élite towards a unified ‘professional’ and utilitarian education, aiming at a rational link between purposes and means through an efficient use of the available scientific knowledge? To start answering these questions for the future, I intend to proceed in three stages. First the charismatic model of teacher training colleges5 will

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be described, then the cultured model of secondary schoolteachers.6 These two former models have indeed evolved in recent years: a development which both reveals their resistance and at the same time contributes to it. But I shall be less concerned here with their historical vicissitudes than with what they represented at the time of their greatest fame—then I shall attempt to bring out the different aspects of the model of the professional expert teacher. To do so, I shall not only use the Bancel report7, which is at the moment the most explicit document about the future IUFM, but also works coming from countries whose teacher training has been universitybased for a long time. THE CHARISMATIC MODEL AND PRIMARY TEACHER TRAINING For Weber, society is essentially a place of conflicts between groups competing for the conquest of wealth, social recognition and power. According to its forms, education is an asset in some of these struggles. Practical and vocational education, which was most of the time given through a charismatic relationship between the master or journeyman and the apprentice, furnishes weapons for the economic fight. The education of the cultured person, which transmits the distinctive culture of superior groups, favours social recognition. The meritocratic education—which multiplies exams certifying, at each stage of the progression, the acquired skills—guarantees to those who pass the final stages an expertise and a power perceived as legitimate. The charismatic education is less oriented towards content than towards the incorporated example of mastery represented by the tutor or training master. This type of very old, craft transmission not only permits, through the imitation of the master, the acquisition of technical gestures and practical knowledge, but also favours, through identification, the support of the specific values of the professional environment. In teacher training, this model gives greater importance to direct experiment than to research or conceptual reflection. It favours a syncretic education, making little distinction between theory, practice and moral values, the whole being embodied in the unit, difficult to divide, of a person, the training master. Different realizations of this model could be found in several countries, particularly in the United States, until the 1930s with ‘Normal Schools’, private or state8 in England with training colleges until 1963,9 and in Quebec with teacher training colleges and ‘scholastic colleges’ before the reform inspired by the Parent report of 196510. However, one of the most coherent, lasting and perhaps original forms of this charismatic model is to be found in France, in secular, republican Ecoles Normales, at their greatest fame between 1880 and 1920. None the less, this model has survived till now, adapting itself more or less successfully until 1969 and collapsing since then, its death being forecast for 1991, with the end of

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teacher training colleges. I will study this model at the time of its greatest strength, between 1880 and 1920. Established in the county town of a département, where they were often geographically distant from city centres, socially cut off from local life by their system of enclosed space and intellectually separated from universities, teacher training colleges received fairly small classes of students in spite of their imposing appearance. The fact that they were scattered all over the country favoured local recruiting among children of rural origin to whom they offered the opportunity of an important social and intellectual promotion and a stable job not far from their native town. They recruited 16-year-old young people to give them a triple intellectual, professional and moral training. The teacher training college was first an educational establishment like any other, which, recruiting young people with a brevet élémentaire, prepared them for the brevet supérieur. But it was also a vocational training establishment especially teaching subjects directly connected with the teaching profession: psychology, the moral code and pedagogy, but also writing and drawing, singing and music, agriculture and horticulture for boys, and home economics and sewing for girls. At different periods, these subjects (1905 curriculum), or their substitutes before and after, were taught either concurrently with the general subjects of the brevet supérieur (from 1881 to 1905 and again from 1920 to 1940) or consecutively (from 1905 to 1920 and after the war). Whatever these variations, the difference between teacher training colleges and the other establishments is clear and, as a training college principal pointed out in about 1890, it is ‘contained wholly in the official title “student-master”. The young people accepted in teacher training colleges are students for the time being, they will soon become masters. After giving them an education like any other educational institution, the colleges are therefore to give them the special education which will make them good schoolteachers’.11 In this conjunction of two types of training, in this wish for a global training, is to be found one of the distinctive features of the charismatic model. The moral purpose of the training is another important characteristic of the charismatic model. ‘Education is valuable only if it aims at and achieves moral ends’, Compayré declared in his course ‘written for teachers and students of our teacher training colleges’ and precisely entitled ‘Intellectual and Moral Education’.12 Because if the state, established by Jules Ferry as the educator of the people, multiplied and, with the help of regional councils, financed teacher training colleges, it is ‘not only in order that they might dispense to the people, through the student-masters they prepared, a certain basis of factual information’, but ‘that they might spread also habits of mind, ways of thinking, judging, feeling, which play a large part in the training of the character and intelligence of a large majority of the nation’. 13 To become, in the name of the State, the educators of the people, student-masters had to acquire personally the

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desirable qualities and even show themselves as models. Teacher training colleges prepared them for this role in two ways, indirectly, through the organization of institutional life, and directly, through a specific teaching from the principal. Life at teacher training colleges was based on the boarding system, reinforced by the enclosure system, a strict limitation of contacts with families and the outside world, and on the quasi-monastic rule of conduct which had been borrowed in 1833 by teacher training colleges under the law of Guizot from the novitiates of teaching congregations and which, in 1881, ‘has not disappeared yet; and the more simplified and reduced to its essential elements this rule has been, the more imperious and saved for all it has become. It was made, according to official instructions, for sensible young people, likely to find their personal way, for a basically honest and hard-working élite…for students all familiar for a long time with the particularly severe requirements of the teaching profession’.14 Rule and enclosure suggested a state seminary, according to Grillois’s expression as a title of his book of memories.15 And even when during short outings, the student-master thought he could escape the rule and his situation, his uniform, the thouine which he wore until 1912, prevented such an escape, because, as a former schoolmaster declared, ‘it pointed us out, it engaged us, like the tunic of the soldier or the cassock of the seminarist; we felt we belonged to a corps, to an order’.16 The purpose of this secluded regularity and of the uniform was, as in similar religious or military institutions, to transform in their very souls the young people who joined it, to impart a new and manifest identity to them. That was the meaning of Pécaut’s exhortation: ‘Apply yourselves; to remaking, and not only, as our books too readily say, to improving yourselves: for which one among us is not in many respects badly made?’ 17 A new being had to be created in several respects: in his conceptions, guided by reason and science, in the faculties of memory, judgement, reasoning and intelligence that he had learnt to develop in himself so as to be able to develop them in children; finally in his passions which the teacher training college discipline, the acquisition of working habits and a regular and morally exacting way of life will have taught him to master. It was a complete education, of the whole being, given by a complete institution, like the church, the army or the mental hospital,18 which takes total care of its ‘clients’, malleable young people or adults with a weak personality, to impart a new identity and a new status to them. This is achieved by the coherent and powerful socialization permitted by the relatively controlled interactions in an enclosed space. Indeed, human interactions, with their emotional forces (fellow feeling, attachment, identification…) and their particular forms (friendship with other student-masters, guidance by training masters, academic relationships with teachers and almost spiritual advising by the director)

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are, with the rule and enclosure system, among the most efficient means of professional socialization. The relationships with the director of a teacher training college are probably the most influential. He is the ‘real superior of the house’, according to Pécaut, who is not afraid of religious allusions and makes explicit the hierarchical as well as the moral and spiritual nature of this superiority: ‘A superiority by law, undoubtedly, but without personal superiority, slight and temporary. Real superiority, that which in the end makes everyone submit, is a superiority of reason, character and the heart’.19 Setting the trainer’s authority in his capacity to embody the qualities of order, especially moral, that one wants to transmit to the would-be master, rather than in his formal qualifications (degrees) or hierarchical position, is one of the distinctive features of a charismatic type of training. The success of such a training is achieved less by the measured acquisition of a certain number of subjects than by the expression in one’s behaviour of ways of being and doing, of the required values and qualities. But the conversion that is sought, the transformation of the professional and social choice into a vocation engaging the whole personality and expressing it, cannot be achieved according to a simply rational process of transmission. Deep motivational forces have to be mobilized, and this is achieved by the strong personal relationship with an exemplary personality like that of the director and teachers. Besides, directors had powerful personal means of influence, particularly with three of their specific activities detailed by Laprévote.20 First, living on the premises, he can observe and work, intervening authoritatively in difficult cases through a summons to his office to advise, sermonize, be a real spiritual adviser. Then, he conducts and concludes with a ‘homily’ collective meetings of meditation and reflection on local or general topics that are examined in the light of the state doctrine. Finally, he is ‘in charge of a part of the teaching, but the most elevated part, the one which exerts the deepest influence on students, that is pedagogy, psychology and moral doctrine. As a superior of the college, the director is also a father, in the same sense, by the way, that religious communities gave to these two words. This refers to a benevolent authority but also implies an essential mechanism in individual (re)construction, identification, as Laprévote underlines: ‘As a chief project manager of training [the director] appears as a model of identification and, if he is fatherly, it is in the sense that, in his new birth, the teacher in training identifies with him, with the role he plays and the values he embodies’.21 And that is how, by identifying with him and imitating him, the training teacher will become, like him, more than a teacher, a master, whose authority is accepted because he has a charisma, an exemplary radiance.

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THE CULTURED PERSON MODEL AND THE TRAINING OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS The cultured person’s education reflects the values of an élite whose way of life and culture is imitated and according to which the training is established. For the secondary school teachers (the professeurs) who have attended a university, university professors represent the epitome of the cultured person. They share with university professors the notion that the intense and prolonged cultivation of a university field of studies constitutes in itself a deeply educational and satisfying experience. University professors represent for many of them the reference group to which they hope one day to belong. Thus, identifying themselves with this socially superior group, they seek in the same way to set themselves apart from primary school teachers whom they consider intellectually and socially inferior. As we have seen, teacher training colleges gave a general as well as professional training. They endowed the teacher with a limited but sound general knowledge, professional ethics and equipment in the form of a set of teaching methods, recipes and techniques, which were to enable him or her to cope with life in an isolated village and to master little by little the class entrusted to him or her. Actually, as Prost points out, the first organized attempts to give urban poor children a basic knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic and above all religion (such as Damia’s in Lyon in 1667; J.B. de la Jalle’s in Reims in 1681 and in Paris in 1687) assigned this task to the Petits Frères des Pauvres, a religious order, who were trained in ‘masters’ seminaries. Moreover, throughout the nineteenth century, no primary education, including monitorial teaching with pupils helping the master, and ‘shelters’, the ancestors of nursery schools, was conceived without its training course. As is emphasized by Prost: ‘Here is an age-old obvious fact: even in charity schools or at the humblest level of ‘shelters’, you don’t just improvise a primary school teacher’. But he adds immediately: ‘By contrast with primary education, secondary education neglects any sort of training’. Before 1880, the Faculties of Letters and Science had a primarily general role and in no way trained teachers. Only the Ecole Normale Supérieure did that, and for a restricted number of selected students. The rest, by far more numerous since they represented 90 per cent of the secondary schools staff, learned and trained themselves on the job by teaching. As to the normaliens, their training w as essentially academic. The few pedagogic elements which successive ministers tried to introduce during the nineteenth century were all soon abandoned: a 6- to 8- weeks’ practical training in 1832, a chair of pedagogy in 1847, a paper exam for the agrégation in 1821 and then, in 1852, a third year devoted to the preparation for the teaching profession and not the agrégation. At the end of the century, the majority of teachers who answered a parliamentary survey in 1899 remained hostile to professional training, as

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has been shown by Isambert-Jamati. ‘A course in education? A practical training? They are no use in secondary education’, said a senior lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure while the chief education officer of Aix reveals the social reasons: ‘The student teachers of the teacher training colleges get regular teaching on education, and the primary school annexed to the college constitutes a field of experience for them. This practical training couldn’t take place in lycées, for the parents wouldn’t agree to place their children in classes where beginners would try their hand’. In other words, as Isambert-Jamati observed, the parents of poor state school children who don’t pay have no say in the matter, whereas the parents of the lycée pupils, who pay, could send them to another school. As to the interest of courses in education, an even greater number of teachers seem to doubt it. What makes a good teacher lies in ‘inborn qualities’ and cannot be acquired through lessons. This talent is expressed by the teacher’s creativity in his/her classroom but this requires independence. Talent, creativity and independence would all be killed if teachers were compelled to apply the established principles and the ready-made recipes of a course in education.22 Why does this huge difference in attitude as regards training between primary and secondary education exist in France as well as in England (according to Ford)? Why this will for differentiation which Espimas expressed in the same survey: ‘We need very different primary and secondary school teachers to suit all classes of society’? As we may infer from the latter words, it is due to the very different but complementary social functions which were given to primary schools and lycées in France and to their British equivalents, as is shown by the British minister of education R.Lowe, who declared plainly in 1867: In my opinion, it is in no way the state’s duty to prescribe what everyone must learn, except for the Poor for whom time is so limited that they should only be taught a few basic subjects if some sort of result is to be obtained. The lower classes must be educated so that their members might carry out the duties which are incumbent upon them. They should also be taught to appreciate the more cultured people when they meet them, and to bow to their opinions. Moreover, the higher classes should be educated in a very different way so that their members might offer the lower classes the right to receive an education of a superior type, to whom if the case arises, they should yield and to whose opinions they should bow. Here is a perfect illustration of the educated man who used distinction as a sign of membership of an acceptability to certain social groups, as Collins points out in the tradition of Weber. On the one hand, some people had a liberal education which gave them the opportunity to increase their knowledge of their favourite subjects close to cultured minds, dilettante

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gentlemen or brilliant students who had themselves deepened their knowledge of a subject of their choice at university. No need for them of any knowledge of education, the mere example of their social or intellectual mastery was enough for them to educate the young minds who were confided to them as private tutors or teachers by upper-class families. On the other hand, there was an elementary education limited not only by time but also ‘by the dangers which would inevitably be involved by educating the working class too well’. Young people of modest origin and with a low cultural and intellectual level, hardly superior to that of their pupils, could undertake this work, provided that they agreed to lead an exemplary life and to become ‘missionaries for the poor’: ‘The job was open to the children of any skilled or unskilled workers provided that they renounced a higher salary and submitted to a fairly strict moral rule from the age of twelve till the age of twenty’. The university-educated teachers could not be attracted by such a profession: they had too much knowledge, too much independence and probably lacked these domestic virtues of obedience, temperance and hard work, which were necessary to discipline the common people. THE PROFESSIONAL MODEL AND THE ‘UNIFIED’ TEACHING PROFESSION This model privileges instrumental rationality, based on coherence between the means and the ends. According to Weber, this impersonal and emotionally neutral rationality is spreading in modern societies in the form of a bureaucratic rationalization which ‘demythifies action by clarifying the set of rules and procedures which constitute in a demonstrable way the most appropriate means to reach specified ends’. A good illustration of this process is management by objectives, whether in education or in business. As far as teacher training is concerned, once the end is defined, and in this model it can only be the teacher’s efficiency, the means can be inferred. That is to say, the (teacher’s knowledge and behaviour will have to be shown to be) implemented in the classroom to be effective. In teacher training programmes, this leads to an emphasis on all the knowledge and skills which can directly be applied in class, and to a neglect of all the aspects of the educational theory and of subject knowledge in depth which do not appear clearly to contribute to the efficacity of practice. Thus, we can see that this model is in effect opposed to the former model of the cultured man which supposed that the teachable professional knowledge did not exist and that subject matter knowledge was of fundamental importance. In France, the recent Bancel report follows a similar process of rationalization. Its very first line sets as the ‘purpose of a real training: making the future teachers acquire a sound academic knowledge in the places where this knowledge is elaborated, and the competencies which

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correspond fully to the practical activities they will have to fulfil in the various schools where they will be appointed’. The first aspect of this objective is not the concern of the new Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres and indeed it is not dealt with in the report. Such an omission indicates a narrow definition of the place of academic learning in professional training. The second aspect lays the stress on the practical orientation of the seven desired competencies. These are mainly centred on the management of learning situations, and, therefore, on the transmission of knowledge rather than on the knowledge itself. However, they bring into play three roles of knowledge, related to subject matter identity, to the management of learning skills, and finally to the educational system. All these competencies and knowledge ‘define the content of a total professionally’ which serves for the former instituteur now to become a ‘school professeur’ as well as for junior, senior high school or vocational school teachers. This is made possible because the competencies and knowledge are mainly oriented towards the management of learning situations and centred on the pupils, the classroom, the school and the knowledge of the educational system—all things favourable to a common training for all teachers, which, of course, does not exclude a specific teaching of the different subjects. In the United States, where the difference between primary and secondary school teachers has long been whittled away, the rationalization of training took place in the late 1950s with Competency-Based Teacher Education. Its aim was to teach measurable and precise knowledge and skills, identified by research as being effective. In order to reach this aim, the students had to be given pragmatic and clearly defined assignments and complete the programme which was composed of the list of precise competencies to be organized and explicit evaluation criteria precisely defining the level of mastery to be reached. However, the narrow learning of efficient behaviours did not ensure the teachers’ intellectual mastering of their procedures and the CBTE has been reproached with not favouring the professionalization of teachers. In fact, the professionalization of the teacher’s job is one of the essential aspects of the professional model and one of the major objectives of the reforms it involves. It is at the centre of the two recent American reports on the teachers of the future. This word appears many times in the Bancel report with, however, the sometimes different meaning of the constitution and improvement of individual professional mastery. In France, this word is usually understood in its individual dimension. In Anglo-Saxon countries, it has a more collective scope and indicates the general improvement of the status of an activity which can obtain from the state a monopoly of practice and an autonomy of organization provided it is guided by the clients’ well-being and it exercises an ethical control on its members; this recognition is linked to a process of rationalization and specialization which makes it non-controllable by its clients but more

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efficient and therefore better acknowledged. Other activities have known a similar evolution, medicine and law being the most cited examples. The nineteenth century’s medical progress, particularly Pasteur’s medicine, have made it possible to improve the efficiency of medical intervention and at the same time to obtain public recognition as well as a higher income, a more consistent monopoly of medical care and a better control of medical training and the candidates for the job. By relying on the example of medicine and various other activities, a few functionalist authors saw professionalization as a practically inevitable process of gradual rationalization of activities, resulting in ‘everyone’s professionalization’, according to the title of an article by Wilenski. This made it possible to hope teachers themselves might reach this envied position. Thus, Huberman considers the American teacher as a clinician of learning methods who builds up the most favourable situation for each child by using his knowledge of the psychological laws of learning. This implies that the teacher has learnt in a university to master these general laws and to adapt them to invariably individual cases. He is no longer a badly trained civil servant subject to controlled programmes and schedules but a better qualified and more autonomous professional. Such a process of professionalization, which is closer to useful thinking than to reality, implies a university training for two reasons: professional knowledge must first be deepened and rationalized by research before being taught to the future members of the profession. Here are two functions of the university. However, the role of universities in professional studies must go hand-in-hand with the professionalization of university studies. Otherwise, there results a mere and useless sterile academization of training, as is shown by what happened in England in 1970s. Teaching student teachers philosophy, sociology, psychology and history of education certainly aroused a greater interest for these disciplines, allowed the creation of numerous posts in universities and favoured a remarkable renewal of problematics. But they did not help student teachers learn their future job better and were soon questioned. Today’s tendency is to train student teachers as close as possible to the real conditions of the job and to use trainers who have a first-hand knowledge and practice of the job, instead of university professors who do not practise it and whose knowledge of it is purely theoretical. Such an opportunity is offered in medical schools thanks to teaching hospitals. In this context, medicine professors who visit their patients are at the same time physicians who diagnose and prescribe treatment, researchers who collect data through observation, and ‘teachers’ who show the students how to conduct a medical examination and who control their first attempts. Why not use a similar organization in teacher training? In the same way as there are ‘teaching hospitals’, why not create ‘teaching schools’, where university professors and teacher-trainers might be in

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charge of a part-time teaching of children as well as undertaking research in education and training student teachers? This is what Lanier is now setting up in Michigan (USA) and what Hargreaves suggests for England. Sociologists tend to pose as specialists in the meaning of history, and thus run the risk of often being contradicted by its sovereign course. Let us yield to this tendency, ignore this risk and, following Weber, let us conclude this survey of more than a century of the history of teacher training by assenting that here, as elsewhere, a process of rationalization is at work. Owing to the evolution of secondary education, whose functions are no longer distinctive and segregative, victorious rationalization would drive us from two modes of socialization, based on morals or on social and cultural choices, to one mode based on utilitarian and technical rationality as well as on science. Thus, in teacher training as in the rest of social life, would emerge that demystification of the world which Weber foretold. We would lose both the very strong attachment fostered by the charismatic schoolmaster and the bliss of sharing the knowledge of an élite, and become subject to an emotionally neutral and gloomily bureaucratic socialization. However, since Weber, rationality has spread beyond these forecasts and has taken in the emotional dimension. It is now possible to implement rational modes of socialization which create strong moral attachments on the enchanting delightful sense of participating in an élite culture. The numerous private donations offered to American universities show that people can experience for them the same feeling of attachment as they may experience for a person who made them what they are, when what they are satisfies them. Creating such attachments, which favours a deep professional involvement, is one of the major challenges for the IUFM. NOTES 1 2 3 4 5

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Prost A. (1981) Histoire générale de l’enseignement et de l’éducation en France. T.IV: L’école et la famille dans une société en mutation. Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France. Isambert-Jamati V. (1985) ‘Les instituteurs, ces “incapables prétentieux”’ Revue française de pédagogie, 1985, 73, pp. 57–65. Weber M. (1948) From Max Weber, Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bell A. (1981) ‘Structure, knowledge and social relationships in teacher education’. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2, 1, pp. 3–23. Nous nous appuierons pour cela sur la thèse de G.Laprévote (1984) Splendeurs et misères de la formation des maîtres. Les écoles normales primaires en France, 1879–1979. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon; et sur les travaux de J.Vial Les Instituteurs. Paris: Delarge, 1980 et ‘Passé et présent de la formation des maîtres’, in M.Deblessé and G.Mialaret (1978) Traité des sciences pédagogiques. Tome 7: Fonction et formation des enseignants. Paris: PUF. Nous aurons recours non seulement aux histoires générales d’A.Prost (1968) L’enseignement en France, 1800–1967. Paris, Colin; (1981) op. cit.; and (1982) ‘Note sur l’histoire de la formation des enseignants en France’, in de

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Peretti La formation des personnels de l’Education Nationale. Paris: Documentation Française, pp. 240–245, mais aussi aux travaux de V.IsambertJamati. ‘La formation pédagogique des professeurs à la fin du XIXe siècle’, Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, 2, pp. 261–293 et avec S.Henriquez (1983). ‘Le rôle des universités dans la formation des enseignants en France’, European Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 6, 3 pp. 271–279. Et pour une description détaillée de la situation récente. Leselbaum N. (dir.) (1987) La formation des enseignants du second degré dans les centres pédagogiques régionaux. Paris: INRP. Bancel D. (dir.) (1989) Créer une nouvelle dynamique de la formation des maîtres. Paris: Ministère de l’Education Nationale. Woodring P. (1975) ‘The development of teacher education’, RYANK Teacher Education. The 74th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: University Chicago Press, pp. 1–24. Bell (1981) op. cit. See also Dent H.C. (1977) The Training of Teachers in England and Wales 1800–1975. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Conseil Supérieur de l’Education (1989) Rapport annuel 1987–88 sur l’état de l’éducation. Le rapport Parent vingt-cinq ans après. Quebec: Publications du Quebec. See also Jolois J.J. and Piquette R. (1988) La formation des maîtres et la révolution tranquille. Montréal: UQUAM. Chauvin L. (undated) L’éducation de l’instituteur. Paris: Alcide Picard et Kaan. quoted by G.Laprévote (1984) Splendeurs et misères de la formation des maîtres. Les écoles normales primaires en France, 1879–1979. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Compayré G. (1906) L’éducation intellectuelle et morale Paris: P.Delaplane, p. 194. Pécaut F. (1879) Etudes au jour le jour sur l’éducation nationale. Paris: Hachette, p. 132. Chauvin L. op. cit. p. 165. Grillois J. (1923) Le séminaire laïque. Paris: Ed. Fallois. Ozouf J. (1967) Nous les maîtres d’école. Autobiographies d’instituteurs de la Belle Epoque. Paris: Juillard, p. 91–92. Pécaut F. (1897) L’éducation publique et la vie nationale. Paris: Hachette, p. 280. Goffman E. (1968) Asiles: Etude sur la condition sociale des malades mentaux. Paris: Ed. de Minuit. Pécaut F. (1897) op. cit., pp. 372–373. Laprévote G. (1984) op. cit. pp. 69–73. Laprévote G. (1984) op. cit. p. 70. On trouvera, pour 2 périodes historiques différentes, de nombreux exemples de ces jugements négatifs des professeurs envers les instituteurs dans IsambertJamati (1985) — ‘Les instituteurs, ces “incapables prétentieux”’. Revue française de pédagogie, 73, pp. 57–65.

Part V Values

Introduction

An education system needs to justify itself constantly by reference to the values which underpin a nation’s culture. In a democracy it is expected to transmit a range of intellectual, aesthetic and moral values which permeate the curriculum and approaches to teaching and learning. These will reveal the answer to such questions as what knowledge a society considers worthwhile, its appreciation of truth and beauty, how it rates the difference between good and evil, its sense of the individual. What makes France distinctive is that the education system is so clearly defined as the crucible of national identity and the ladder of individual opportunity. There is in France a special emphasis on values defined as ‘Republican’, the basic principles of equality and secularity, fruits of the nineteenth century victory over the monarchy and the Church. It is part of the school’s mission to inculcate these values, part of the State’s to guarantee that they are upheld nationally. In societies forced to come to terms with change, values are always challenged. The 1980s provide the proof. French society, like others, had to adapt to the aftermath of the petrol crisis. The Mitterrand victory in 1981 marked a turning point which was possibly more significant culturally than politically. In addition, the education system—though here France was not alone—had to digest changes referred to in earlier sections: the transformation of selective secondary education into a mass system, and the confirmation of the permanent presence of ethnic minority groups. Both called into question traditional educational values. Two issues stand out. One is the nature of learning. The other is the balance between the respect to be accorded to private beliefs and the role of the school as a public institution. Faced with the evidence that large numbers of pupils were not climbing the ladder of opportunity, major efforts were made in the early 1980s to think of more than simply trimming school programmes common to all schools which are widely criticized as encyclopaedic (Corbett 1990). Inspired by the British debate between G.H.Bantock and Raymond Williams and the ‘new sociology’ associated with the names of Basil Bernstein and M.F.D.Young, there was a strong intellectual move in France

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in favour of thinking about the whole context of the curriculum: programmes, pedagogy and the hidden curriculum (Forquin 1989). A number of initiatives followed, signalling the end of a phase of ‘cultural absolutism’ masterminded by the general inspectorate (Corbett 1990). From their base in the prestigious Collège de France, France’s most famous sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, working with the biologist François Gros, launched the seven principles for a curriculum which built on Bourdieu’s epoch-marking statement reprinted here. A curriculum should find a balance between different forms of excellence, be able to reconcile the universalisms inherent in scientific thought and the relativism taught through historical sciences. It should reflect the plurality of lifestyles and cultural traditions. Above all, if France believes in reducing the inequalities based on cultural inheritance, all pupils should be given ‘the technology’ of intellectual enquiry. This is controversial stuff for the reasons defined by J.-C.Forquin: ‘The tension between normative and relativist views has become one of the crucial issues in modern education’ (Forquin 1994). The attack on a notion of culture as defined by what a bourgeois élite knows—clearly verifiable empirically—has brought sociologists onto a terrain traditionally reserved to philosophers such as Alain Finkielkraut. Alain Finkielkraut can be seen as playing the same role as Bloom in the USA and Scruton in England—intellectuals who whilst not at the centre of policy-making provide antennae towards which policy debate can be directed, receiving widespread coverage in the media. More precisely, Finkielkraut, in the ironical extract printed here, is conforming to the model of the normative philosopher as described by Forquin. The virulence of the attack on the recognition of a multicultural society is characteristic. He is opposed to ‘the dizzy uncertainties of cultural fluidity over the fixed virtues of cultural rootedness’. But he feels himself— temporarily? —outmanoeuvred. ‘If you refuse to equate Beethoven and Bob Marley you belong to the party of the bastards and killjoys. Elitism is the enemy.’ If that sounds familiar, it is because normative values are typically also defended on the right. But as the historian Antoine Prost points out, parenthetically, what should be noted in France is that those who defend traditional values include a significant part of the left. The Trotskyist tendency in the teachers’ unions and the dogmatic Marxist/doctrinaire socialists among intellectuals who were formed by 1968 (this is code for J.C.Milner whose On Education, cited in many of the pieces which follow, was hugely influential) are firm believers in a single pattern and normative values. The line-up also includes, says Prost, ‘subject-based teachers of the older generation in the most prestigious lycées with the (unfounded) fear that standards were going down’. It is indeed the line of the major secondary teachers’ union, the SNES, long seen as under Communist influence.

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But as well as being an outstanding historian of education, Prost was long a doughty fighter via union activities for a non-Marxist left, and later educational adviser to M.Rocard when he was prime minister. He is a strong advocate of the view that standards have not fallen as the French education system has expanded, but equally that the French system needs renovation. In Chapter 23 he speculates on why there were no links— indeed the reverse—between those who wanted choice of school and those who wanted a differentiated pedagogy. Differentiated education is, however, essential in the name of equality of opportunity, says Philippe Meirieu, the best-known French defender of a science of didactics and a hugely successful publisher. ‘The [current] educational contract favours a few particularly well-suited pupils.’ Meirieu is equally concerned with equipping teachers to get the best out of their classes: ‘Teachers don’t need to be more knowledgeable. But they do need to be more intelligent.’ One reviewer in the prestigious Revue Française de Pédagogie calls him the equal of Dewey: ‘The teacher, the trainer and the educator find in Meirieu echoes of their own hopes and fears’ (Reboul 1992). Whatever the next institutional steps, the debate on its own makes it clear that the traditional French approach of a selective homogeneous system based on meritocratic aspirations and a shared concept of culture has diversified into one which has to recognize the very different expectations of many parents and pupils. In particular it has to recognize that there are now many in schools for whom the prime preoccupation is how to survive on the fringes of a poor urban society which is no longer structured by work, and which no longer respects the values imparted by the school. In addition, cynical administrations often fail to deliver to schools their promised support. Often, as Lemoine notes in his chapter, there is an enormous gap between what the ministry says and what happens at the chalkface. But what is distinctive about France is that the solutions focus not so much on the pupil but on a theory of knowledge as taking in savoir-faire as well as savoir, and how to adapt it to local conditions. Without knowledge there is no personal autonomy (Charlot et al. 1992). Without knowledge school failure follows as night follows day. There is a linked social phenomenon in these urban areas under stress. It is the presence of large numbers of children of non-European and nonChristian origin. In terms of values the conflicts are, however, specific. The non-racist school has to struggle to enable its pupils to rise above an ambient racism. But what has been particularly painful in France, so proud of its secular and integrative tradition, is having to face a Muslim demand for recognition of their cultural identity. This is famously epitomized by the demand that young girls be allowed to wear the Muslim scarf. As Beriss reveals, intellectuals initially reacted with unconcealed hostility to the scarf. It took the statesmanlike reaction of Lionel Jospin, minister at the time, including his preparedness to make himself unpopular

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with his party, to work through to a solution matching a more flexible practice but still clearly based on principles universally recognized, those of the French constitution and those of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. One can see that it was a repeat of his work for the Education Framework Act: firm on the principle of the unity of the system and the national guarantee for every pupil, flexible on the means to achieve it. ‘L’école française est faite pour éduquer, pour intégrer, pas pour rejeter’, he said. But if, as Beriss suggests, the conflict is between different models of cultural and political legitimacy, the school will not resolve the problem on its own. The educational practices which epitomize Republican ideals are few and far between. Costa-Lascoux’s chapter is valuable as the report of a civics education experiment in poor suburbs, where teachers find themselves ‘teaching literacy and being a security guard’ rather than transmitting a knowledge of Voltaire and Baudelaire. Here too the theme is one of how to transmit knowledge. Costa-Lascoux talks ‘in terms of training in freedom of thought’. As such the experiment shows signs of having helped French pupils born to immigrant families to sort out their civic identity and in the process become intellectually autonomous. But Costa-Lascoux’s evidence of a hardline Muslim refusal to accept an Enlightenment-based on philosophy is both a new problem and, in France, an old one, working back to the nineteenth-century church/state war as to what the nation wanted of schools. As the Bourdieu-Gros Commission put it so appropriately: the necessary perpetuation of the past and the necessary adaptation to the future should be a matter of permanent reflection. But the French, even under stress, remain faithful to knowledgebased values. REFERENCES Collège de France (1985) Proposition pour l’enseignement de l’avenir (Commission Bourdieu-Gros), Paris: Documentation Française. Charlot, B., Bautier, E. and Rochex J.-Y. (1992) Ecole et savoirs en banlieue… et ailleurs, Paris: Armand Colin. Corbett, A. (1990) ‘French curriculum reform’, in B.Moon (ed.) New CurriculumNational Curriculum, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Forquin, J.-C. (1989) École et culture: le point de vue des sociologues britanniques, Brussels: De Boeck. Forquin, J.-C. (1994) in Dictionnaire encydopédique de l’éducation et de la formation, Paris: INRP/Nathan. Reboul, O. (1992) Review of Le Choix d’éduquer, éthique et pédagogie by P. Meirieu, Revue Française de Pédagogie (juillet) 100: 131.

21 Principles for reflecting on the curriculum Pierre Bourdieu

PREAMBLE At the end of 1988 a committee was formed by the minister of education, chaired by Pierre Bourdieu and François Gros, with a brief to reflect on the curriculum and to plan a revision of it, bearing in mind the importance of the coherence and unity of knowledge. Other members included Pierre Baqué, Pierre Bergé, René Blanchet, Jacques Bouveresse, Jean-Claude Chevallier, Hubert Condamines, Didier Da Cunha Castelle, Jacques Derrida, Philippe Joutard, Edmond Malinvaud and François Mathey. In the first instance the members of the committee resolved to formulate principles which would guide them in their work. They were conscious and aware of the practical implications and applications of these principles, particularly as they related to pedagogical issues. They strove, therefore, to establish principles on the basis of strict intellectual rigour derived from the intrinsic logic of knowledge and from definable assumptions and questions. The committee was not expected to intervene directly and rapidly in curriculum design. They wished to delineate the main objectives for gradual change in the compulsory curriculum. These changes would take time if they were to follow, or perhaps anticipate, the evolution of science and society. Specialist working groups will later continue a deeper reflective process for each of the main areas of knowledge. They will attempt to suggest, through regular reports which will be completed in 1989, a number of precise observations that draw out the implications of the principles proposed in this paper. They will not define the ideal content of an ideal curriculum. The proposals will, in the main, consider the restructuring of the division of knowledge, a new definition of the transmission of knowledge, the elimination of outdated or outmoded notions, and the introduction of new knowledge that stems from research as well as economic, technical and social changes. These will then be discussed at an international gathering of experts. If, in the educational system, or elsewhere, it is essential to reflect on the notion of change it is out of the question to contemplate abolishing the

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past. The majority of innovations introduced in recent years were justified. Although important to ensure that what is inherited from the past is not rejected outright it is not always possible, at any one time and in any one area, to determine the importance given to items that are ‘out of date’ as opposed to those that are still ‘valid’. It is necessary to consider constantly a new balance which reflects the influence of the past and the necessity of adaptation for the future. The necessary abstract and generalized shape of the principles thus defined can only be justified by the work to come. This work will need to be guided by the rigour of these principles, while also testing them to determine and differentiate the content. FIRST PRINCIPLE Course content must be regularly reviewed so that new knowledge demanded by scientific progress and changes in society (European unification being a prime example) can be introduced. Any addition of knowledge must be compensated for by a reduction elsewhere in the programme.

To reduce the breadth or difficulty of a part of the programme should not lower the standard or level. On the contrary, if such a reduction is cautiously achieved it should raise standards, provided the time required for study is reduced and the work improved by substituting passive learning for active reading—and here we refer to audio-visual as well as literary texts. A discussion of practical approaches should give more room for creativity and imagination. This implies, among other things, that the testing of learning and the evaluation of achievements must be radically transformed. An evaluation of standards reached should no longer be based on a heavy and haphazard examination. Continuous assessment and an end-of-course examination focused on essential knowledge should reflect the importance of putting into practice knowledge acquired in different contexts. This would, for example in the case of experimental science, involve practical tests aimed at evaluating creativity, critical abilities and the practical knowledge acquired. SECOND PRINCIPLE Education must give priority to all the areas which can lead to a way of thinking which is endowed with a validity and applicability of a general nature as opposed to areas where knowledge could be acquired just as efficiently (and sometimes more pleasantly) through other means. It is important to ensure that education does not leave unacceptable gaps which could endanger the success of

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pedagogic objectives. Most notably, attention should be given to fundamental ways of thinking or knowledge that are supposed to be taught by everyone and yet may never be taught by anyone.

It is absolutely necessary to give priority to those areas where the objective is to ensure that fundamental processes are thoughtfully and critically assimilated. These processes—the deductive, the experimental, the historical as well as the critical and reflective—should always be included. In order to redress the balance, the uniqueness of the experimental thinking process should be made clearer. The outcome will be a positive reassessment of qualitative reasoning, a clear recognition of the temporary nature of explanatory models and an appraisal of the need constantly to train for practical forms of research enquiry. It will also be necessary to examine whether and how each main area of knowledge (and each of the ‘disciplines’ within which they have been more or less adequately interpreted) can contribute to the different thought processes. The logic and traditions of certain specialisms might involve a re-examination of where they are located in the curriculum. An appropriate place should also be found for certain techniques that are given tacit acknowledgement at the present time but are seldom transmitted methodically, for example the use of dictionaries, the use of abbreviations, the rhetoric of communication, the setting up of a filing system, the creation of an index, the use of a ‘fichier signalétique’ or of a data bank, the preparation of a manuscript, the search for documents, the use of computer data, the reading of numerical or graphical tables. If all pupils were given the technology of intellectual enquiry, and if in general they were given rational ways of working (such as the art of choosing between compulsory tasks or of spreading them over time), then an important way of reducing inequalities based on cultural inheritance would have been achieved. THIRD PRINCIPLE Open, flexible and changeable programmes are a framework not a prison. There should be fewer and fewer constraints the more you go up the hierarchy of the educational process. Teachers need to collaborate in order to define and implement programmes. There must be progression—vertical connections and coherence—and horizontal connections within specialist areas and equally at the whole programme level (for each class or year group).

The programme should not be dictatorial. It operates as a guide for teachers, pupils and parents who need clear objectives and an understanding of the requirements of the level of knowledge being

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considered. (Teachers could be asked to talk to their pupils about this at the beginning of the school year.) This is why it has to be seen alongside a review of underlying philosophy, the objectives sought, the prerequisites and requirements necessary, and it should also include examples of where it has been applied. Objectives and content of different specialisms and at different levels must be perceived and defined through their interconnections. Programmes must predict explicitly the places where they repeat part of other programmes and this should only occur where it is necessary to ensure that fundamental knowledge is acquired. Although it can be useful to address the same question from different viewpoints (for example, the law of perspective from the viewpoint of mathematics and the history of art), we should strive to abolish, when it has been established that no purpose is served, all undesirable overlaps and double usages. This would be true both between successive levels of the same specialist areas and between different subjects within one level. In order to require and obtain progressive and coherent curriculum courses we must predetermine, as accurately as possible, the level expected at the beginning (avoiding systematically vague titles which can be interpreted loosely) and the level to be reached at the end of the year in question. Programmes must be piloted to ensure that they can be completed by the majority of pupils (to ensure success they must be accompanied by indications of the study time required at each stage). Every fundamental specialism must be taught through a process, planned over years, which guides the learner from a simple initiation through to a mastery of the thought processes and requirements which are unique to the specialism. Coherence and complementarity between courses offered by different specialist areas must be methodically investigated at each level and it will be necessary to establish a committee for common courses (at each level) to ensure coherence and avoid repetition. While there would be no wish naïvely to copy foreign models, it is possible that a critical inspiration could be found in a methodical comparison of the curriculum offered in other countries, notably within Europe. The comparison could provide a means of bringing to light gaps and omissions and ought to permit the discarding of remnants from an outdated historical tradition. Not only would this increase the compatibility of the French with other European systems, it would also reduce any disadvantage faced against eventual competitors. It would as well lead to a conscious and explicit redirection of established programmes. FOURTH PRINCIPLE A critical review of the compulsory curriculum must always reconcile two variables, compulsoriness and transmittability.

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On the one hand, the acquisition of an area of knowledge or of a thought process is more or less indispensable for scientific or social reasons at certain levels; on the other hand, its transmission is more or less difficult depending on the ability that the children have to assimilate and the training of the teachers involved.

This principle should lead to the exclusion of any premature transmission of knowledge. It should lead to the mobilization of all the necessary resources (for example, in terms of time allocated and teaching methods) to ensure efficient transmission and assimilation of the areas of knowledge deemed to be essential (to have a better idea of the real transmittability, at a given level of a knowledge area or thought process, we should take account of research that would evaluate mastery of the knowledge taught in different specialisms to pupils of different levels of attainment and from different social strata). The eventual transformation of the content of courses and the final modifications to a course should be established after a trial run in a real situation. This should be done in collaboration with teachers who have received appropriate training. The demands for adaptation by teachers should be supported through sabbaticals and through long secondments which would allow them to prepare for new thinking processes and areas of knowledge. They should acquire new qualifications in the process of developing these new approaches. On a more general note, new systems would have to be erected with the objective of drawing together and analysing the reactions and reflections of teachers who would be asked to criticize and suggest improvements (the minitel system could be useful for that purpose). A permanent search for methodical and practical teaching research which would bring teachers together and directly involve them in innovation would be put in place. FIFTH PRINCIPLE In order to improve the effectiveness of knowledge transmission through a diversification of teaching methods (while at the same time taking account of the real rather than theoretical knowledge that has to be assimilated) it will be necessary to distinguish between specialisms as well as within specialisms what is compulsory and what is optional. Teachers responsible for different specialisms would come together to develop collective and group learning through, for example, enquiry or field work approaches.

The increase in knowledge renders invalid the concept of encyclopaedism. It is impossible to teach all the specialisms or the whole of a specialist area—besides which, new specialisms appear which connect fundamental science and technical application (information technology is within each

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subject as well as existing as a subject in its own right). These areas would not be merely added to the curriculum. Sooner or later the divisions of the curriculum will need redefinition. It is necessary to substitute for the actual, encyclopaedic, additive and compartmentalized teaching a system of defined compulsory and optional subjects, directly adapted to the intellectual orientation of the pupils and planned to ensure the assimilation of essential knowledge. Alongside this would be a range of optional and interdisciplinary areas allowing the teachers to take the initiative. This diversification of pedagogical structures, and of the status of different areas, will take account of the specific nature of each ‘discipline’. This represents a move away from the mere totalling-up of subjects which, as practised, is one of the major obstacles to any real transformation of the curriculum. The redefinition would create alternative theoretical and practical applications, compulsory and optional courses, individual and group learning (and individualized programmes for pupils). This would have the effect of reducing the number of hours on pupils’ timetables without increasing the number of classes allocated to each teacher. It would increase teacher autonomy since, within each defined programme of study, they would organize their own study plan before the beginning of the school year. It should also lead to a more flexible and intensive use of apparatus and buildings (the relevant authority—département or commune—should involve teachers in the building or renovation of schools to ensure that education takes place in a setting which is adapted for quality and need. Group and multidisciplinary activities would best fit into the afternoon. This is the case, for example, in the teaching of languages where the study of discourse, oral and written, and the image are brought together. Language is at the junction of a number of specialisms, presupposing that good use is made of technical materials, leads to relationships with outside partners (artists, the media, industries, etc.) necessitating practical as well as analytical activity. SIXTH PRINCIPLE Concern to reinforce the coherence of teaching should lead to the enhancement of team teaching that brings together teachers from different disciplines. It should lead to a rethinking of the divisions within disciplines and a re-examination of certain historical regroupings. It might succeed, although always gradually, in bringing closer together the different areas created in the evolution of science.

Everything should be done to encourage teachers to co-ordinate their actions through workshops aimed at exchanging information on content and teaching method. These would also give them the means (in adapted

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buildings and with new equipment, etc.) to enrich, diversify and broaden their teaching and leave behind, in the context of team teaching, the strict frontiers of their discipline. (It would be desirable to have certain teachers who have a formal proportion of hours allotted to them for the coordination and organization of meetings, the printing of documents, communicating with colleagues, etc.). Teaching sessions calling on teachers of two (or more) different specialisms, put together because of their affinity, should have the same status as other lessons (each hour taught in that way would, in practical terms, have to be acknowledged as one hour teaching for each teacher). These sessions would be targeted at groups of pupils assembled on the basis of criteria different from those currently used. These could be on the basis of attainment, or common interest, or a particular theme. An allocation of hours, whose use would be freely and annually determined by the teachers involved, might officially be put aside for that purpose. All means—enriched and modernized libraries, audio-visual techniques and so forth—would be mobilized to reinforce the attraction and efficiency of the approach. The care taken to rethink and surmount the ‘frontier’ between the disciplines and corresponding teaching units should not be to the detriment of the identity of fundamental subject teaching. It should, rather, bring out the coherence and problematic areas of the thinking process which is the characteristic of each specialism. SEVENTH PRINCIPLE The search for coherence should be accompanied by a search for balance and integration between the different specialisms and, as a consequence, between different forms of excellence. It would be especially important to reconcile the universalism which is inherent in scientific thought and the relativism taught through the historical sciences and it should reflect the plurality of lifestyles and cultural traditions.

Everything should be done to reduce the conflict between theory and technical, between formal and concrete, between pure and applied. Practical features of the curriculum should be reintegrated within fundamental teaching areas. The need to balance the room given to what we shall call, for the sake of convenience, the ‘conceptual’, the ‘sensitive’ and the ‘corporal’ is obvious at all levels, particularly in the early years. The weight given to technical requirements and to theoretical requirements will be determined according to criteria which are unique to each level of the programme. They will therefore take account of career interests, the pupils’ power of abstraction and the time they will be entering working life. Modern education should in no way sacrifice the history of languages and literature, of culture and religion, of philosophy and science. It must,

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rather, reassess itself and work ceaselessly towards these histories in an increasingly subtle and critical manner. For this very reason it must not be based on a representation given by those who reduce ‘humanism’ to a fixed image of ‘humanities’. The teaching of languages can, and must, provide the opportunity to learn logic, just as much as the teaching of physics or biology. The teaching of mathematics or physics, as much as the teaching of philosophy or history, can and must prepare the learner for the history of ideas in science or technology (provided, of course, the teachers are trained accordingly). On a more general note, access to scientific methods derives from the acquisition of elementary logic and ways of thought—in other words, techniques or cognitive tools which are totally indispensable in promoting rigorous and reflective reasoning. The opposition between art and science which continues to dominate the organization of schooling and the mentality of teachers, pupils and pupils’ parents can and must be surmounted. The curriculum should be capable of addressing simultaneously science and the history of science or epistemology. It should also promote art and literature, and aesthetic reflection and forms of logic that these subjects can develop. Finally, it will be necessary to teach not only a mastery of language and literature, philosophy and science, but also the active process of logical procedures and rhetoric that engagement with these subjects requires. The apparent abstractness of these areas could be removed if common programmes were developed where the teacher of mathematics (or physics) and teachers of language or philosophy made clear that general competencies were required in the reading of scientific texts, technical briefs or approaches to argument and discourse. A similar effort should be made to articulate thinking processes which are part of the natural human sciences, to inculcate the rational, critical-thinking mode which all sciences teach, and to ensure that these are based on historical and cultural roots which reflect the range of scientific and cultural knowledge. In this way the pupil should develop a comprehensive respect for diversity in time and space, and for civilization, lifestyles and cultural traditions. The National Council for developing all aspects of the curriculum and school programmes will be expected to put into practice all the principles outlined above. Membership will be on a personal basis rather than through representation of teachers, institutions or associations. The National Council will operate on a permanent basis (which presupposes that members will be freed from a proportion of their other duties) for a period of five years. Changes will only be introduced every five years, with the jurisdiction of the National Council embracing all trends and types of education.

22 A pair of boots is as good as Shakespeare Alain Finkielkraut

The legatees of Third Worldism are not the only ones to advocate the transformation of the European nations into multi-cultural societies. The same ideal is proclaimed today by the prophets of ‘post-modernity’. The difference is that the former, in the face of Western superciliousness, argue the equality of all cultures, whilst the latter want to make general use of a notion which surfaced some years ago in the world of art. The postmodernists exalt the rather dizzy uncertainties of cultural fluidity over the fixed virtues of cultural rootedness. They want to apply to life the same principles to which post-modernist artists and painters refer when they are working, and to replace our former exclusive approaches by eclecticism. Such a philosophy recoils at the brutal choice between academic tradition and innovation. There is a conscious, deliberate mingling of styles. Now, instead of being advisedly this or that, classical or avant-garde, bourgeois or bohemian, the post-modernist brings together, in his own distinctive way, the most disparate of fads and fashions, and the most contradictory of influences. Free-floating, unencumbered with any definitive credo or culture, such a person likes to be able to move effortlessly from a Chinese restaurant to a West Indian club, from couscous to cassoulet, from jogging to religion, from literature to hang-gliding. Fragmentation is the order of the day for this new hedonism which rejects both nostalgia and breast-beating. Its practitioners do not aim for an authentic society in which individuals live at home in their cultural identity, but for a polymorphous society, a variegated world which will offer a wide range of experiences to every individual. What they extol is not so much cultural variety as generalized cross-fertilization, the right of everyone to the distinctiveness of his neighbour. To them multi-cultural means ‘well stocked’. They have no interest in cultures as such. They want cultural tasters, bits of culture which they can try out, get the flavour of, and then discard. They do not conserve but rather consume the available traditions. To the extent that they are ‘consumer-kings’, they fret at the constraints on the full flowering of diversity, constraints which derive from what they see as the worn out and rigid ideas of the past.

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‘All cultures are equally legitimate and everything is cultural’, is the common cry of the affluent society’s spoiled children and of the detractors of the West. This common language, however, hides two quite contradictory programmes. The anti-colonialist philosophy for its part picks up the anathema cast on art and intellectual activity by the Russian populists of the nineteenth century: ‘a pair of boots is worth more than Shakespeare’. Over and above their evangelical advantages, besides the fact, in other words, that they protect unfortunates against the cold more effectively than could an Elizabethan play, boots have the advantage that they do not lie. They reveal themselves straight away for what they are — modest emanations of a given culture—instead of dissimulating their origins in the manner of accepted masterpieces, and exacting the respect of all men. This is an exemplary humility, and if art is to break with imposture it must turn its back on Shakespeare and come to terms as far as is possible with the pair of boots. This requirement takes the form in painting of minimalism, that is to say of the tendency for the creative input of the artist to be progressively reduced, and the corresponding appearance in the galleries and museums of works which are partly indistinguishable from everyday objects and even from everyday materials. As for writers, their duty is to adopt the canons of so-called lesser literature, because, unlike hallowed texts, these lesser works express the collectivity, rather than the individual locked up in his private genius, isolated from others by his pseudo-mastery: terrible mortification which hits hardest those authors who belong to the cultivated nations. To reach non-culture, to get on a par with the pair of boots, they have further to go than people from underdeveloped countries. But never mind! ‘Even someone unlucky enough to be born in a country with a great literature must write like a Czech Jew writing German, or an Uzbek writing Russian. He should write like a dog or even a rat, digging their holes. In this way he can achieve his own level of under-development, his own, individual third world, his own personal desert.’1 This raging nihilism gives rise, in post-modern thought, to an equal admiration for the author of King Lear and for Charles Jourdan. Provided they carry the signature of a leading stylist, a pair of boots are as good as Shakespeare. Everything, moreover, is in keeping with this equation. A comic which combines exciting intrigue and some pretty pictures is just as good as a Nabokov novel. What little Lolitas read is as good as Lolita. An effective publicity slogan counts for as much as a poem by Apollinaire or Francis Ponge. A rock song is in no way inferior to a melody of Duke Ellington. A good football match rivals a ballet by Pina Bausch; and a grand couturier can hold his own with Manet, Picasso and Michaelangelo. Today’s opera, ‘that of everyday life, of the film-clip, the jingle, the publicity-puff’,2 is broadly speaking just as worthwhile as Verdi or Wagner. The footballer and the choreographer, the painter and the couturier, the writer and the ad-man, the musician and the rocker, are all the same:

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creators. We must scrap the scholastic prejudice which restricts that title to certain people and regards others as sub-cultural. Not only must Shakespeare be humiliated; the bootmaker must be ennobled. It is not just that high culture must be demystified, brought remorselessly down to the level of the sort of everyday gestures which ordinary people perform in obscurity; sport, fashion and leisure now lay claim to high cultural status. The vengeful or masochistic absorption of cultivation (the life of the mind) into the cultural (the life of everyday) is replaced by a kind of cheerful confusion which raises everyday anthropological practice to the pinnacle of the human race’s greatest achievements. For all that the vocabulary may be the same, post-modern ideas break completely with the philosophy of decolonization. From the point of view of post-modernism, the third worldists are so many grieving left-overs from the age of authority, as hopeless as the humanists or the defenders of racial purity or cultural integrity. Some writers, from Herder to Lévi-Strauss, want to restore to men traditions they have lost. Others, from Goethe to Renan, urge them to break away, only to slap them immediately into uniform. What is the use of resisting tradition, only to impose in its place the unconsidered authority of culture? Barrès locks people in their particular life-styles, and Benda prescribes for them, whatever their background, the same dogmatic itinerary, with the same ritual (and obligatory) stopping points: where is the progress? Postmodernist anti-racism rejects Benda, Barrès and Lévi-Strauss, and replaces them with a new ideal type: the multi-cultural individual. ‘The idea of identity has become more complex. Our roots go back to Montaigne, whom we studied at school, Mourousi and television, Touré Kunda, reggae, Renaud and Lavilliers. We do not ask ourselves the question whether we have lost our cultural bearings, because we have quite a lot of such bearings. We also have in common the luck to live in a country which is a blend of cultures and which respects freedom of thought and conscience. The reality which we relate to is one of cross-breeding.’3 Things could hardly be clearer. If you reckon that intellectual confusion is no protection against xenophobia; if you are inclined to observe a severe hierarchy among values; if you are intransigently opposed to mediocrity; if you cannot accept that the author of the Essais and a television personality, or a meditation designed to uplift the spirit and a spectacle calculated to brutalize, belong in the same cultural bracket; if you refuse, even though one is white and the other black, to equate Beethoven and Bob Marley—then you belong, quite irredeemably, to the party of the bastards and the kill-joys. You belong to the movement for moral rearmament and your attitude is thrice criminal: you are a puritan, who forbids yourself all life’s pleasures; you are despotic; you fulminate against those who, having broken with your exclusivist morality, choose to live on more than one moral plane; you really want one thing and one thing only—to halt the march of the human race towards autonomy. Finally, you

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share the racist phobia against mixing and the racist practice of discrimination. Instead of encouraging cross-fertilization, you resist it.4 What does post-modernist thought want? The same thing as the Enlightenment: to make man independent, to treat him as a grown-up; to release him, as Kant might say, from that childish state for which he is himself responsible. With this nuance, however: that culture is no longer seen as a means of emancipation, but as one of the élitist obstacles to this. Within such a perspective, individuals will have taken a decisive step towards maturity when intellectual activity ceases to be a supreme value and becomes as optional (and is accorded the same legitimacy) as betting or rock ’n’ roll. To enter the age of autonomy properly, we must transform all the obligations of the authoritarian age into options. Élitism is still the enemy, but the meaning of the word has been surreptitiously reversed. When he said, ‘We must do for culture what Jules Ferry did for education’, André Malraux located himself specifically in the tradition of the Enlightenment, wanting the great works of humanity to be more widely known. Today the novels of Flaubert are lumped together, in the soporific world of entertainment, with popular fiction, television series and the sentimental films over which contemporary incarnations of Emma Bovary drool. The person who is regarded as élitist (and therefore intolerable is not the one who would withhold culture from people but the one who would deny the label ‘cultural’ to any pastime. We live in the age of feelings. Today there is no more truth or falsehood, no stereotype or innovation, no beauty or ugliness, but only an infinite array of pleasures, all different and all equal. Democracy once implied access to culture for everybody. From now on it is going to mean everyone’s right to the culture of his choice (or his right to call anything which takes his momentary fancy ‘culture’). ‘Let me do what I want with myself!’5 No transcendant or traditional authority, and not even a plain majoritarian one, can shape the preferences of your post-modern man or regulate his behaviour. He is equipped with remote control, in life as much as in front of his television. He arranges his own programme in utter serenity, without allowing himself to be intimidated any longer by traditional hierarchies. Free in the sense which Nietzsche intends when he says that no longer to blush at one’s own conduct is the sign of a realized freedom, he can let go and give himself over to his immediate cravings. Whatever he selects— Rimbaud or Renaud, Lévinas or Lavilliers—his choice is automatically counted as culture. Non-thought has, to be sure, always co-existed with the life of the mind; but it is the first time in European history that this non-thought has donned the same label and enjoyed the same status as thought itself, and the first time that those who, in the name of a ‘high culture’, dare to call this non-thought by its name, are dismissed as racists and reactionaries.

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Let us be clear. This dissolving of culture into all things cultural does not put an end to intellectual activity or art. We must not subscribe to the myth of the golden age in which masterpieces abounded. This stereotype is as old as resentment itself; and goes back to the beginnings of the human race’s spiritual and artistic life. Our recent problem is different— and much worse. There are good works of art; but the line between culture and entertainment has been blotted out, and there is no place where such works can be properly received and given their true significance. So they float absurdly and pointlessly in a featureless void. When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning. It was when he first heard a racehorse described as a ‘genius’ that Ulrich, Musil’s man without qualities, finally renounced all his ambitions. He was at that time (1913) a scientific hopeful, indeed the young white hope of the intellectual community. But what point was there in going on with it? ‘During his youthful days of life in barracks Ulrich had hardly ever heard anything talked about except horses and women. That was what he had fled from in order to become a man of importance. And now when, after varied exertions, he might almost have felt entitled to think himself near the summit of his ambitions, he was hailed from on high by the horse, which had got there first.’6 Less drastic than his hero, Musil wrote the first two volumes of The Man Without Qualities. It seems today that his perseverance has been rewarded. In fact no one doubts his genius any more. He died unknown; but he lives on in scholarly treatments and successive editions, and in the university studies which show the fascination which the last years of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy have for the contemporary public. The historical irony, however, is that Ulrich’s pessimism is born out by the very way in which his creator is commemorated. As Guy Scarpetta says, the fashion for things Viennese in these closing years of the twentieth century is characterized by ‘a kind of levelling down, the subsuming of some proper names under other ones—a fashion for presenting ‘’Vienna” as a homogeneous mass’.7 From ornamental kitsch to the Emperor’s side-burns, everything to do with Franz-Josef is an object of veneration. The same promiscuous cult pays homage to The Man Without Qualities and Strauss’s waltzes. What we like about Vienna is the prefiguration of our own confusion. It is precisely the new outlook Musil denounced which, now it has triumphed, pays him such solemn homage. Today there are no execrated poets. Allergic to all forms of exclusion, the prevailing view of culture favours Shakespeare and Musil just as much as that sublime pair of boots and that genius of a racehorse. HIS MAJESTY THE CONSUMER We should not think, at the same time, that the qualities which are so painfully missing in the world today, were brilliantly and

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unproblematically in evidence just a little while ago. Doubtless it would have been inconceivable for the nineteenth century bourgeois to rave about a pair of boots or think of racehorse as ‘a genius’. What guided and informed this outlook, however, was utility, not humanism; contempt for idleness, rather than enlightened devotion to the values of culture— ‘Remember: time is money’. This idea was the tablets of the law for the bourgeois, who understood no logic except the logic of business and planning, and did not go in for trivia. The preoccupations of art seemed just as wasteful and frivolous to him as those of the entertainers and the tailor. His view of the world was a purely technical one, and he recognized only operational know-how and activities of an achievable kind. Anything which was not functional, which could not be counted or put to use was literature. In other words, instrumental reason, what Heidegger calls ‘calculative thinking’, forced the life of the spirit, the practice of intellectual activity (what we have been calling ‘culture’) into the sphere of entertainment: ‘Technique as the highest form of rational consciousness…and the absence of thought in the form of an organised incapacity, unable by its very nature to establish any link with “what is worth inquiring into” are mutually supporting; they are one and the same thing.’8 There have been some great upheavals since. Our human needs were once subjected to severe controls; now they are endlessly pampered and gratified. Vice has become a virtue. Advertising has replaced austerity, and the spirit of capitalism today has widened its productive scope to incorporate all the spontaneous pleasures of life. Actually it has been tracking them down relentlessly since it first appeared on the scene. These spectacular changes in attitude, however, mask a deep fidelity to old puritan values. When modern hedonism urges us both to enrich ourselves and to amuse ourselves, when leisure time is no longer repressed but subjected to economic calculation, there is a kind of deployment of bourgeois rationalism against the former bourgeois values. Calculative rationality widens its domain, discovering utility in uselessness, making systematic forays into the realm of fancies and pleasurable indulgence. Culture was once deprecated as useless expenditure. Now any whim or pleasure can be dignified with the epithet ‘cultural’. From now on, no transcendental beliefs must be allowed to check or even to modify the economic exploitation of leisure and the growth of consumption. The superiority of the previous era lay in the fact that men of culture resisted purely economic logic as a folly and a tyranny, indeed resisted it precisely in the name of culture. The post-modern age countenances it with scarcely a word of protest. The artist used to be at war with the philistine. Today, for fear of being tainted with élitism or with failing to meet the elementary requirements of the democratic outlook, your intellectual abases himself before the power-hungry world of show-business, or fashion, or advertising. The extraordinarily rapid transformation of

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ministers of cultural affairs into administrators concerned with entertainment as such passes without comment. Musing on the American cinema, Hannah Arendt wrote as long ago as the 1950s: ‘Lots of great writers of the past have survived centuries of neglect or being forgotten. The question is unresolved whether they will be able to withstand a show-biz version of what they have to say’.9 Less than thirty years later, it is not just Hollywood which gives us a saccharined version of Dr Zhivago. Avant-garde producers bring into the theatre the aesthetics of the music-hall or of television, and almost nobody bats an eye. Intellectuals no longer seem to care about the survival of culture. Is this our new trahison des clercs? The ‘culture-industry’ meets with no opposition, in the event, when it invades culture proper, and claims for itself all the prestige of the real thing. Obviously we cannot fight on all fronts at once. In any case the first priority of contemporary intellectuals is to debunk ‘masochistic moralising’10 of the kind earlier generations practised. Leaving Marx by way of Tocqueville, they demonstrate that far from being just a mask for class struggle and exploitation, democracy on the contrary constitutes a vast anthropological mutation undergone by modern societies. Alone among all the characteristic types of humanity democratic man sees himself as an independent being, so to speak a social atom. Cut off from his contemporaries and his posterity, he concentrates above all on providing for his private needs, and he wants to be regarded as equal to all other men. The essence of the neo-Tocquevillian case is that this vulnerable man should not be vilified. He is worthy rather of support against his enemies or against that residual part of his own nature which wants to go back ‘to the good old days when everybody thought alike, or when everyone had his clearly allotted place and felt deeply attached to his community, when there was a convergence of interest and a natural complementarity between the various social roles, when everybody and everything was comfortably bonded, having in view a single and unmistakable aim—in sum, when the very texture of communal existence had a reassuring solidity’.11 The totalitarian régimes afford us clear evidence of what happens to democratic man when he succumbs to that particular nostalgia. Such a rehabilitation of western individualism would deserve unqualified approval if, in its praiseworthy anger, it did not confuse egoism (or to use a periphrasis without any moral connotation, the pursuit by each person of his private interests) with autonomy. In the event, the individual’s breaking his links with the old collective structures (guilds, churches, castes or ranks) in order to concentrate on his own affairs, does not, ipso facto, make him competent to find his bearings in the world. He can break away from society without at the same time being free of the prejudices which it transmits. The limiting of authority does not guarantee autonomy of judgement and will. The dissolution of social constraints inherited from the past does not in itself mean that the

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spirit will be free. Equally necessary is that which in the eighteenth century was called Enlightenment: ‘While there remain men who do not obey their reason alone, who take their opinions from some foreign source, the chains will have been broken in vain.’12 Moreover the philosophes laboured simultaneously to extend culture to everybody and to withdraw individual life from the power of the state or the grip of the community. They wanted individuals both to be free to get on with their individual interests and to have the imagination to think beyond their narrow domain. Today it is apparent that they have won half the battle. Tyranny has been beaten, but not obscurantism. Blind traditions are powerless; but so is culture. True, individuals are not deprived of knowledge. We can claim, on the contrary, that in the West and for the first time in history, the intellectual inheritance of the human race is both completely and also immediately available to us. The craft labour of the encyclopaedists having been taken over by paperbacks, video-cassettes and data-banks, there is no longer any material obstacle to the dispensing of a general Enlightenment. But, just when technology, in the form of television and computers, seems to have the capacity to bring knowledge to every household, culture is being destroyed by the logic of consumption. The word itself lives on, but emptied of every idea of a spiritual formation, of an openness to the world and a care of the soul. From now it is the pleasure principle—that postmodern version of individual interest—which rules over the intellectual life. It is no longer a question of turning out men who are independent spirits, but rather of satisfying their immediate desires, of amusing them at least cost. The post-modern individual is a free and easy bundle of fleeting and contingent appetites. He has forgotten that liberty involves more than the ability to change one’s chains, or that culture itself is more than a satiated whim. Indeed, not even the clearest minds and the ones most revolted by the spirit of the age seem to remember this any better. They may well talk of the ‘age of emptiness’, but they still see in this new attitude an important advance, maybe even the ultimate stage of democracy. However ironically they describe the ‘kaleidoscopic age of the supermarket and self-service’,13 they cannot conceive of any alternative to this way of life other than a minatory control and the weight of stern conventions. Gentle regression, they suggest, is preferable to harsh repression. In fact the former actually prevents the latter: ‘There is no point in despairing. The atrophy of the will is not a catastrophe. It does not imply a submissive or alienated humanity. Nor does it in any sense herald the rise of totalitarianism. A relaxed and apathetic outlook is really more a rampart against the resurgence of the religious manias of the past and against the great paranoid projects.’14 Intellectual activity has at times in the past been blind to totalitarianism. Now it is blinded by it. For a long time the crimes of Western imperialism prevented us from realizing exactly what monstrosities were being

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committed in the name of revolution. These days the fear of Big Brother serves as an alibi and a justification for the disappearance of culture in the West. The obsession with 1984 turns us all into the Panglosses of the consumer society. We tremble at the thought of a violent intrusion of brute power into private life, and so we tolerate the smiling aggression of advertising and the sugary intrusion of musack. Since everybody is perforce involved, the dilemmas of the individual trapped in cultural Disneyland— which offers everything and gives nothing—take on the appearance of a sovereign exercise in autonomy. The world of long distance orders and purchases comes to seem to us like the best of all possible worlds.15 ‘A SOCIETY WHICH HAS FINALLY BECOME ADOLESCENT’ Liberty is not possible for ignorant people. This, at any rate, was the view held by the Enlightenment. One is not born a fully-fledged individual, rather it is something one learns to become by surmounting the chaos of mere appetite, narrow sectional interest and the tyranny of received ideas. In consumerist logic, by contrast, freedom and culture are defined by the satisfaction of needs, and therefore cannot be the outcomes of a selfmortification. That man, in order to attain full autonomy, must break with the immediate call of his instincts and the weight of tradition is an idea which has vacated the very words in which it used to find expression. Hence the present crisis in education. The school in the modern sense of that word is a product of the Enlightenment, and it is dying today because the authority of the Enlightenment has been called in question. A gulf has opened between the outlook of society and this institution governed by the strange idea that there is no autonomy without thought, and no thought without hard work on one’s own character. The mental life of society develops ‘in a middle zone of personal eclecticism’,16 everywhere except between the four walls of educational institutions. School is the last-ditch exception to generalized self-service. The misunderstanding which divides this institution from its users is therefore growing apace. The school is modern, but the pupils are post-modern. School aims to form the mind; the pupils have the butterfly minds of young tele-addicts. According to Condorcet, school tends to ‘blur the division between the base and the enlightened parts of our species’. The pupils translate that emancipatory vision into an archaic programme for human subjugation, and, in a single act of rebellion, reject both discipline and teaching, both the master who dominates and the teacher who instructs them. How might we resolve this contradiction? By making the school postmodern too, is in substance the answer we get from management and reformers alike. The latter actually look for ways of bringing about what we might call the education of consumption. In certain American schools they even go so far as to package grammar, history, mathematics, and in fact all the basics, in a rock programme which the children listen to on

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their Walkmans.17 Educational administrators recommend, more sensibly, the large-scale use of computers in the classroom, in order to equip the high-school children technologically without making them give up their infantile games. From the electric train to information technology, from fun and games to intelligence, progress must be brought about gently, preferably without the knowledge of its beneficiaries. It matters nothing that the intelligence developed in this way, through a game, is at the level of manipulation rather than of thought. Between increasingly mechanical know-how and an ever greater consumer-variety, the type of discernment needed for reflective understanding of the world has no use and, indeed, no name, that of ‘culture’ having been definitively confiscated from it. But this simple adjustment of methods and curriculum does not completely reconcile school and ‘life’. At the end of a long and detailed discussion of the educational malaise, two French sociologists conclude: ‘If a culture consists in an ensemble of behaviour, techniques, customs and values which make up the character of a social group, then to a large extent music establishes the culture of the young. Unfortunately, the music in question, namely rock and pop and the like, is regarded by adult society and the teaching profession as a sub-music. Musical education, the kind which music teachers receive, observes a hierarchy of distinction which puts classical masterpieces at the top. We will not debate this point, even if it grates rather: the gap between conventional education and the pupils’ tastes is here especially pronounced.’18 To do right by the school then, I suppose we ought to get rid of this gap, and give the adolescents what they want. Teach youth to the young is the ticket, rather than hanging on in our senile, obstinate way, to outmoded hierarchies. We should drop Mozart from the syllabus and in his place install this raving rocker Amadeus—Wolfie to his wife (whom he met one fine afternoon of an Indian summer, on a campus in Vienna, Massachusetts). The young are a recent development. Before the advent of the school there was no such group. The traditional system of apprenticeship could reproduce itself without separating its trainees from the rest of the world for several years, and therefore dispensed with the long transitional period we call adolescence. With mass schooling, adolescence ceased to be a bourgeois privilege. It became a universal condition, and also a special style of life. Sheltered by school from the influence of parents, and from the teachers by the peer group, the young have been able to build their own world, an inverse mirror of the surrounding values. The relaxation of jeans is pitted against conventional clothes, comics against literature, rock music against conversation. Youth-culture, a veritable anti-school, has proclaimed its power and independence ever since the 1960s, in other words since teaching was democratized wholesale: ‘Like any close-knit group (that of the black Americans for example) the adolescent movement remains a partly hidden continent, but also a partly forbidden and

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incomprehensible one. The best illustration of this is the distinctive communication-system, which is highly autonomous and for the most part cryptic, expressed through rock culture, in which feeling counts more than words, sensation more than the abstractions of language, atmosphere more than actual meanings or rational discourse. All this is alien to the traditional criteria of Western communication. It puts an impenetrable barrier in the way of any even half-way interested approaches by adults. Whether one plays or listens the thing to be is “cool”, or to freak out. “Guitars are more expressive than words, which are old (they have a history) and not to be trusted.”’19 One thing at least is clear. Founded as it is on words, culture in the classical sense has the double drawback that it both ages people by giving them a memory which exceeds that of their own biography, and also isolates them by forcing them to say ‘I’, that is, to exist as distinct individuals. By destroying language, rock music gets rid of this double curse. The guitars abolish memory, the unifying warmth replaces conversation, that relationship between separated beings: the ‘I’ dissolves ecstatically into the Youth. This regression would be entirely harmless, if Youth were not everywhere now. Two decades have been enough for deviance to become the norm, for autonomy to become hegemony and for the adolescent lifestyle to set the pace for society as a whole. Youth is fashionable. The cinema and advertising focus primarily on a public of fifteen- to twentyyear-olds. Thousands of portable radios sing, almost all to the same guitar strains, of our good fortune to be done with conversation. And the drive against growing old is quite open. Less than a century ago, in that secure world so well described by Stefan Zweig, ‘everyone who wanted to get on had to use all the disguises possible to seem older than he was’, ‘the newspapers recommended products for hastening the growth of one’s beard’, and young doctors, fresh out of college, tried to acquire a little bit of extra weight and ‘wore gold-rimmed spectacles, even if their eyesight was perfect, just so as to look to their patients like men of experience’.20 Today youth is the categorical imperative of all the generations. One neurosis chases another. People in their forties are teenagers who have not grown up. As for the elderly, they are not honoured for their wisdom, as in traditional societies, nor for their sobriety, as in bourgeois society, nor for their fragility, as in civilized societies. They are honoured if and only if they have remained young in mind and body. It is no longer the case that adolescents take refuge in their collective identity, in order to get away from the world; rather it is an infatuated world which pursues adolescence. This reversal constitutes, as Fellini remarks with some amazement, the great cultural revolution of the post-modern age: ‘I wonder what must have happened at some point, what kind of curse has overtaken our generation that, suddenly, people have started regarding the young as the bearers of heaven knows what absolute virtues. The young, the young, the

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young…It is as if they had just landed in their spaceships…Only a collective delirium could have led us to regard fifteen-year-olds as embodying all the master virtues.’21 So what did happen, then? However enigmatic it may be, the delirium of which Fellini speaks did not appear from nowhere. The ground was well prepared. The long process of the conversion to hedonism and consumerism of Western societies has culminated today in the worship of juvenile values. The bourgeois is dead, long live the adolescent! The one used to give up life’s pleasures for the sake of accumulating wealth and put, as Stefan Zweig says, ‘moral appearances above the human being’. The second, demonstrating an equal impatience with the rigidities of the moral order and with the demands of thought, wants more than anything to amuse himself, to relax, to escape the pain of schooling by giving himself over to leisure. This is why the cultural industry sees in him the version of the human race which most perfectly fulfils its own essence. This does not mean that adolescence has finally become the most beautiful time of life. Once rejected as a type, today the young are rejected as individuals. Youth today is a bloc, a monolith, a quasi-species. One cannot be twenty today without immediately seeming to be a mouthpiece for one’s generation. Attentive friends and tender parents, research institutes and the whole world of consumption, together make sure that this conformism is perpetuated and ensure that no one can ever say: ‘All right, I’m twenty, but this does not define me and no one is going to bracket me with it.’ The young are all the less inclined to break out of their age-group (their bio-class as Edgar Morin would say) in that all adult treatment of them starts off with a surrender to them. In order to put itself on the level of youth, the adult world undergoes a course of de-intellectualization. We have seen this in education, but also it is true in politics, where the parties competing for power all do their utmost to ‘modernize’ their appearance and message, accusing each other of being old-fashioned at heart. In journalism too, we recently heard the director of a televised news and leisure programme in France admit that he owed his success to ‘the underfifteens surrounded by their mothers’, and to the way they are drawn to ‘our ads and jingles’.22 In art and literature certain masterworks are now already available, in France at least, in the form, called ‘abbreviated and artistic’, of the comic strip. The same tendency is apparent in moral life, as the worldwide television charity concerts show, and in religion, to judge by the travels of John Paul II. To justify this general infantilizing, this triumph of babydom over thought, the argument from efficacity is usually employed. In the high noon of ‘my opinion’, closed minds and people locked away in their private worlds, the tie-up between charity and rock ’n’ roll brings together, immediately, fabulous sums of money. As for the Pope, he draws huge crowds, just when the best authorities tell us that God is dead. If we look

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more closely, however, such pragmatism is clearly useless. The great concerts for Ethiopia financed the deportations of the very people they were supposed to feed. True, it is the Ethiopian government which is responsible for this misappropriation of funds. Nevertheless the mess could have been avoided if the organizers and the participants in this global high mass had agreed to turn their attention from the spectacle and remember, if only for a moment, that between the singing and dancing teenagers and the starving children stood a political dictatorship. John Paul II’s success, on the other hand, relates to the manner and not the substance of his talks. He would unleash the same enthusiasm if he authorized abortion and decided that clerical celibacy from now on has lost all its obligatory character. His act, like that of the other super-stars, empties heads, the better to fill them with the spectacle alone. It carries no message but wraps everyone in a profusion of son et lumière. Believing that he is merely adopting the form of a fashion, he forgets, or pretends to forget, that such a fashion is aimed precisely at the annihilation of meaning. In culture, religion and rock charity, it is not youth which is affected by lofty discourse. Rather the realm of higher thought itself is replaced by that of vibration and dance. In the race of the rest of the world, the young do not just defend their tastes and specific values. They also mobilize (or so their great thurifer informs us) ‘other parts of the brain than those which support languagebased expression. Along with generational conflict goes a conflict between different parts of the brain (non-verbal recognition versus verbalization), hemispheres which have long been blind to each other’.23 The battle has been harsh but what is today called communication shows that the nonverbal hemisphere has carried the day. The cartoon has overwhelmed conversation. Society has ‘finally become adolescent’.24 Not knowing how to help the victims of famine, it has found, in the concerts for Ethiopia, its international hymn: We are the world, we are the children. NOTES 1 2 3 4

Deleuze-Guattari, Kafka, Éditions de Minuit, 1975, p. 33 (my italics). Jacques Séguéla in Le Point, 24 février 1986. Harlem Désir, in Espaces 89, L’identité française, Éditions Tierce, 1985, p. 120. Harlem Désir is the president of S.O.S.Racisme, which was set up in France in 1984. This kind of blackmail was very much in evidence at the time of the great student demonstrations in Paris in November 1986. One leader-writer having been so bold as to maintain that the students had ‘mental AIDS’, Jack Lang, the former minister of cultural affairs, a man who was very popular with young people, responded as follows: ‘So that is what the Chirac-Hersant culture consists in: the contempt for youth, the hatred of music, of rock, of Coluche and Renaud!’ Do Coluche and Renaud belong to culture? Are music and rock one and the same? Is rock the definitive modern music or an atavistic regression to universal rhythm? From now on it is impossible to ask these

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questions if one also wishes to criticize police violence or the ravings of entrenched ideologues. Rock or repression: we have to make a choice. Once the intellectual defended his rights against the fascist jusfication of brute force. Today this is forbidden him, in the name of anti-fascism. André Bercoff, Manuel d’instruction civique pour temps ingouvernables, Grasset, 1985, p. 86, et passim. Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities, Secker and Warburg, 1979, Vol.1, p.46. Guy Scarpetta, ‘Esquisses viennoises’, in Lettre internationale, no. 8, 1986, p. 59. Heidegger, ‘Dépassement de la métaphysique’, in Essais et conférences, Gallimard, coll. Tel, 1980, p. 100. Hannah Arendt, La crise de la culture, Gallimard, coll. Idées, 1973, p. 266. Octavio Paz, Rire et pénitence, op.cit., p. 93. Marcel Gauchet, Tocqueville, l’Amérique et nous, op.cit., p. 71. Condorcet, Rapport et projet de décret pour l’organisation générale de l’instruction publique, April, 1792, quoted in Bronislaw Baczko, Une Education pour la démocratie, Garnier, 1982. Gilles Lipovetsky, L’ère du vide, Gallimard, 1983, p. 133. Ibid., p. 64. Even if we consider the matter in strictly political terms, it is naïve to enthuse about this world. Politically indifferent, ‘cool’, functionally allergic to totalitarian ideas, the post-modernist is no longer inclined to fight those ideas. The defence of democracy moves him no more than his subverted values. Recently an imprisoned French terrorist threatened some of his jurors with ‘proletarian justice’, and this was enough for most of them to report sick, obstructing thereby the rule of law. We should not rejoice too quickly though. A careless indifference to grand causes has its counterpart in abdication in the face of force. The fanaticism which seems to be vanishing in the West seems in danger of giving way to another sickness of the will, and one hardly less frightening: a a tendency to collaboration. George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, Faber, 1971, p. 66. See Neil Postman, Se distraire à en mourir, Flammarion, 1986, p. 129. Hamon-Rotman, Tant qu’il y aura des profs, Sevil, 1984, p. 311. Paul Yonnet, Jeux, modes et masses, Gallimard, 1985, pp. 185–186. Stefan Zweig, Le monde d’hier (Souvenirs d’un Européen). Belford, 1982, p. 54. (Die Welt von Gestern.) Fellini par Fellini, Calmann-Lévy, 1984, p. 163. Philippe Gildas, Télérama, no. 1929, 31 December 1986. Paul Yonnet, ‘L’esthétique rock’, Le Débat, no. 40, Gallimard, 1986, p. 66. Ibid., p. 71.

23 The educational maelstrom Antoine Prost

Although the creation of a ‘service public unifié et laïque de l’Education Nationale’ (which seems to imply the nationalization of the private schools, subsidized by the state) figured prominently in the programme of François Mitterrand, it did not play a large role in the presidential and legislative campaigns of 1981. The Catholic hierarchy had also refrained from taking a position on the issue. Today calm reigns again in this domain. By the time of the televised debate between Laurent Fabius and Jacques Chirac on 27 October 1985, if the question of manpower training arose, the education issue did not come up at all. Between 1981 and 1985, however, there was a veritable tempest which brought about the departure of the Minister of Education, Alain Savary, and the Prime Minister himself (14 July 1984). Without reviewing the details of these events, we would here like to do two things. First, we want to demonstrate the parallels between quarrels about schools and pedagogy and understand the links between them. Then we want to show why the Left ultimately suffered a double defeat. THE SCHOOL QUARREL The secular tradition of the French Left is widely known. Therefore it was not surprising that the Socialists tried, in keeping with their views, to modify the educational cancordat imposed by Michel Debré in 1959. The Right itself had already amended it for its own purposes with a 1971 law and the 1977 Guermeur Law, which allowed the private school directors (rather than the state’s recteurs) to appoint teachers in the private schools. Over the years, however, the French people had grown accustomed to direct state financing of private schools and the ranks of partisans of strict laïcité had thinned. Only 23 per cent of the French population favoured subsidies to private education in 1946, as compared with 46 per cent in 1951. In 1974, only 23 per cent opposed subsidy. Indeed, only 40 per cent of François Mitterrand’s votes were against any subsidy, versus 36 per cent in favour of complete financing and 19 per cent for partial state financing of private schools. The scholastic status quo was therefore largely accepted, even within the Left.

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The Socialists after 1981 were thus forced to choose between abstaining from raising the school question directly or approaching it very prudently. Even before the elections, Mitterrand had chosen the second route, affirming that the grand service public should result from ‘negotiation and not from a unilateral decision’ (letter of 1 May 1981). The Minister of Education, Alain Savary, adopted the same attitude, discreetly discussing the topic, and avoiding rash statements. It became apparent very quickly that the ‘united and secular service’ that a personal adviser had included in the President’s election programme could not be realized. It would have led to a costly and intolerable power struggle. The abandonment of this crucial proposal, the fundamental point for the laïcs, was decided before the summer of 1982. Careful observers would have noticed that, on 4 August 1982, the cabinet did not use the ‘united…service’ expression a single time when reporting on ongoing discussion about educational policy. From then on, Savary’s goals were to organize the progressive reconciliation and co-ordination of state and private education, with the latter to be subjected to the same rules as the former regarding size and school calendar. Catholic education constitutes more than 90 per cent of private education. The Catholic hierarchy, therefore, was a powerful voice. Conscious of the historical impact which a peace treaty concerning education signed with a leftist government would have, it negotiated cautiously and firmly, but with a clear desire to conclude. The proposed law finally adopted by the government on 8 April 1984, met with its approval excepting only one provision: the option for those private-sector schoolteachers who so desired to become civil servants. It was confidentially made known to the Elysée, however, that the prelates would not oppose this point if its implementation were discussed.1 The supporters of secular education rejected the compromise. It is obvious that they were not aware of the state of public opinion on the question. For example, certain officials of the National Committee on Secular Education questioned the accuracy of an IFOP opinion poll requested by the Minister on this subject in April 1982.2 Perhaps it was personally too costly for them to recognize that their ideal was no longer possible. But the fact remained that the government could not have scheduled a vote on the Savary bill without having overcome their resistance. The laïcs were believed to be committed to the Savary bill, therefore. Then, on 22 May 1984, Prime Minister Mauroy accepted Socialist amendments to stiffen the bill in a laïc sense which shattered the consensus. What followed is well known: the massive 24 June demonstration (blessed by three bishops), the obstructionist tactics announced by the senators and the final withdrawal of the bill by Mitterrand (12 and 14 July 1984). When all was said and done, the real stakes of this complex negotiation were limited. The principle of academic freedom was not questioned at all,

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nor was state financing of private education.3 However, what took place was an unprecedented mobilization marked by huge rallies like the one in Versailles on 5 March 1984, which involved one million participants. Private school Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) generated a movement that went far beyond their rather restricted circle. The opposition parties poured themselves into the movement. This was politically sound, of course, but the movement was out of their control as well. Various polls show that in June 1984, 55 per cent of the French people thought that the Savary bill infringed liberties and 56 per cent approved the demonstration of 24 June.4 How can we account for the vast size of this mobilization? Undoubtedly, religious allegiances played a role locally (in Brittany, for example). On the whole, however, they did not matter much. Approximately 7 per cent of the French populace are practising Catholics and only 16 per cent of school children attend private schools. Yet more than half the French condemned the Savary bill. Given these statistics, many French people without religious conviction apparently support a type of school to which they would not send their own children. Moreover, close to half of the parents of public-school pupils, 47 per cent to be exact, disapproved of the bill.5 Conversely, parents did not send their children to private schools primarily for religious reasons. According to the April 1982 IFOP poll (which confirmed previous results),6 religious education was only the sixth most important reason for selecting private schools. The revived war of the schools in 1984 differed from preceding ones, then. Catholics were no longer the first to defend their faith. In truth, parents were defending their children’s future. The 1982 IFOP poll states this fact eloquently: among those selecting public education, 85 per cent favoured retaining the option to choose between public and private education, and 58 per cent saw private education as a possible recourse.7 With the reforms of the Fifth Republic, public education became a vast bureaucracy with little pity for those who did not understand its inner workings. To enrol a child in the primary school of one’s choice was impossible: each school had a precise zone of recruitment, a ‘sector’. This ‘sectorization’ also determined enrolment in secondary school. Then followed ‘orientation’, a complex procedure which definitively decided the assignment of students to a particular section, and, as a result, to more or less prestigious future prospects. It was a rigid system, disliked by many parents, particularly those parents whose children were denied attendance in the desired section’s schools and those who quite simply did not understand the way enrolment worked and felt helpless. The private school therefore became a second chance, the best recourse against an undesired assignment or orientation. The proof of this was the large number of students transferring from public to private schools, especially those students at critical transition points such as the beginning of the sixième and the seconde. In 1980, 10 per cent of students in the seconde of private institutions had come from public schools. The vague

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discontent aroused by the educational bureaucracy, amplified by the new wave of anti-state liberalism, was without doubt the essential reason for the mobilization favouring instructional freedom. It was a demand for deregulation. THE PEDAGOGICAL DEBATE The 1983–84 education war differed from preceding campaigns in another way: it was accompanied by widespread questioning of the quality of public education. Until recently, it was generally acknowledged that the best instruction was to be found in the lycées and public sector schools. They offered a better qualified faculty, recruited through very competitive examinations, and a more rigorous screening of pupils before promotion to the next grade. With the exception of certain schools maintained by prestigious religious orders, private education could not rival that of the state. It is quite different today. For one thing, the faculty in private schools has been massively upgraded since the Debré Law, which allowed the recruitment of teachers who had the same background as those in the lycées. In addition to being equal in ability, they have the reputation for caring more about their pupils. Pedagogical reasons play a determining role in the choice of a private school; in fact, the reasons mentioned most frequently in the 1982 IFOP poll substantiate this claim. Respondents mentioned the following order of priorities: private institutions provide not only instruction, but also education (92 per cent); both discipline and the quality of the faculty are superior to those of state schools (90 per cent); and relations between parents and teachers are more fruitful (86 per cent). Next in line was the possibility of receiving religious instruction (64 per cent) and innovative pedagogical methods (59 per cent). Proximity to home was mentioned in only 37 per cent of the cases. Another survey carried out in northern France in 1976 placed better human and moral training as the first reason. Christian education was next, followed by the belief that ‘they take better care of our children’.8 As unkind to the public schools as the picture drawn by these polls appears, it does seem to be confirmed by the unequal satisfaction of parents with one or the other type of school. Sixty-two per cent of parents of privately educated children were very satisfied with the schools, 37 per cent were quite satisfied: a total of 99 per cent positive opinions. Parents of publicly educated children are only 76 per cent satisfied and, among them, only 25 per cent are ‘very satisfied’.9 The dissymmetry is striking. In this context, the policies of Alain Savary, which aimed to reduce the difference between the two forms of schooling, might be perceived as risking the degradation of supposed ‘good’ teaching. Why propose aligning good private teaching with a public rival not up to its standards? Opponents of the Savary bill defended the right to ‘difference’ in private

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education: 35 per cent felt that private education should not be required to follow the same rules as public.9 More generally, currently fashionable ideas were transferred to education: the state’s performance, by definition, would be worse than that of private enterprise. Consequently, in order to improve education, it ought to be freed of state supervision. Posters and flyers displaying a birdcage were widely distributed in May 1984, and they went so far as to proclaim, ‘Free the school’, implying that the schools were as bad as gulags. Paradoxically, the strictly pedagogical reforms undertaken by Savary did not benefit from this climate. The authors of the principal reports guiding the minister’s action (André de Peretti, Louis Legrand and Antoine Prost) disregarded the polls mentioned above, but nevertheless were sensitive to the effects of the bureaucratization of the educational system. In order to train teachers better and revitalize the schools or lycées,10 they proposed a decentralization of the system which would bolster the initiative of individual institutions. They hoped that each school would embark on its own educational project. They advocated better supervision of each pupil’s work through a tutorial system. Their proposals did not require tremendous upheaval, but moderate evolution affecting the methodology of teaching in the system more than its structures. This orientation probably responded to the needs of the moment for it rested on sound documentation. Moreover, teachers themselves endorsed the proposals widely. In 1985, 77 per cent of teachers favoured greater autonomy for educational institutions.11 Far from being supported by general opinion, however, this new pedagogical policy prompted a chorus of criticism. This pedagogical quarrel, which became increasingly widespread, in turn reinforced the private schools quarrel. The chronological overlap between these two opinion campaigns merits note. Louis Legrand delivered his report on secondary education (collèges) in December 1982, at the very moment when the Church hierarchy was refusing to discuss the initial propositions of the Minister of Education. A wave of protest arose immediately against the idea of instituting a ‘tutorial’ for school pupils. In the winter of 1983– 84 several books denounced lowered educational standards and pedagogical laxity.12 In recognition of their large readership, these topics became the subject of a debate on the television programme Apostrophes on 3 March 1984, exactly two days before the Versailles demonstration. This wave of criticism originated from two distinct sources. The conservative Right held that individual supervision of pupils’ work was an attempt at gaining an ideological or moral hold over children. This mobilized parents against the tutorial that would ‘take away their children’. In keeping with tradition, this position advocated authoritarian education where students had only to do what they were told. The vehemence of these criticisms was so excessive as to be suspect. For example, in Le Point (21 May 1984), Jean-François Revel stated that ‘all

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education in the proper sense is from now on positively forbidden’ in elementary schools, while Michel Debré asked the Minister of Education if it was true that it was henceforth forbidden to learn to read.13 More surprising, at least at first glance, was that the Right’s viewpoint was supported by part of the Left. The Trotskyite tendency of the FEN (the Fédération de l’Education Nationale, the teachers’ union), which split in 1984 to join Force Ouvrière, resurrected the positions of the intransigent defenders of secularism. It fought against an educational renewal that seemed to it to weaken the image of teachers and learning and to abandon administrative uniformity and therefore to threaten the equality of citizens and the unity of the nation. These criticisms were reiterated by many Parisian intellectuals who, from 1965 to 1968, had themselves been followers of the most dogmatic Marxism and were often doctrinaire Socialists. These voices joined those of the Right in calling for pedagogical ‘restoration’. They also indisputably found a receptive audience among teachers, especially those with the most advanced degrees, the oldest and those teaching in the better lycées.14 This campaign was unjustifiable. In fact, the pedagogical ‘restoration’ that it called for had been happening since the mid-1970s while the audience for liberal educational methods had continued to diminish. To criticize pedagogical innovation was therefore like finishing off a badly wounded soldier. Careful examination of the facts15 showed that selectivity had been strengthened in the schools and lycées for more than ten years, and that the famous ‘standards’ were certainly rising. None of this mattered much for the media which orchestrated the campaign. Instead they repeated ad nauseam that students knew nothing and that teachers no longer taught. In the end, the public began to believe it. THE FAILURE In July 1984, therefore, the government confronted double waves of opposition to the Savary bill and to any educational reform. It might have faced up to it, of course. At the time, some people believed that it had resolved to do so. But in the end the government preferred to abandon its plans. The bill on private education was withdrawn, purely and simply. Mitterrand hinted at it on 12 July and announced it explicitly on 14 July. Like everyone else, Savary learned of the decision while watching television. Apparently he still cannot understand it.16 In fact, it is difficult to understand why, when a historic compromise was on the verge of succeeding, the President of the Republic did not oppose the Socialist amendment which cast doubt on it. Why, later, after having hardened his stand, did he suddenly back down? Less ambitious texts, drafted by Savary’s successor and adopted in the autumn of 1984, subsequently settled some of the disputes that existed between the state and the private schools. But they did not chart any middle course. What happened was an armistice, not a peace treaty.

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This change on the private schools question did not necessarily imply an about-face on the pedagogical question, of course. The choice of JeanPierre Chevènement as Savary’s replacement settled this additional issue, however. The first words of the new minister were interpreted as the blow of the whistle ending recess, hinting that efforts at educational renewal had not been serious. Insisting on the scientific competence of teachers, on the solidity of the knowledge to be transmitted and the indispensable effort and work of students, without mentioning the equally critical need to adapt instruction to the actual needs of students and to appeal to their interests, Chevènement accepted an opposition between learning and students that one would have believed outdated, siding with the ‘scholars’ and not the ‘teachers’. This speech was also greeted with enthusiasm by those considered the most reactionary inhabitants of the university, the Société des Agrégés and Union Nationale Interuniversitaire.17 The rightwing press did not spare its praise, either. Subsequently, the minister’s speeches became more balanced. On more than one question he pursued the policies of his predecessor, in the reform of collèges, for example. But the new programmes and instructions for elementary schools, divided by disciplines, were marked by their encyclopaedism and insistence on the primacy of teacher initiatives. The activities of students appeared, in their light, to be the teacher’s job. It probably was appropriate to re-establish a certain balance following the overemphasis on student ‘awakening’ in 1969. The programmes of 1977, 1978 and 1980 had already attempted to redress things, however. By 1984 the pendulum had gone well beyond the point of equilibrium.18 The public was elated. On 2 September 1985 Le Point commented on a poll in which lycée students rated their teachers. The number one criticism of their teachers was the lack of communication (30 per cent), ranking well ahead of professional incompetence (21.8 per cent). Being able to interest students in learning (21 per cent) came before competence (19.5 per cent) in the definition of a good teacher, and indifference came just after incompetence in that of the bad teacher (16.1 per cent and 17.6 per cent). Le Point’s headline ran: ‘Profs reinstated’ with the subtitle: ‘What a revolution! The end of the 1968-style dilettantism.’19 CONCLUSION The place which state education holds in the French democratic tradition is well known. The Republic was basically universal suffrage plus free, obligatory and secular schooling. As far as matters of schooling were concerned, the Left traditionally pursued three objectives: democratization, secularism and teaching methods focused on the student. These three features characterized the work of Jules Ferry. But Ferry, as minister, was not only responsible for the bills on free, compulsory and secular primary schooling, but he also mentioned active teaching methods and active

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school and lycée curricula, in opposition to the authoritarian methods ascribed to the congréganistes who were men of dogma. Ferry hoped ‘to dictate the lesson to the child as a judgment no longer, but to make him find it…to excite and awaken the spontaneity of the child…instead of imprisoning him in rules already made’.20 These three features surfaced again in the major text serving as a reference for the Left from 1945 to 1968, the—unrealized—Langevin-Wallon plan (1947). With respect to these objectives, where did the recent Socialist experiment stand? It definitely honoured democratization (in the wider sense of distribution), in particular with Chevènement’s recent goal of 80 per cent of the youth earning the baccalauréat. On laïcité things are less clear. The adversaries of secularism were incontestably at the centre of the movement that swept away the Savary bill. Its withdrawal was therefore a defeat for the secularists. But one cannot forget that they contributed to this final defeat. On the whole they preferred compromise on the official existence of subsidized private education, rather than run the risk of progressive unification which might introduce pluralism into the very bosom of the state school.21 In a way, both the secularists and their adversaries refused an evolution in which their identities would have been at risk. The attitude of the laïcs may be interpreted either as fidelity to their tradition or rigidity in so far as their ideal proved inapplicable in presentday society. It must therefore be concluded that the Socialists were the victims of the vast international trend of anti-state liberalism, of a hostility to regulations reinforced by the bureaucratic evolution of the school system and of their own refusal to modernize their reform plans. The same ambiguity was found in pedagogy. In a sense, the restoration answers the very conservative demands of a population anxious about order, security and the newly unruly behaviour of youth. If the schoolmaster ‘on high’ is reinstated, it is to control students better and instil in them a respect for authority. Praise for authoritarian teaching here serves the moral order. The Left assuredly contradicts itself in this dogmatism. But not all of the Left. A certain Jacobin tradition leads parts of the Left directly to such dogmatism. Despite their political roots in this tradition, the teachers are divided. The decentralizing discourse of Savary, obliging them to face their responsibilities toward students, upset them. Chevènement’s discourse reassured them, in contrast, by absolving them of responsibility for their students’ failure and reaffirming their identity as specialists in a discipline. Even if such teachers are not a majority, many adhere to this vision of their function. More profoundly, French society is today settling some of the issues with its schools which were raised in 1968. Among teachers, the divisions provoked by the ‘events’ of 1968 have not been forgotten. Some have been seeking revenge. Others have been converted to 1968 ideals. Still

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others, having become teachers, have repudiated the earlier identities which they had held as students at the time. Passions are, therefore, quick to flare up. Outside the teaching profession few have forgotten that the explosion of 1968 came from the universities. This fact conjures up a vague danger to be averted. A door through which unforeseeable demons might one day enter should be kept tightly closed. A minister of the Left like Savary, despite his caution and reason, seemed, to the Right, to open that door by his liberal initiatives. A more authoritarian leftist minister could, on the contrary, avert the peril on a lasting basis: Chevènement chased away the shadows of 1968. Because of this, and because economic crisis and unemployment constitute effective antidotes to generous Utopias, the Right in power does not fear such demons. NOTES 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10

11 12

13 14

Alain Savary, En toute liberté (Paris, Hachette, 1985), p. 96. Ibid., p. 127. Complete text of the bill, ibid., p. 220. Polls published respectively by Paris-Match (8 June 1984); and La Croix (22 June 1984). Poll published by La Croix (22 June 1984). Cf. a poll carried out by the IFOP in 1978 and the Catholic weekly La Vie, which cited the following situation regarding the reasons behind choosing private education: the seriousness of the studies (25 per cent), religious education (21 per cent), which was equal to discipline and supervision of the students. Also Robert Ballion, ‘L’enseignement privé, une école sur mesure’, Revue française de sociologie (April-June 1980). Alain Savary, En toute liberté p. 125–6. Poll cited by the Cabiers de l’actualité religieuse et sociale (15 February–1 March 1982), p. 182. Poll published in Le Matin (30 May 1984). André de Peretti, La Formation des personnels de l’Education nationale (Paris, Documentation Française, 1982); Louis Legrand, Pour un collège démocratique (Paris, Documentation Française, 1983); Antoine Prost, Les Lycées et leurs études au seuil du XXIe siècle (Paris, Centre national de documentation pédagogique, 1983). Poll from Le Monde (10 September 1985). Among others, see Jacqueline de Romilly, L’enseignement en détresse (Paris, Julliard, 1983); Maurice T.Maschino, Voulez-vous vraiment des enfants idiots? (Paris, Hachette, 1984); Jean-Pierre Despin, Marie-Claude Bartholi, Le Poisson rouge dans le Perrier (Paris, Criterion, 1983); M.Jumilhac, Le Massacre des innocents (Paris, Plon, 1984). Jean-Claude Milner’s De l’école (Paris, Seuil, 1984) came a little later, along with Hélène Huot’s Et voilà pourquoi ils ne savent pas lire (Paris, Minerve, 1985). See also the special issue of Le Débat, September 1984. Written question. The Le Monde poll which we have already cited clearly shows this phenomenon.

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15 We tried this in our own report and, more recently, in Eloge des Pédagogues (Paris, Seuil, 1985), supporting our points on the age of students, the evolution of the rate of failure and international studies. 16 Alain Savary, En toute liberté, pp. 179–80. 17 See the reaction to the press conference of the minister at the 1984 rentrée. 18 Ministère de l’Education nationale, Ecole élémentaire, Programmes et instructions (Paris, Centre national de documentation pédagogique, 1985). 19 The poll at issue was done in collaboration with Phospore, a magazine for lycéens which commented upon it somewhat differently. See Phospore, September 1985, which also published an interview with the minister in which students are very important. 20 Speech to the pedagogical congress, 2 April 1980, in Robiquet, Volume III, p. 320. 21 I agree here with Jean-Marie Mayeur, ‘La Guerre Scolaire’, XXe siècle, revue d’histoire, January-March 1985, p. 107.

24 Is differentiated teaching out of date? Philippe Meirieu

Five years ago in his preface to the first edition of the book from which this chapter is drawn, Daniel Hameline recalled that the history of schoolteaching is a ‘faltering history’. Undoubtedly this point could be illustrated today by the history of differentiated education: indeed, several centuries before the introduction of this term by Louis Legrand in 1973, there were already traces of his idea in the instructions given by J.-B. de La Salle in 1706 for the running of his schools;1 in them, he stressed the importance of the individual monitoring of pupils and asked for the homogenizing effects of grouping in classes to be offset by a thorough examination of the progress of each pupil and the individual setting of exercises carefully selected for the level that he had reached. Two centuries later, in her school in Dalton, Massachusetts, Miss Parkhurst developed a ‘teaching plan’ in which, for each subject and each class level, the programme was divided into ten monthly contracts, themselves broken down into weekly tasks organized by the teachers according to the pupils’ needs. A few years later, Washburne, in the school in Winnetka, after a major survey of children’s potential for assimilation, devised the abolition of classes and their replacement by progressions strictly adapted to individual needs. Certainly, this was imbued with Taylorian ideas, which were very fashionable at that time in the economic field, and envisaged a form of education which we would more readily describe as ‘breaking in’; but the work that he carried out was none the less considerable. Some time later, Freinet, from quite a different perspective, proposed, alongside group activities designed to ensure the child’s socialization and the completion of learning, a system of self-marked files allowing each child to progress at his or her own pace and according to needs identified with the teacher. In a totally different ideological and institutional context but in an unquestionably close relation educationally, Pierre Fauré developed what he called ‘individualised communal teaching’2 and he too suggested that, for at least part of the school timetable, the running of the class in imposed groups, based on the still mistaken belief in the homogeneousness of pupils, should be suspended and replaced by individual and small-group activities allowing the child to be active and involved in an education

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programme suited to him or her. We must also cite Claparede and Cousinet, Dottrens, Oury and many others who have all endeavoured to orchestrate this key idea whose simplicity of wording is perhaps misleading as to the ease of its implementation: ‘It is the child who learns and no one can learn in his place…And since no two pupils are identical, there is no successful learning without differentiated teaching’. THE REASONS WHICH HAVE GOVERNED THE EMERGENCY OF DIFFERENTIATED TEACHING ARE MORE TOPICAL THAN EVER How then can the considerable success of the concept of differentiated teaching in the mid-1980s be explained? What more did it contribute that had not already been talked about in education for a long time? Was the context so special that words which had for so long been considered of marginal importance could finally be accepted by many teachers and even listened to by those in charge of the education system?3 Analysis of these questions here would require lengthy exposition and it is no doubt still too soon to carry this out dispassionately. Nevertheless, perhaps we can put forward some hypotheses. At first, differentiated teaching undoubtedly seemed to be an approach which included both the ideas of synthesis and of opening up: it incorporated the contributions made by different teaching trends and, without either denying their specific nature or misrepresenting their propositions, made it possible to bring them together in the service of the pupils. It acknowledged its debts and safeguarded what it borrowed without toppling over into an ill-assorted mishmash: its philosophy was that of the ‘pupil as subject’, teaching where autonomy is the ability gradually to direct one’s own learning oneself, a concept of social relationships as having both to recognise diversity and strive for solidarity, promoting what specifies and seeking what unifies, all of this making it possible to include techniques, which sometimes already existed, within a ‘teaching code of ethics’ which no doubt gave them more weight and meaning. Perhaps too we have had enough of the ‘wars of religion’ which were already compromising the credibility of educational discourse and in which at times militants exhausted themselves, each ‘clique’ using indisputable contributions (such as the social psychology of groups, genetic or differential psychology, taxonomical approaches) to support their claim to hold the only truth acceptable from an educational point of view and putting forward their tools as the only acceptable remedies for academic failure when they were not systematically excommunicating other researchers. Differentiated teaching could, then, represent a possible way out of dogmatism, to move beyond quarrels and sterile confrontations into something other than the weak consensus where ‘all things are equal since the intentions are good’.

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For differentiation, all things are not equal inasmuch as they are not all ‘good’ for every pupil, every objective, every situation; but the propositions of some are admissible inasmuch as examining them makes it possible to judge their relevance and the conditions for their correct use. In a way, we have given up a concept where ‘the enemy’ was unfortunately too often represented as ‘the other model’ in favour of an idea which is open without being ‘weak’ and where the enemy has at last become everything which damages and separates people and which does not allow them to develop differently or to recognise each other as possessing the same humanity, capable of working at ways of living together. Is further emphasis of this aspect of differentiated teaching needed to underline its topicality? As confrontation between the different tools of cognitive educability hardens, as certain concepts of learning or evaluation try to establish themselves as the only ones able to overcome academic failure, as positivist experimentalism claims to arbitrate disagreements which bring people into conflict without always throwing light on its own presuppositions, differentiated teaching can, more than ever, represent a possible perspective from which to begin less biased exchanges. This would be something like a ‘code of ethics for educational communication’, a commitment to rational examination which avoids both relativism and universalism, benevolent ideological soft soap and a priori external prescriptiveness. In a way it would be a question of controlling our exchanges by questioning the models which are presented to us according to the three poles which are always found in a teaching proposition: the axiological pole which—implicitly or explicitly—promotes values and cultural representations, of the learner, of the trainer and of the relationships which they have to maintain, the psychological pole which draws on knowledge derived from a particular branch of psychology; and the praxeological pole which formalizes tools enabling us to examine reality and change it. Differentiated teaching could therefore ask all the models which have the field today: What form of ‘educational sociality’ are you trying to promote? Which dimensions of the learner do you take into account? What can be done with your tools? Where, when, for whom and why are they relevant? In a word, or rather a question, what place can you fill in the plan for a ‘pluralist school’ which seems to us today to be both socially necessary and ethically essential? But if differentiated teaching is still topical, if it is, more than ever, required to complete and control all the educational practices which are proposed, it must not be forgotten that this is because of the rise of a major phenomenon, characteristic of the contemporary educational institution: the heterogeneousness of pupils and the growing social pressure on schools. For here we are dealing with an unprecedented change: until now, by and large, schools dispensed learning to children prepared to receive it and more or less all of these children had a cognitive and social profile

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built up through their contact with stimuli from their environment and precisely defining their ‘academic aptitude’. Now if we no longer want to reserve the benefits of schooling exclusively for these pupils but to share them out among the majority so that they can truly become protagonists in the particularly complex society which awaits them, then we must, quite obviously, differentiate the modes of access to learning. If we want the farmer to understand the phenomenon of farming subsidies and to weigh up the ecological implications of his decisions, if we want the manual worker and the clerical worker to participate constructively in consideration of their working tools and to have access to an understanding of economic issues without which the slightest scrutiny of those above them in the hierarchy will be experienced as a question of authority, if we want continuous training to become widespread, connective tissue to form, cultural and political debate to avoid demagoguery and manipulation by the media, then raising the general level of knowledge is a requirement that cannot be ignored. And differentiated teaching, because it combines radicalism in its objectives and relativity in its methods, because it thus reverses the traditionally selective way in which the institution of school works, might well be the only way of reaching it. In that case, it would not have been a new fashion itself destined to be superseded soon by other propositions; but it would in a way represent the academic projection of our social and political ideal, the institutional and educational incarnation of the ‘duties of present generations’ which, as Jacques Attali has clearly shown, must be defined today by ‘the rights of future generations’.4 DIFFERENTIATED TEACHING STILL HAS TO BE EXTENDED IN SEVERAL DIRECTIONS So differentiated education is not out of date. But neither is it rigidly set, and we would like to suggest here, more or less concisely, the working tracks which it invites us to explore in order to remain faithful to our original idea which we have just briefly repeated above. • Let us first recall, in a few sentences because we have enlarged on it at great length elsewhere,5 the need to set up, simultaneously with teaching differentiation, structures for methodological guidance where metacognition will be the practice with pupils. Giving regular consideration together to the way in which learning takes place, gradually identifying to oneself the most effective procedures, putting together a cognitive repertoire consisting of enough indicators to represent the required tasks, treatment programmes to be used according to the problems encountered, attitudes to be developed in the different situations confronted, this really is the key to intellectual effectiveness. In this sense,

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methodological guidance is neither a part of teaching differentiation nor a move beyond it, it is the gradual setting up by the pupil him or herself of a psychic apparatus directing differentiation processes. And we believe that this is the only way of proceeding which is both technically possible and morally acceptable. Indeed, the form of differentiation which aims at a differentiated dispensing of knowledge and methods, organized by the teacher based on an indisputable preliminary diagnosis, would be so difficult to organize that it would lead to the indefinite postponement of action in order to meet the requirements of the analysis. What is more, such a plan would deprive the pupil of the possibility of gradually forming the subject of his own education, which clearly remains our final aim. • A second direction of work, whose importance we had doubtless underestimated, concerns the need to strengthen education programmes around core objectives6 before beginning the differentiation of practices. As Jean-Pierre Astolfi7 has explained very well, differentiation introduces additional complexity into education practices and this is only tolerable if it is supported by preliminary ‘simplification’ work. It is therefore without doubt necessary to rethink our teaching programmes. But this has nothing to do with casually giving up part of these programmes or superficially examining their content in order to separate what is still topical from what has become outdated. Identifying core objectives calls for indepth educational work in each subject, the precise identification of the tasks which will be required of the pupils at each level of education and of the problems which they will have to solve in order to see them through. It is, to our mind, only in this way that one can fruitfully reach the objectives whose nature is, in the true sense of the word, operational. The operationality of objectives has, in fact, often been compared to the unambiguous way in which they are worded and to the fact that they describe precisely the behaviour expected of the learner. Quite obviously, this was a considerable advance in educational thinking but one which has not always made it possible to avoid formalism or to distinguish the objectives which are really important for the learner’s progress. On the other hand, by linking the objectives to the problems which a pupil encounters in carrying out a task, we may hope to identify both conceptual objectives (those which give meaning to a subject and the mastery of which makes it possible to ‘read’ effectively the ‘reality’ of ‘subject aims’) and procedural objectives (which represent the tools which are indispensable for processing and transforming these aims). Thus, if in French in the first year of secondary school, we consider that a pupil must know how to write a description of a person (which will, of course, constitute only one of many academic tasks), we must ask ourselves what problems he will encounter in achieving this: some of them, quite obviously, will be connected with the mastery of the actual concept of describing someone

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and with identifying the attributes of this concept in literary terms and at the level of expression required in the first year, the study of several descriptions, research on their common points, individually or in small groups, will be particularly effective here. But this work will have to be completed by the study of a certain number of operational procedures such as spelling, syntax and style: among these, the use of pronouns will be very important as this is one of the specific features of written as opposed to oral description.8 From this example it can clearly be seen that it will not be possible from a cursory examination of current programmes to decide which core objectives to pursue. These can only be determined by examining the aims assigned to education, identifying the academic tasks which pupils should be enabled to master at each level of the curriculum and pinpointing the problems which the pupils will have to solve in order to carry out these tasks. Clearly this work is difficult and largely remains to be done, but it seems to us vital so that teaching differentiation can introduce a variety of aids and methods into the educational presentation of a relatively few ‘nodal points’ to which more time can be devoted and for which complex systems can be set up. We will thus move away from a notion of differentiation, which is still too often ‘programmatic’ and linear, and commit ourselves firmly to thinking in terms of more comprehensive and open-ended ‘problem situations’.9 • The fact remains that differentiation introduced in this way is characterized by its essentially instrumental nature and leaves little room for a dimension of learning which is none the less fundamental and also opens up recognition of individual differences: the dimension of meaning. As it happens, moreover, many teams working with us have wondered about this point just when others in other contexts were making the same observations. Philippe Perrenoud, at a symposium held in November 1989, remarked that, ‘while working towards the differentiation of education, a new stage of thinking is entered: asking oneself about the meaning of academic work and learning for the pupils. No matter how differentiated it is, ‘education will not be effective if its content so often remains alien to pupils’ experiences and interests and if the educational contract leaves so little room for individuals and their extra-curricular experience.’10 Given such a complex problem, we can obviously only begin to prepare the ground. So let us ask ourselves at what levels learning can have meaning for a learner. In order to make some headway on this question, in broad outline, three pairs of notions can be made use of: • Learning can first of all have meaning because it answers a question that has already been asked or because it solves a problem that has already been encountered: in this case, we will say that it is completed uphill. It can

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also derive meaning in relation to a problem that can be imagined or anticipated: in this case, we will speak of downhill completion. • Next, learning can have meaning at a ‘functional’ level, because the problems encountered or anticipated are of a more ‘technical’ nature; it can also have meaning at a ‘symbolic’ level, because the questions to which it relates refer to issues of a more personal kind, whether that is in the form of a challenge to be accepted, a mystery to be solved, or an image of oneself to be set or restored. • Finally, learning can have meaning with reference to ‘school activities’, because it is in class during an exercise or activity that problems have emerged or will emerge; or it can have meaning with reference to extracurricular activities because in the family, social or economic environment, the pupil has been confronted with or has confronted questions which new learning will help to resolve. Of course, these three pairs of notions are put forward here because of their heuristic fecundity in educational terms. In many respects, the contrasts which they represent are artificial: completion uphill is only possible if, in one way or another, the problem encountered in the past is also projected into the future; similarly, learning which we have called ‘functional’ still has repercussions at the symbolic level in so far as it contributes to the development of the person, and equally any symbolic issue reflects a certain functionality at the level of personal psyche;

Figure 24.1 Analysing the ‘dimensions of meaning’ present in a teaching situation.

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finally, the distinction between activities with school or extra-curricular references is itself debatable inasmuch as the former are often inspired by the latter and the latter model the former. The fact remains that these three pairs can be made use of to obtain Figure 24.1 which makes it possible to analyze a teaching situation; through it, we will ask ourselves which ‘dimensions of meaning’ are present here or, in other words, what opportunities to ‘derive meaning’ pupils can find in it. Thus, if one examines a teaching situation where the teacher, without any special preparation, gives a talk on a topic, we can ask ourselves about what opportunities to ‘derive meaning’ the pupils are given: doubtless some of them, having been trained beforehand, will understand his aim by trying to imagine the assessment test which they will be given a few days or months later, but this requires training in thinking ahead which, if it has not been taken care of by the school, is inevitably left to the random nature of social situations. Other pupils, of course, will derive meaning from what the teacher says because for them it corresponds to a specific previous experience or because there is a whole system of identification between them and it. But, on the whole, there is the danger in all this of not stimulating many people and leaving the majority of pupils —those who are not, as it is usually put, already ‘motivated’ —faced with knowledge which is suspended in a purely ‘educational’ sphere without any possibility of the least significance being attached to it. On the other hand, if the teacher has previously set a task in which, an obstacle having emerged, he or she has been able to articulate a learning objective, if he or she has set up a problem situation and involved the class in observing vocational situations capable of giving meaning to what is being taught, if he or she has been able to stimulate the desire to learn through his or her liability to create a puzzle or to trigger a playful response, if he or she has worked with each pupil on the development of a personal or vocational plan, then he or she has multiplied the pupils’ chances of finding a meaning, of finding sense in what he or she says. And this is a particularly important dimension of teaching differentiation for us today. • A lot of other themes would merit development, each of them evidence, in its way, of the vigour and relevance of differentiated teaching, as well as the need to carry on with research and experimentation. We would like, in conclusion, to touch on one theme which in itself would require several complete pieces of work: indeed, surely the very idea of teaching differentiation may well enable us to question the traditional process of schooling itself as the only way of ensuring the training of young people. Too often, in fact, we forget that school is only a means, invented two or three centuries ago in a specific cultural environment, of meeting one objective which was—and still is—training. Of course, we must not set to work too quickly in this area: school, despite the criticisms of Ivan

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Illich,11 is still necessary as a time and place where the constraints of production are suspended, a space where immediate efficiency can be postponed in order to take time to learn without fear of social sanction, wasting material, making mistakes, analysing them so as not to repeat them. School is a necessary place for deferring social complexity, the useless repetition of well-mastered tasks; it is an indispensable place to offset the inevitable randomness of environmental stimulation. But school is also a place where formalism and didacticism today screen off the knowledge which it is responsible for passing on, where the ‘educational contract’ excessively favours a few particularly well-suited pupils, where the most effective means and people are not always available to organize certain kinds of learning. That is why we have suggested 12 making sure that the fundamental experiences of the institution of school as a place free from the constraints of production and social randomness is preserved, but also that, persistently and resourcefully, it is made more flexible by the introduction of structures which might break up the monolithic way in which the class functions by introducing differentiated spaces: areas for project work, where, faced with tasks, the pupils can discover obstacles and turn them into objectives; resource areas, where all kinds of means can be put at the disposal of learners using all the technology at our disposal today; guidance areas, where the learner, individually, can find someone to listen to him or her, someone able to help him or her discover a learning strategy, assess results and adapt methods. No doubt these suggestions will seem Utopian to many. But perhaps Utopia is one of our greatest duties today, if we do not want in schools the boredom, which we know one day comes out of monotony, as much as anger or even failure, to sound the death knell for our hopes. Differentiated teaching is definitely not out of date It is even, to our mind, the only horizon possible today for the future of schools and so for our future. We can only hope that this horizon does not move back as we move towards it and put first and foremost our teaching resolution and passion on which the credibility of our ventures and the success of our projects depend. NOTES 1 2 3

Some extracts from J.-B. de La Salle’s text will be found in Différencier la pédagogie: des objectifs à l’aide individualisée, Cahiers pédagogiques, Paris, 1989, p. 50. Pierre Faure, Un enseignement personnalisé et communautaire, Casterman, Tournai, 1979. Is it necessary to recall that the Education Act passed by parliament in July 1989 specifically cites differentiated teaching as one of the favoured means of giving more opportunity to each pupil and enabling him or her to succeed to the best of his or her ability in the school system?

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‘L’au-delà du capitalisme’, Nouvel Observateur, 22–28 March 1990, p. 69. See Enseigner, scénario pour un métier nouveau, E.S.F., Paris, 2nd edition, 1990. 6 Louis Legrand develops the notion of key objectives in La Differentiation pédagogique, Scarabée, Paris, 1986, in particular p.97 et seq. 7 ‘Les 3 J de la pédagogie differenciée’, Différencier la pédagogie, des objectifs à l’aide individualisée, Cahiers pédagogiques, Paris, 1989, p.165–174. 8 I can say: ‘I saw a man arrive. The man was carrying a suitcase. The suitcase seemed heavy.’ But it would be better to write: ‘I saw a man arrive; he was carrying a suitcase which seemed heavy.’ This is the kind of transformation work (use of pronouns) that we do, for example, when we are working on the transcription of a piece of speech; this is what we should do ‘spontaneously’ when we write. 9 See Apprendre…oui, mais comment, E.S.F., Paris, 5th edition, 1990, in particular, p. 164–179. 10 ‘L’élève à l’école: réflexions sociologiques’, in CO-information, Geneva, 1990– 1, p.56–67 (p.64). 11 See Une société sans école, Le Seuil, Paris, 1971. 12 ‘Faut-il en finir avec la classe’, in Le Binet-Simon, No. 621, 1989, pp. 29–39.

25 Academic failure, social failure Teaching in the lost suburbs Maurice Lemoine

At each outbreak of violence in the suburbs, the French government responds with emergency meetings followed by the high-profile announcement of ad hoc arrangements. But stopgap measures are no substitute for policy. And the courage of some teachers, confronted with poverty, abuse and exclusion, is not enough. Can we isolate education, or architecture, from the general organisation of the urban infrastructure and, beyond that from current values in society as a whole? Colombes, Aulnay, Mantes-la-Jolie, les Minguettes, the northern districts of Marseille, Vaulx-en-Velin…Concrete shadows and dormitory towns, pockets of poverty, sensitive islands, town centres falling apart, housing projects and lost suburbs. Scores of people unemployed, not to mention those in temporary work: the ‘stairwell’ generation. Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb, the Francs-Moisins housing estate, twelve levels numbered from 1 to 12, twelve thousand souls. One teacher is sceptical: ‘Frankly, I’m surprised that it hasn’t exploded yet.’ This year Dominique Mulcey, an English teacher at the neighbouring collège, has had ‘a bonus’ with the first year: twenty-three pupils per class— in previous years it was twenty-seven or twenty-eight. ‘Eleven are the right age, 11 years old. In previous years, the majority were 13 or 14!’ In her collège [lower secondary school for 11–15-year-olds] in Tours, Geneviève Decosse has classes of twenty-eight or more. ‘Which, in a ZUP [Priority Urban Zone], with pupils of all nationalities, when you’re a French teacher, makes the situation difficult.’ Out of her five classes, three have problems. In all of them, a good quarter of the pupils are heading for trouble. Sons and daughters of the most destitute, they live for the moment and come to school to meet up with their friends. They are not really aware of being on a different cultural wavelength or of the difficulties that they will encounter in the future. They don’t keep up for reasons which have more to do with the outside world than with school. ‘What they learn on Friday is forgotten by Monday. At 14 or 15 a sense of repeated failure crystallises in the pupil’s head.’

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They are there. Vegetating. Older and older. With a lost expression. As passive as in front of the television. ‘At times’, laughs Dominique Richard, a teacher specializing in pupils with learning difficulties, in a special education department (SES)1. ‘I feel as if I’m on TV. The only difference is, they can’t switch channels.’ When they’re not creating an extraordinary shambles in class, flirting with criminality or driving the more fragile teachers to despair or a nervous breakdown. ‘Age is a big problem. In the collège we now have school communities which are geared more towards 14- to 16-year-olds, even 17-year-olds. In the vocational lycée, we had young people leaving with the BEP [a vocational certificate] at about 16. Currently, with the vocational baccalauréat, they’re leaving at 20 or 21! The population has changed, we can’t ask the same of them as before.’ Often, a mere assistant teacher, with no experience, has to face the ‘monsters’. To plug the gaps, make up staff numbers, fill vacant posts. With no or very little training, appointed to the most exposed places, they make it possible to keep the system running cheaply. They get by as well as they can. There is a great lack of understanding between teachers and pupils, and a feeling of total disconnectedness by the former in relation to the environment in which these young people live. Go to the housing estate to meet some parents? ‘I must admit that, when I leave the school’, confesses Alain Delamarche, ‘having worked six or seven hours, I’m shattered, worn out. If I had to go on…especially as it isn’t over, there’s work to mark, lessons to prepare—I give up! It’s hard to take this destitution all the time, you need to get some fresh air.’ Each year, a hundred thousand youngsters leave school without a single qualification. At the dawn of the year 2000, getting 80 per cent of an age-group to baccalauréat level? Such is the challenge issued, somewhat recklessly, by the politicians. In order to meet it, there is one principle: the ‘individualization’ of education. The Education Act of 1989 is clear on this point. ‘Individualize?’ asks Geneviève Decosse. ‘Individualizing is being able to speak to each child for three or four minutes about their problems, exercises that they haven’t understood, and so on. With fifteen pupils, okay. With twenty-eight, we’re kidding ourselves.’ ‘Well’, Dominique Richard points out, ‘as a last resort, we get round it by individualising the marking. We don’t mark everything. We have two kinds of marking: one showing the pupil his or her progress, and the real sanction, the one which will be on the report.’ Other parameters are added. The teachers are not very comfortable talking about them. They phrase their remarks carefully, anxious not to see their thoughts misrepresented. Gilbert Huguet, a German teacher at Aulnay: ‘There is no ambiguity. We are all in favour of raising the level of knowledge of the maximum number of students. The problem is you can’t launch that as a slogan. It’s much more complex.’

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Taken up unanimously, the ‘80 per cent passing the baccalauréat’ slogan has led to some perverse behaviour. Didier Girauteau, a mathematics teacher at the same lycée in Aulne, observes: ‘It was flung at the population without any explanation. As a result, parents perceived it as: all our children are going to become doctors, senior executives, and so on. Obviously, that isn’t true!’ The first result was more and more difficulty in making pupils repeat a year. They generally move up from one year to another automatically, at their parents’ request. ‘I realized this last year’, admits Dominique Mulcey at Saint-Denis. ‘The children say: “Even if I get low marks in everything, I don’t care, I get through.” When they come to face the world of work, they won’t have been trained to put any effort into their work and they won’t go far!’ Staggering numbers of pupils reach baccalauréat level in this way, at the end of an unremitting effort by teachers. ‘But what they haven’t been told is that they won’t be able to go on to higher education. There is already enormous wastage there from the first year onwards. Bac or not, they’ll find themselves with nothing, destined for the job centre. It’s a waste of public money. It would be better to make the pupils do courses where they would succeed.’ Out of the twenty-six metropolitan area education authorities, Creteil, in the area around Paris, comes last in terms of rate of entry to the baccalauréat, including the vocational one. According to the chief education officer himself, Christian Forestier, 30 per cent of non-Frenchspeaking pupils educated in France are in this area education authority, as well as 20 per cent of French pupils of foreign origin. At the beginning of the last school year, a hypervoluntarist policy allowed rates of pupils moving up into the final year of secondary school to come into line ‘in forced march’ with the national average. The result was remarkable, and remarked upon. Was it a statistical success? ‘The chief education officer called us together and the gist of what he said was: the situation must be sorted out. Since so many pupils are taking science subjects elsewhere, I want as many in the Créteil area education authority. And in a bureaucratic way, it was decided that we had to make so many pupils take such and such a course.’ The sense of relinquishing their power to give pupils guidance on courses is exasperating and discouraging. ‘Now when we have staff meetings to discuss pupils’ progress, we just make suggestions, the number of passes in the exams is more or less programmed! There’s no longer any real consideration of a pupil’s future, his or her abilities and motivations.’ Gérard Lagrost, a PE teacher at the Voillaume lycée in Aulnay, in forceful language, with militant tendencies, appeals to the foundations of secular education: ‘We think in percentage terms. We manage flows. I put myself in the humanist tradition of education and I’m faced with the following problem: how to guarantee each individual the optimum development of his or her potential?’

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SELECTION DETERMINED BY NON-EGALITARIAN MECHANISMS The ambiguous message of ‘80 per cent to baccalauréat level’ has only reinforced the idea that without academic knowledge there is no salvation. At a time when a sharp drop in numbers of pupils going into vocational education is being observed, when more than 5,000 places for apprenticeships (and slightly fewer for the vocational lycée) are available to train people, for example, for the building trade—a sector where a young person with a vocational training certificate is sure to be taken on. Everyone knows that a good pupil taking a course in ‘industrial engineering and automation’ is going to find work. The technical subjects which lead to jobs are seeing their recruitment fall off and for obvious reasons: only young people who have failed at everything else are put into them. ‘If guidance on courses does not take place under the right conditions’, warns Franck Boutaric, a teacher at Aulnay, ‘non-egalitarian mechanisms in society will come fully into play. And subsequent selection will be all the more serious given that it will not be based on the criteria of merit, potential or competence, but on social criteria. It will put those who were in a position of weakness from the start at an even greater disadvantage.’ It would be unfair not to recognize the efforts of successive governments over a period of years. Since 1981, the school plans and priority education zones (ZEPs) of the ‘Savary reform’ have changed life in the collèges. The fight against academic failure goes on through a non-egalitarian distribution of resources for the benefit of the most disadvantaged. Educational action plans (PAEs) 2 help to open schools up to their environment and encourage teachers to work in teams. A LOT OF MONEY BUT GREAT WASTE ‘I have the impression’, says Marie Ploux, a teacher of history and geography, ‘that the PAEs have served to give a false image of the collège, a sort of shop window. There are some very good experiences and it’s not a question of throwing the baby out with the bath water. But fundamentally, the pupils’ relationship with work hasn’t changed.’ Some go further: for some years, there’s been plenty of money available, but it corresponds neither to requests or to needs. The government says: ‘You want to set up dancing lessons? Make a plan, we’ll give you so much funding.’ ‘The problem being’, explains Alain Delamarche, a qualified secondary school teacher, ‘that we have to have numerous meetings, everything has to go through the principal, up to the schools inspectorate, then to the education offices, and before a committee.’ It takes three to six months to get two or three thousand francs. ‘And when we finally get the money, it’s too late. But they ask us to show how it’s

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been used!’ All without any follow-up, without knowing what will happen the next year, with what financial resources: ‘There’s an impression of great waste.’ At the same time, investment in the ZEPs is declining. For the collèges, as for the primary schools, a slight improvement in academic results is being observed, but not in the guidance of the pupils concerned. ‘When a headteacher tells us: “I’ve got an additional half-supervisor”’, one in Paris says, ‘we wonder what the person will have wrong with them!’ ‘Some resources are allocated’, a provincial colleague echoes, ‘half-posts for remedial classes, but on the other hand they increase pupil numbers, which means that it’s tit for tat.’ Even though everyone, including the minister, is aware that early schooling is one of the ways of fighting academic failure, in the Colombes ZEP, a drop in the rate of early schooling is being seen3. ‘For lack of resources, we are dismantling all our nursery school support networks in primary education.’ In Aulnay, the Voillaume lycée and vocational lycée, a school intended for 1,000 pupils, takes in more than 2,500. The classrooms have been divided in two, recreation areas taken over, boarding done away with, so as to create more classes, and because of understaffing, teachers are overloaded with extra hours. There is a total discrepancy between the official talk and the everyday reality: an absence of structures to provide decent working conditions, an absence of supervision, of teaching strength. ‘There is a gradual deterioration. I’m tending more and more to throw in the towel’, admits M.Langlade, a CPA4 teacher. ‘I’m not even talking about improved salaries, the bonuses that they announce on television and we get three years later. I was ready to make a certain number of sacrifices. I agreed and said: Not all at once! But it can’t go on like this.’ And how long can they hold out? ‘People are beginning to get out’, Gérard Lagrost reveals, referring to his school. ‘Colleagues who have taught for fifteen years ask to be transferred in the hope of finding a more normal situation elsewhere. Oh, it’s not a mass exodus, teachers are a tough breed even in desperate situations, but out of ninety colleagues, there are six or seven. It’s very dangerous.’ ‘Very dangerous’, agrees Mme Vallet, the principal of the Henri-Dunant collège in Colombes, not far away. ‘We risk ending up with motivated, experienced teachers leaving little by little, only to see every year a rapid succession of assistant teachers who can’t be integrated into the teams. Now in a ZEP, we can’t do any positive work until we have structured training and supervision.’ VIOLENCE IS NOT A RIGHT From theft to racketeering through abuse and assaults on teachers, not a week goes by without a trade union statement condemning violence against teachers, particularly in the area around Paris.

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In a text entitled ‘Let’s roll up our sleeves and keep our heads clear’, Gérard Lagrost protests with a certain vehemence: ‘In our schools there should not be a right to violence, a right to abuse, a right to racketeering, a right to possess stolen goods, a right to drugs, even soft drugs.’ Then he asks: ‘Should our youngsters be subjected to chaos because they come from a disadvantaged area? State and institutional dignitaries, who are generous with their talk of “equality of opportunity”, prefer to put their own children in top Paris lycées, or even in renowned private schools. I’ve never heard of them complaining about lessons starting on time or silence in the corridors. School is not a place where everything and anything goes. We’re teachers, we have to instil the concept of citizenship into pupils’ experience.’ This is underscored, in the difficult context of these marginalized suburbs, by the fact that discussion is not confined simply to examining different educational options, or even to requests, reaffirmed daily, for new resources. The creation of new posts is the union creed, more particularly in the SNES5. Whatever benefits are brought by increases in staff, they will not fundamentally resolve this crisis. ‘Not automatically, at any rate. A whole current of union thought believes they will. As far as we’re concerned, that’s not enough.’ This remark brings to light—again—the function of the teacher. ‘I’m not in favour of primary school teachers getting out the grey smocks and the cane again’. Gérard Lagrost explains, ‘but today there are too many vague, woolly rules. What else can you do but reaffirm a certain number of secular, democratic values, questioning a certain number of types of behaviour? For example, you can’t thumb your nose at people all day long and respect them at the same time. We no longer have any authority. There’s no law, everything is negotiable.’ Admittedly, according to some colleagues this is a somewhat simplistic picture. ‘But we have to restore the educational dimension which doesn’t exist in a number of families’, Gilbert Huguet confirms. ‘Some pupils need to be faced not with order and authority but with talk devoid of demagoguery which they don’t hear around them.’ Then he screws up his face and adds: ‘It goes beyond the mere problem of needs.’ Marie-Françoise Mouzet, a French teacher at Colombes, protests: ‘How can teachers be asked to educate young people when society as a whole is totally bankrupt ethically? What’s highlighted everywhere is cars, clothes, cash, guns and the law of the jungle! And they ask us to talk in totally opposite terms: what’s important is the job you’ll have and the pleasure you’ll have doing it. On TV they only show them useless games where you win lots of money by spinning a wheel. We’re in a permanent state of discrepancy. You want to say: that’s enough!’ Marie-Françoise Mouzet belongs to that group of teachers who, despite the problems, reject all negative talk and fight to break the logic of ‘sociocultural handicaps’. Last January she was involved in setting up a big

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‘festival of creation’ which brought together all the ZEP schools6 at the local hall in Colombes. ‘In all the schools we took on a number of projects —painting, sculpture, writing, music, theatre, singing—the aim being in the course of the day to present these achievements to pupils, parents and the local population. To show that schools in a ZEP are as good as so-called normal schools.’ The teaching teams did an extraordinary job and there was keen involvement from the pupils. However, on Saturday 11 January 1992, the day fell apart. After the pupils had presented a completely successful first part made up of songs, percussion and theatre, a ‘rap’ group of youngsters from the 4Chemins district, took over the stage. ‘It was decided, democratically, to open the day to local associations of youngsters who had been taken out of the school system and who found themselves on the streets with tremendous integration problems.’ Reluctantly, the rappers were followed by their usual out-of-school audience: ‘keublas’ and ‘rebeus’7 got into the hall, full of hatred for ‘keufs’ and ‘geoibours’8 and for the school which taught them nothing. In a few minutes, faced with this micro-society, led by adults, able to carry through a project, they were overcome by frustration: confronted with their total failure, they had nothing to offer. Only their riot culture.9 Let’s have a riot! They made an extraordinary mess and sparked off fights; the pupils, who had been quiet until then, let rip, outflanking the teachers. ‘In our schools, violence is controlled. But there, what horrified me was that we didn’t control anything any more.’ It took the arrival of the police to calm everyone down—but all the same, nothing really serious happened, except an incredible uproar. THE SCHOOL LINK IN THE URBAN CHAIN The teachers, in a state of shock, were shattered. Some protested, violently criticizing the decision to invite the rap group. Others, such as Mme Claire Ladousse, head of a primary school, analyzed things more lucidly: ‘We mustn’t single out scapegoats. All these troublemakers are our pupils’ brothers! The youngsters we pass in the streets. These are the ones who get on everyone’s nerves, who make people’s lives a misery, youngsters that don’t belong anywhere, that we don’t know what to do with. We could have hushed up this aspect of our neighbourhood and sanitized the day of creation. But they are part of our reality, so it was natural that they should come back for that day.’ Later on we learned that the town is short of four or five educational teams, that there is no real policy of prevention, that the municipal youth service has seen its subsidies cut, that reception points have disappeared. And that specialist teachers are unsuccessfully demanding resources in the face of an incredible increase in problems in a context of growing tensions.

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How could schools be unaffected by this environment? The urban chain forms a whole: the dignity of places, justice, police, employment and, of course, education. Can schools do everything? NOTES 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9

Section d’éducation spécialisée: a special education department responsible for taking in pupils with minor handicaps or mental retardation not entering the first year of collège A group of activities enhancing the value of qualities other than purely academic abilities and organized among themselves in a coherent way. With regard to the difficulties—at times the failures—encountered in their schooling by children from disadvantaged environments, it appears that preschooling enables early screening of problems and that it can be a factor in the reduction of inequalities or in academic and social integration (see Claude Durand-Prinborgne, l’Egalité scolaire par le coeur et la raison, Nathan, coll. ‘Education’, Paris, 1988). CPA: classe de préapprentissage [pre-apprenticeship class]. Syndicat national des enseignants de second degré: National union of secondary education. The Buffon, Péguy and Péguy B nursery and primary schools, the H.-Dunant collège, the Valmy and Garamont lycées and the local general/vocational lycée. ‘Keublas’ and ‘rebeus’: backslang for blacks and Beurs [people born in France of North African parents]. Also backslang, for policeman [flic] and middle class [bourgeois]. Read Faroud Aïchoune, Nés en banlieue, Ramsay, Paris, 1991.

26 Scarves, schools and segregation The foulard affair David Beriss

On 18 September 1989, Ernest Chenière, principal of the collège GabrielHavez in Creil, decided to expel three young girls from his school for wearing Muslim scarves in class. By the middle of October the affair of the Muslim ‘scarves’, ‘veils’, or ‘tchadors’ had become front-page news in national dailies and major news magazines, and the subject of at least one debate in the National Assembly in which the Minister of Education Lionel Jospin was obliged to take a stand. Jospin ultimately referred the affair to the Conseil d’Etat whose very ambiguous ruling came down at the end of November. The debate none the less continued, splitting the government and the Socialist party and eventually contributing to a National Front victory in the parliamentary by-election in Dreux. And while the affair is certainly not over, the issue of immigration and, especially, integration has returned to the forefront of national politics in France. The affair has raised a long list of profound questions, including the meaning of secular education, the place of Islam in France, women’s rights, the integration of immigrants, the future shape of French domestic politics and of France’s national identity. The explosion of controversy was none the less surprising, especially in light of recent cases concerning the exclusion of immigrant children from schools and other equally serious forms of discrimination which had caused no particular stir. In fact, the level of passion around foulards has been compared to that of the Dreyfus affair. Most people seem to have strong opinions and it has been, for some time, difficult to get anyone to discuss anything else.1 And like Dreyfus, l’affaire des foulards islamiques has served to highlight some of the deeper ideological conflicts that divide French society. The context of the controversy is important to understand. Only within the last decade have immigrants begun to assert their ethnic identities. In the past, newcomers had been integrated into the French community on an individual basis, with institutions such as trade unions and schools serving as gateways to French culture (Noiriel 1988). Post-1945 immigrants are distinguishable from those of earlier migrations, some analysis note, because they were considered and considered themselves primarily as temporary labourers who focused their energies on earning enough money to support relatives in their home countries. Further integration into

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French society was not of great interest, nor did the French seek to integrate them (Freeman 1979). In the last fifteen years the perception of immigrants as temporary workers has been transformed, however, and migrants are now defined as a ‘social’ rather than as a ‘labour’ problem (Grillo 1985; Schain 1985). This transformation can be linked to the end of labour shortages in France brought on by the economic crisis of the 1970s as well to the ending of legal migration in 1974. The settlement of immigrant families in France—primarily North African—helped spark public debate on immigrant living conditions. At the same time, the newcomers and their children began to make claims on the state while maintaining citizenship ties with their countries of origin. In all this, immigrant groups, in particular those of the ‘second generation’ —whether through ethnic associations or through ‘rainbow coalition’ type groups such as SOS-Racisme—began to insist on the right to be different, to have non-French cultural identity, while, at the same time, claiming political rights within France. By making demands to participate in political life in France while maintaining distinct cultural identities, immigrants, even if they are citizens, challenge the cultural basis of French politics. The state has played a central role in the construction of the idea of the French nation since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. Central to this idea is that the nation has been the product of a political community itself based on the creation of a cultural community in which one could find the ‘general interest’. Participation in the affairs of the state is based on membership in this national cultural community, rather than on legal citizenship. Ideologically, then, political community is, in France, identical to cultural community (cf. Gaxie 1978; Weber 1976), in contrast, say, to a community of descent or territory. If immigrant demands are considered illegitimate within the French political field, it is because they are in conflict with this ideology. Other ways of thinking about such things have existed. In the nineteenth century, for example, the Catholic church provided an alternative model of political legitimacy, providing support to groups that promoted a return to the old regime, to authority legitimized by blood and by religion (cf. Azéma and Winock 1969). And, more recently, in the Communist party, among peasants and in regionalist groups, one has found different perspectives positing particular groups as cultural communities within France that are somehow different from the national political culture and thus contesting the notion of France as an ethnically unified nation (cf. Karnooah et al. 1980; Weber 1976; Noiriel 1986). But the statist-cultural community notion has remained dominant. One of the most important mechanisms for creating national identity has been public education. Originally developed at the end of the nineteenth century, secular education has often been the subject of debate, most recently in 1984. Keeping religion out of the schools in

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France was not, as in the United States, originally a matter of religious freedom, but rather was designed to remove education from a Church which rejected the principles upon which the Republic was founded and thus could not be trusted to educate the young (Prost 1968:195). Still, the precise meaning of secularized education has never been particularly clear. Even in later nineteenth-century republicanism there were sharp disagreements concerning the extent to which the Church should be kept out. For those, like Jules Ferry, who placed emphasis on national unity, it was important not to alienate the followers of the Church by too sharp an exclusion, on the theory that education would progressively eliminate the desire for religion among the people in any event. More radical republicans believe that religion, rather than fading away, would be a continuing obstacle to progress. Thus moderates such as Ferry would have allowed some religious presence, while radicals wanted (and on occasion attempted) to eliminate all religious references from the schools (Prost 1968:198–199). It is important to note that the actual relationship between education and religion has been a changing one. At various times over the past century, and in different parts of France, clergy have taught and have been allowed in schools as chaplains. School programmes have also sometimes reflected Catholic ideas. Today, many public sector schools have Catholic chaplains (aumoniers), and school officially lets out after a half-day on Wednesdays to allow students to attend catechism classes. At the same time, debate among those who believe that the school should reflect some sort of religious ideas, those who believe it should be neutral, and those who believe in the active rejection of religion by the schools has continued. Finally, the object of this debate has not been religion per se but the role of the Catholic church (cf. Prost 1968). At first it might have seemed that when Emest Chenière expelled the three girls he had been upholding the idea of religious neutrality. In fact, he had apparently acted more out of a desire to restore order in his school following efforts by students of different origins to be exempted from parts of the curriculum for religious reasons—Jews in kippote who did not attend school on Saturdays as well as scarf-wearing Muslims demanding exemption form physical and sex education. He based his decision not only on the Ferry laws of the 1880s mandating the religious neutrality of the school, but also on regulations dating from the mid-1930s banning any religious or political insignia and forbidding proselytizing (Le Monde, November 6:1.62). Reaction to incidents of exclusion of immigrants from housing or schools—when there has been a reaction—had usually been fairly predictable. Leaders of anti-racist organizations such as SOS-Racisme protest publicly, and right-wing groups, the organizers of the Radio Courtoisie network, for example, have proclaimed their support of exclusion. The Left has generally claimed that immigrants should not be

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discriminated against and the Right (especially the extreme Right) has protested that France is no longer in the control of the French people. The scarf affair shattered this pattern, however. The Left in particular was split, with different people taking positions that had more to do with their ideas concerning the future form of French politics and identity than with party loyalty. Curiously, the incident brought together people who had never been allied on immigration. Those opposed to religious symbols in the schools saw foulards at the least as a threat to the capability of the schools to educate, at the worst an undermining of the Republic and national identity. Those not opposed—nobody, except perhaps the Muslims themselves, appears to have been actually ‘for’ the scarves— either saw the symbols as relatively unthreatening or as part of a welcome transformation of French culture. Since schools have often been seen as the primary place where people of different origins became French, the wearing of symbols of one’s origin can be viewed as a challenge to a school’s objectives. For convinced secularist republicans, this was an open door to educational chaos. Symbols of community membership could lead to discrimination; without these symbols all students were equal. As Guy Coq remarked in Le Monde, ‘l’espace scolaire établit, grâce au retrait des différences collectives, une essentielle égalié. Chaque enfant est d’abord un membre à part entière de la communauté scolaire’ (October 24:2). It followed that if even one group were allowed to bring its symbols into the schools, others would demand the same, spelling the end of tolerance. Each religious community would then compete for control of the schools, ‘pour y manifester non pas l’esprit d’accueil pour chaque individu en lui-même, comme simple humain, mais les signes de la clôture de chaque communauté contre les autres’ (Coq, Le Monde, October 24:2). Rhetoric escalated for the secular Republican camp. In an open letter to the Minister of Education published in the Nouvel Observateur, five intellectuals, including Alain Finkielkraut, Elisabeth Badinter and Régis Debray, contended that it is permitted to forbid in the name of discipline. The school should be an emancipatory space in which ethnic, religious or political appartenance should be left at the door. ‘Tolérer le foulard islamique, ce n’est pas accueillir un être libre…c’est ouvrir la porte à ceux qui ont décidé, une fois pour toutes et sans discussion, de lui faire plier l’échine’ (November 2–8:30). The tone of this piece captures the passion of the debate. For these intellectuals what is at stake is the very foundation of the schools in France. ‘L’avenir dira si l’année du Bicentenaire aura vu le Munich de l’école républicaine’ (November 2–8: 30). For such defenders of secular schools the young girls are not the Hitlers of this particular Munich. The capitulation is first and foremost to Islam, a fortiori to fundamentalist Islam, and second to those who would subjegate women. Islam is a powerful symbol in france. It is no accident that this affair was started over three young women wearing ‘Islamic’ scarves3

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rather than Christians wearing crosses. It is unnecessary to trace the entire history of French thought on Islam, but it is useful to remember a few moments, not the least being the long French colonization of North Africa—one of whose overt goals was to bring civilization (French culture) to these societies. Muslim women wearing scarves are a powerful image today, sometimes suggesting veiled women carrying bombs during the Algerian war, ‘Muslim’ terrorism in Europe, and antiprogressive images of women in black tchadors in Iran. A joke circulating in Paris suggested that if Islam is France’s second largest religion, then ‘anti-Islam’ is the first. Polls tend to confirm this. A recent IFOP survey published by Le Monde shows that French people have a strikingly negative image of the Muslim religion. Sixty per cent of those interviewed associate Islam with violence, 66 per cent see it as antiprogressive and 71 per cent associate it with fanaticism (November 30: 15). On a late-night television debate at the beginning of November, one journalist commented that there is a real threat to France because, as he put it, Islam is a religion of combat. Wearing scarves was seen as only the beginning of an offensive by extremist Muslims. As Pierre Mauroy, head of the Socialist party and former prime minister remarked, ‘…il n’y a aucune raison pour que les Français subissent des formes d’intégrisme, des formes d’intolérance’ (Le Monde, October 24:17). Exaggerated interpretations of the affair as a plot by Muslim extremists were rife in the press. The possibility of a Muslim plot in which foulards were just the first step (the next being demands to take Voltaire out of schools) appeared in the Nouvel Observateur (October 26–November 1: 79), in an interview with Gilles Deleuze in Libération (October 26:2),4 and in interviews with Muslims who suggested that the extremists were moving to take control of European Islam (Nouvel Observateur, November 2–8: 38–39). A lengthy investigative article in L’Express (November 3:9–12) informed readers that for the Muslims it is only the rules of secular education that are negotiable, not the wearing of scarves. Moreover, it was claimed that behind the girls were fathers who were members of, or who had been pressured by, extremist organizations, one of which was rumoured to have a terrorist connection. L’Express goes on to suggest that some members of these organizations are converted Françaises, including teachers who are going to start wearing veils to class. One leader of an extremist group is quoted as demanding the organization of a Muslim national council, predicting that if one is not organized, Western Europe will be subject to ‘une tempête ravageuse comme jamais dans l’histoire de l’Occident’ (November 3:12). The article finishes with the menacing spectre of a pan-European Islamic organization and the note that the next conference of European Muslims will be held in 1990 in Paris. There has been yet another argument in favour of banning scarves in schools, this one suggesting that they are a symbol of the oppression of women. Schools should liberate children through education, it is claimed,

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and if children are allowed to carry signs of their oppression into the schools they will not be liberated. This idea is especially well illustrated in the Finkielkraut, Badinter, Debray letter. In allowing foulards, Jospin, instead of giving young women ‘un espace de liberté, is signalling ‘qu’il n’y a pas de différence entre l’école et la maison de son père’ (November 2– 8:30). This is contrary to French practice of equality between the sexes and in fact is a way of implying approval for what they call the harshest patriarchy on the planet (November 2–8:30). Françoise Gaspard, former mayor of Dreux, wrote in the Nouvel Observateur that the struggle of Muslim women in North Africa against the obligation to wear veils was in fact a struggle for democracy (October 26–November 1:80). In the same issue, Jean Danie suggested that to defend the right to wear the veil, ‘c’est tout simplement prendre parti dans un conflit entre musulmans. C’est prendre parti en faveur d’un mouvement qui assigne à la femme une place, une place, une fonction, des traditions’ (October 26–November 1:70). To those who oppose foulards, the fundamental question is that of integrating immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, into French society and its political implications. The notion that immigrants represent a threat to French cultural identity, while traditionally a theme of the Right, has become, with foulards, a worry shared by many on the Left, against the background vision of a homogeneous French culture to which, in Jacobin tradition, the individual belongs only by virtue of his or her relationship to the state. In this vision, democracy is a religion itself, with its dogmas, hierarchies and priests. As Laurent Joffrin commented in the Nouvel Observateur. La démocratie…n’est pas une auberge espagnole des sectarismes, un Club Méditerranée où les gentils dirigeants animeraient de gentils citoyens. Elle a, elle aussi, quelques sanctuaires où il faut ôter son chapeau, sa kippa ou son foulard. Les religions n’ont pas le monopole de la foi et la foi démocratique ne peut plus être un consensus mou …Pour une fois, c’est l’interdiction qui libère. Sans cela, les croyants ne croiront jamais que nous aussi croyons à quelque chose. (November 2–8:35) Religious pluralism, in this vision, is a matter for the privacy of one’s home. For this camp, the scarves were seen as pointing France toward a more pluralist type of polity in which groups (such as Muslims or Jews) might constitute a major aspect of a citizen’s political identity. Some manifestations of this ‘pluralism’ are clearly seen as threatening. As JeanPierre Chevènement, Minister of Defence, remarked, Ceux qui, depuis quinze ans, veulent nous vendre le ‘droit à la différence’ nous vantent les charmes du ‘modèle américain’. Mais ce

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n’est pas les Etats-Unis qu’ils nous préparent—à supposer que cela soit désirable—c’est le Liban tout simplement. (Le Monde, November 9:1–2) Jacques Julliard was simply indignant at the idea that he could be identified with any sort of group. For him, this sort of pluralism represents a regression toward ‘tribalism’. Yet Julliard finds it nearly impossible not to identify his ‘ethnicity’ in explaining where this feeling comes from; he comments that being identified by ethnicity or religion ‘heurte au plus profond mes sentiments chrétiens, républicans, libertaires’ (Nouvel Observateur, October 26–November 1:71). For Gilles Kepel, a prominent sociologist of Muslim immigration, there are only two models of integration available, the French ‘assimilationist’ model and the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ‘community’ model. Kepel identifies the latter with the existence of black ghettoes in the US. The French model is infinitely preferable, he claims, but it does require that the social conditions that lead to a desire to form communities be addressed (Le Monde, November 30:14). When Education Minister Lionel Jospin finally took a position toward the end of October, his reasoning was different, based on the role of the schools to integrate people into French society. As Jospin put it, ‘l’école française est faite pour éduquer, pour intégrer, pas pour rejeter’ (October 26–November 1:78). In making this choice, Jospin displeased many members of his own party as well as the opposition, but he did have the support of the President and of Michel Rocard. Jospin’s position was not that, no matter what they might demand, wearers of religious insignia should be allowed in schools. Rather, he argued a more fluid position in which the child’s conscience would be respected while the basic elements of the educational system were upheld. Wearing scarves would be permitted, but proselytizing forbidden. Nobody would be excused from basic elements of educational programmes, such as sex education or athletics, because of their beliefs. If parents rejected this position, he added, they were free to send their children to a private school. Some commentators argued that secularism was designed to defend the religious freedom of the people from the state. From this point of view, it was important to respect the religious beliefs of students and there were no grounds for rejecting children from the schools. Guy Sitbon, following Jules Ferry instead of the more radical republicans, noted that secular education required teachers to be religiously neutral in their classrooms, approaching the religious beliefs of children very carefully and avoiding alienating them from the schools. Islam, like the other religions in France, will eventually fade away if this line is followed (Nouvel Observateur, November 9–15:35). Jean Daniel, whose position switched in mid-affair, agreed that rejecting children from schools would be counter-productive and then denounced what he called a spirit of ‘secularist integrism’ running

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counter to the spirit of tolerance inherent in secular education (Nouvel Observateur, November 2–8:32). Noting, like those opposed to the scarves, that the schools should have as a goal the elimination of inequalities, Harlem Désir pointed out that there are far more flagrant signs of inequality in the classroom. He went on to comment that, ‘s’il fallait revenir à un laïcité vestimentaire, alors, fidèles à Jules Ferry, nous combattrions, d’abord par la blouse, la scandaleuse ostentation des différences sociales entre les gamins-Chevignon à 3000 francs et les gamins-Tati à 300 francs’ (Nouvel Observateur, November 9– 15:37). For the leader of SOS-Racisme, the real problems of immigrants in schools stem from their lack of integration, which causes failure and, eventually, unemployment. Such problems will not be solved by excluding them for religious differences. For proponents of tolerance, the danger in rejecting children for religious reasons resides in pushing them towards more extreme positions. Islam can be integrated into the French Republic, they insist, but not through rejection. Jospin remarked that, ‘ce n’est pas en provoquant le refus, en pratiquant l’exclusion qu’on favorisera l’évolution de l’Islam dans le monde occidental’ (Nouvel Observateur, October 26–November 1:79). And Désir commented in Le Monde. ‘Eriger la laïcité en barrière, c’est repousser ces enfants dans les bras de l’intégrisme parental et, demain, dans les écoles coraniques florissantes qui seront présentées comme seules respectueuses de la dignité des musulmans’ (November 10:9). Another article in Le Monde pointed out that the ‘community reflex’ had become important among Muslims precisely because their religion had been mistreated in the press and by French society as a whole. As long as mosques are refused or destroyed (as happened in one incident, in Charvieu-Chavagneux) and Muslims are excluded from school for their beliefs, Muslims will regroup into marginalized communities (November 8:13–14). This process, noted Claude Allègre, can work against the integration of Muslim immigrants into French society (Nouvel Observateur, November 9–15:33). The proponents of inclusion were obliged to deal with the issue of women’s subordination. Their position, however, was that the schools should work to reduce these gender inequalities in the same way they worked to undercut religious extremism. The best way to teach equality, in other words, was to expose children to other ways of living in the school itself. If Muslim girls are to reject male domination, Allègre argued, they must be admitted to the public sector schools where ‘elles pourront apprendre, comparer, comprendre et finalement se déterminer ellesmêmes. C’est-à-dire enlever le voile’ (Nouvel Observateur, November 9–15:33). This position was developed by Jean Daniel as well, in his second editorial on the issue (Nouvel Observateur, November 2–8:32). Jospin himself commented that by accepting Muslims at school, France provided them with alternative ways of seeing the world and brought them out of the

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isolation of the family, thus providing them with the cultural resources necessary for liberation (Nouvel Observateur, October 26–November 1:79). There was a certain complicity on both sides of the issue in claiming the superiority of French culture over whatever oppressive or ‘uncivilized’ ideas the immigrant’s religion might carry. Pluralists refused this, seeing instead the foulard crisis as a sign that French culture could no longer be conceived of as monoethnic, that some sort of transformation was taking place. The anthropologist Marc Augé thus contended that it was misleading to oppose ideas of two homogeneous cultures, that of France and that of Islam. ‘On ne peut pas condamner la revendication islamiste (“Respectez le voile symbole de notre différence culturelle”) au nom d’une définition frileusement hexagonale de la culture française qui participe de la même illusion ou du même mensonge’ (Libération, November 20:13). French society has changed since the time when it was necessary to fight the Catholic church over the form of government; it has become multiracial and multicultural, and there are no longer any fixed values. Secular education must take this into account, argues Allègre, by teaching individuals to be themselves while still respecting the general interest (Nouvel Observateur, November 9–15:33). Jospin suggests that the goal of secular education must be to prevent conflicts between groups, rather than reducing difference. He comments that, ‘la société a bougé, elle est plurielle. La laïcité n’a plus besoin d’être une laïcité de combat. Elle doit être au contraire une laïcité bienveillante faite précisément pour éviter les guerres, y compris les guerres…de religion’ (Nouvel Observateur, October 26– November 1:78). Finally, as Serge July remarked, by provoking this issue in the schools Muslims have shown a desire to leave their mark on French society, to become part of that society. The compromise between Islam and secular education that must follow, for July, will only enrich the ideas of secularism, ‘renforcée dans ses grands principes et mieux outillée quant à leur application’ (Nouvel Observateur, October 23:3). At the end of November, the Conseil d’Etat presented its judgment on the affair, leaving things in the state of compromise as defined by Jospin. Secular education, the Conseil commented, is an element of the legal separation of church and state in France, a guarantee of the neutrality of the state in religious affairs. It is thus illegal to discriminate in terms of religion for access to education. Wearing religious symbols in school is perfectly legal, provided it does not interfere with the religious freedom of others, or with the correct dispensation of the school’s programme. Proselytism is forbidden. While this judgment disappointed many, it reinforced Jospin’s directive to school principals to attempt to discourage scarf wearers but to admit them if they insisted. In the wake of the debate on Islamic scarves, discussion has focused on immigration and, especially, on integration. The need for this discussion

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was pointed up by the National Front victory at Dreux, where about 60 per cent of the voters sent an extreme right-wing deputy to the National Assembly. Exit polls showed a surprising number of left-wing voters choosing the National Front candidate, and there was little doubt that the scarf affair had contributed to this choice. During the affair, as can be seen above, leaders of the political Left had overtly expressed many of the same fears the National Front had been using as themes for years. Whether this vote may have reflected only local particularities or not, many took it to represent national trends. It is interesting that at least as far as the organization of secular education goes, both pro- and anti-foulard responses parallel those of moderate and radical republicans 100 years earlier. While the latter viewed religion as an incurable menace to republican government and progress, the former felt that the work of secular education would eventually lead to its demise. This debate also clearly points out that many French thinkers, whether pro- or anti-scarf, are convinced that a Jacobin manner of organizing society is still the best available. Islam, for them, represents the dark ages, as do models of society in which part of a citizen’s political identity would be based on membership in another ethnic or religious community. The fundamental difference between them lies in the approach chosen to eliminate this threat of change in France. For the secularist extremists, tolerance of symbolic difference is the first step towards a complete capitulation to the followers of a Khomeiny waiting in the wings to conquer France. Those who take a tolerant approach see Islam as no less a threat, but they believe in the superiority of French values which will undoubtedly allow the Muslims to liberate themselves. It is the conflicts between different models of cultural and political legitimacy that generate the sorts of conflicts that the scarf issue represents. It seems likely that in resolving these conflicts, notions of exactly what it means to be French and of what is legitimate political behaviour will be transformed. NOTES 1

2 3

I was in France doing research on the politics of identity among Caribbean migrants to France until early November and thus was able to witness the affair gathering steam. My research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and from a French government Bourse Chateaubriand. All references to newspapers or journals, unless otherwise indicated, are from 1989. It is difficult to know if these scarves are indeed ‘Islamic’ or simply a garment that is part of some North African tradition. Libération published an article that attempts to explain some of the different customs and terms concerning the ways in which Muslim women may cover themselves, distinguishing between the Persian tchador and the Middle Eastern hidjeb, the latter coming perhaps closest to what these young women were wearing (October 23:4). What is important, however, is not from which tradition these scarves may

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come but that for both the young women and for French commentators they are identified with Islam. Deleuze ask, ‘Y aurait-il done un plan concerté, dont le foulard ne serait que la première étape?’

REFERENCES Azéma, Jean-Pierre, Winock, Michel. 1969. La IIIe République. Paris: CalmanLévy. Freeman, G. 1979. Immigrant Labor and Racial Conflict in Industrial Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gaxie, D. 1978. Le sens caché. Paris: Seuil. Grillo, R.D. 1985. Ideologies and Institutions in Urban France: The Representation of Immigrants. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karnooah, C. in Lamarche , Hugues, Rogers, Susan Carol, Karnoouh, Claude. 1980 Paysans, femmes et citoyens: luttes pour le pouvoir dans un village lorrain. Le Paradou: Actes Sud. Noiriel, Gérard. 1988. Le creuset français. Paris: Seuil. Noiriel, G. 1986. Les ouvriers dans la société française. Paris: Seuil. Prost, Antoine. 1986. Histoire de l’enseignement en France. Paris: Colin. Schain, M. 1985. Immigrants and Politics in France. Ambler, J., ed. The French Socialist Experiment. Philadelphia: ISHI, pp. 166–190. Weber, Eugen. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

27 The child, a citizen at school Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux

The countries of Europe have become multicultural societies. The issue now is passing on and putting into practice common values. Conflicts of culture are also conflicts of norms and laws. Learning about human rights at school is, in this sense, a very positive experience. In France, lessons in civics show that legal concepts and argumentation are well received by pupils: they provide the opportunity to talk freely about discrimination, equality and justice; they are also a way of reforming education and schools. CULTURAL REVOLT AND CONFLICT The riots in Los Angeles, like those in Brixton, Brussels or Vaux-en-Velin, underline the violence of conflicts of culture when they come on top of economic and social marginalization. These sudden outbreaks of revolt are not protests, still less strikes or organized movements like those which contributed to working class history, feminism or struggles for independence. They are, in a climactic form, an expression of intolerance, of a situation, seen as oppressive, which can explode at the slightest disagreement. They mainly concern one age group, 10–18-year-olds, who are still at or just leaving school.1 In often disillusioned terms, a number of teachers and social workers in ‘disadvantaged areas’ or ‘priority education zones’ in France testify to daily incidents. The problem is not young ‘foreigners’. For the most part, it is young nationals, born in towns, who are in the front line. Similarly, the explanation goes beyond living conditions. While cramped housing and unemployed parents lead to some hardships and obvious material difficulties, their situation is far from being as appalling as that in the 1930s or during the war. Adolescents whom the media or politicians have described as ‘rioters’ are expressing something else, a ‘bad life’ experienced as a humiliation, which is not directly linked to their circumstances. In the majority of western democracies, breaking points are appearing. The social fabric is crumbling under the pressure of inequalities; minorities who are discriminated against are forming; religious, ethnic or racial intolerance is hardening—the Anglo-Saxons talk about ‘visible minorities’.

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It is as if a North-South divide, an ‘unequal exchange’, were being established within developed societies. ‘Whether they have French nationality or not doesn’t come into it any more’, a collège [lower secondary school] teacher in Argenteuil remarked. ‘We are like teachers “without frontiers”, or overseas aid workers, “teachers of the world” who are trying to respond in an emergency. Violence, male chauvinism, racism, religious sectarianism are too much today for a young teacher with a passion for Voltaire or Baudelaire. They give up, take refuge in illness or go elsewhere. In actual fact, what I’m doing is teaching literacy, being a security guard, maintaining order. I’m not going to last long in this profession which even so is the one I chose.’ This experience is echoed: ‘Parents say the same thing: they can’t control their children any longer; the fathers have lost their prestige or are absent. We talk about education, but what kind? And what if it were our culture, on the verge of collapse, its faith in democracy lost, that young people from marginalized backgrounds were expressing through violence!’ There are successful teaching experiences, and as a result of school, there is upward mobility for a not insignificant number of young people, and this should be made known and encouraged. However, we cannot deny a socio-cultural phenomenon which contributes greatly to the present crisis in the education system and which is seen, to different degrees, in every country faced with a cultural ‘melting pot’. In particular, countries with immigrants are especially dynamic societies, but they must not be expected to offer the gentle pleasures of consensual life. They bring change and are pierced by contradictions which undermine the growing need for security. In the majority of schools, more particularly in the cities, young people of different origins rub shoulders with each other. The legal position of second generation immigrants is symptomatic of this rapidly changing pattern. Some hold several nationalities concurrently, others do not know exactly which one they have. In their turn, institutions identify them by what they say or on sight of a document produced by a parent. Thus, the young ‘Beurs’, born in France of North African parents, are French, and sometimes registered under the Algerian nationality of their parents, on the strength of what they say or because they continue to be referred to as such. In any case, they have dual nationality. Now, how can they express their identity, exercise their rights and fulfil their obligations (from political rights to military obligations) when even the determination of their national status remains confused or ambivalent? Many young people denounce racism where the administrative machine is obstructive, simply because the information identifying people does not satisfy the legal categories for the country of residence. Added to this is ignorance of the law and administrative regulations, the discrepancy between the letter of the law and actual practices. Finally, beyond this general sociological data, second-generation young people rarely

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internalize the conditions laid down by the law as a scale of values; to them they appear arbitrary, frustrating ‘red tape’ remote from their own concerns. Rejection of the law becomes more marked when the underlying norm clashes with a different concept of personal identity or family relationships. Pluralism then turns into conflict with norms and laws. Codes become confused. The cleverest manipulate the system in their own interests; the most powerless experience uncertainty and general anomie. SCHOOLS FACED WITH PLURALISM When school becomes a place for learning about human rights and fundamental values through civics, when it becomes sensitive to intercultural issues, everyone begins to doubt the integrating power of rules, the coherence of the notion of being a citizen and the definition of being a legal subject. Two opposing pressures combine to strain social bonds. On the one hand, the construction of a European space forces people to think in terms of international harmonization, agreements or conventions, and of European union, in order to move beyond the boundaries of regional identities. On the other hand, concepts of nationality/citizenship and the ways in which institutions work vary considerably from one country to another; national tensions re-emerge. Is it necessary to underline the difficulty of a comparative approach between education systems which are as diverse as they are contradictory? The disparities are not purely formal; they relate fundamentally to the division between the public and the private, the contrast between denominational and secular education.2 The enlargement of the European space, the frequency of trade and communication and the will to create a common union conflict, from the opposite direction, with greater localization, regional chauvinism and minority claims, which encourage a turning inwards and disagreement. Of course European societies have never been uniform or consensual, but history had gradually constructed nation-states whose systems of control, based on reference to democracy and human rights, seemed to have achieved relative equilibrium. Schools had become the favoured means of developing this ideal; today they are the first to be suspected of aggravating differences. Since the middle of the 1980s, the increase in social inequality, the rise in intolerance, the appearance of the ‘new poor’ within the developed societies has shaken the belief in the power of institutions. All the European states now advocate policies of ‘integration’ to counter social exclusion and the break-up into separate minorities, conferring the initial responsibility on the education system.3 When schools came up against class conflict or the phenomena of regional or rural cultures in societies which were becoming industrialized and urbanized, faith in the mission of schools remained intact. French

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Jacobinism, that reducer of disparities, sometimes appeased its conscience to the extent of confusing equality of opportunity and the levelling power of education. However, the gradual eradication of illiteracy and the undeniable social progress which resulted from it encouraged a positive vision which favoured making education systems more democratic. It is too easy to judge the Republic’s schools in the light of present disappointments. Today talk is pessimistic, combining the assessment of ‘standards’ or ‘underperformance’ at school with fears for the break-up of the system. The question of basic values, of ethics and of civics, has thus moved to the forefront of the authorities’ concerns. The revival of civics is the pertinent example of this, as much because of the initial enthusiasm of its advocates4 as the despondency which followed the reforms, for lack of substantial means and a steadfast determination on the part of the authorities to extend education. THE REVIVAL OF CIVICS In France, the rise of civics dates from the middle of the 1980s, a period when public policies relating to integration were themselves being developed in a decisive way. In 1984, the Minister of Education Jean-Pierre Chevènement decided to reform the collèges by introducing more consultation into schools. Democratization was directed at life in schools and at spreading knowledge to the greatest number of people. At the same time, civics, which was not taught very much at that time, despite a long tradition going back to Condorcet and Jules Ferry, was revived. A first set of measures were taken with the directives of 1985 and the Education Act (No. 89–486) of 10 July 1989 with a report on ‘Missions and objectives set by the nation’ and ‘a school system serving pupils and students’, to establish civics in the school curriculum: ‘We are born, we become enlightened citizens […]. The right to education is guaranteed to everyone in order to help him develop his personality, raise his level of training […] and exercise his citizenship.’ Knowledge, learning and values constitute the three pillars of civics. Barely one month later, the Act (No. 89–548) of 2 August 1989, called the loi Joxe [the Joxe Act], relating to conditions of entry to and abode for foreigners in France, was to make reference in its second article to ‘civic instruction’. In his desire to pay tribute to the subject, a tribute which was all the more noteworthy since it was contained in a law outside the education sector, the legislator used by mistake the old-fashioned term ‘instruction’. This Freudian slip was indicative of the ambiguous attitude of the authorities towards the teaching of civics in schools. The education policy advocating the teaching of human rights and republican values received academic recognition: from 4 August 1989, two

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days after the loi Joxe, a memorandum was published on the inclusion of civics in the national diploma awarded at the end of collège studies. From then on, examination questions could be set on this subject and several area education authorities were to include questions on the civics syllabus in the diploma examination in 1990 and 1991. This recognition of the subject in the pupils’ curriculum has not, however, gone as far as establishing a postgraduate secondary school teaching certificate in it. The advent of education in citizenship has not enjoyed the same backing as economics and social sciences teaching, which have become fully-fledged subjects. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF CROSS-DISCIPLINARY TEACHING Lessons in civics, when they were not inflicted on the youngest teacher or the most recent newcomer as extra work, revealed the virtue of learning citizenship from primary school onwards. At the beginning of the experiment, however, many seemed not to believe in it. Some ironically evoked memories of civic instruction in their childhood and headteachers feared parents’ reactions. Would civics be a sort of indoctrination? Some intellectuals went as far as to criticize the ‘republican élitism’ which would conceal a new form of selection—through knowledge of the law and institutions—and a sort of ethnocentric imperialism having no regard for cultural differences. Both very quickly found themselves contradicted by the facts: civics asserted its educational novelty; admittedly, teachers found that it involved additional work, but also that it was a remarkable tool for innovation in teaching; pupils expressed their interest in lessons which, where the experiment was carried out and through its interdisciplinary nature, led to changes in the actual life of the school. In less than five years, the wager was won, especially with the support of young people ‘of immigrant extraction’ who found in it freedom of speech: ‘We can talk about what we experience every day,’ a young Moroccan was to say, ‘about injustice and racism, and we learn about our rights. Now I’m interested in history: it’s like a film, you have to have seen the beginning.’ The confrontation with civics textbooks, the analysis of educational action plans on themes touched on in these lessons, experiments with teaching human rights, surveys of teachers and discussions with pupils are revealing some major trends.5 The advent of the right to education and the teaching of ‘democratic values’, far from shutting down communication with pupils, liberates the teaching relationship, unfetters teaching methods which are too inciting and programmed. The relationship between the person who has the knowledge and the pupil is less one-sided. A dialogue is established, argumentation is built on themes which appeal to crossdisciplinary knowledge and thought which the pupils will go into more

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deeply later in philosophy classes to form their own apprehension of values. The semantic continuity between historical analysis and critical study of current developments is revealed beyond the purely factual. Civics encourages free discussion. LEARNING CITIZENSHIP Research conducted by François Audigier at the Institut national de recherche pédagogique (INRP) [the National Institute for Educational Research] on education in human rights has underlined the new perspectives in this teaching: ‘To teach human rights is both to put pupils in a position to develop their knowledge of human rights and to invite them to adopt “rules of life and will” in keeping with what underpins these rights. These two dimensions are inseparable; what would knowledge about human rights be if its purpose was not to inspire practical application? The one derives meaning in relation to the other; but they do not represent two interchangeable sides of the same project. If, on the one hand, the passing on of a body of knowledge, clearly located and recognized as fundamental in our societies and, on the other hand, the education dimension are among the constantly reasserted aims of the French education system, education in human rights raises a particular problem; adhering to human rights is the result of a freely taken decision.’ Civics, however, covers a wider field than human rights education. It leads to consideration of public-spiritedness, it teaches about the life of institutions, it is based on the legal pillars of a national system while opening up to North-South relations and the world of tolerance. From the immediate living environment of the school and the town, to consideration of ‘world ecology’, the student is invited to locate his personal experience. He learns relativity and responsibility, which are not incompatible. ‘What I liked in the civics class was feeling solidarity with others, being less violent towards others. We worked with the French teacher, the biology teacher and the history teacher on racism and equality. I have never read so much or spent so much time looking for material with friends. And, in the end, we did a play which was recorded on video. It was great!’ Such accounts from pupils are common.6 So one can wonder about the reason for the weak echo of these experiences in the Ministry of Education, the media and the political establishment, as if anything which is directed at a positive Utopian ideal upset ways of thinking and behaving. With civics, reference to the law and institutions takes on normative connotations. The legislative imperative is supposed to be off-putting and instigative; it introduces values, rules and sanctions applied to specific behaviour. Now, in fact, pupils like this rigour; they learn ‘intellectual gymnastics’ while putting ‘human justice’ into perspective in time and space. They learn that the law can be harsh, and can be reviewed. The history of institutions, when it is related, for example, to the changing

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status of women, to children’s rights, to the position of ‘religious minorities’, to political asylum, to the development of industrial or environmental legislation, supplies just as many themes for reflection on freedom and equality, and even more on justice. All collège teachers testify to the pupils’ great liking for discussing justice and equity. Civics then becomes an education in basic civil liberties. A group of teachers in a Paris collège in a priority education zone talk about the pupils’ passion for the judicial system after visiting a court and their interest in the defence of civil liberties after attending a trial in the court of assizes. The co-operation between the school and the magistrates revealed mutual consideration which changed the pupils’ outlook on criminality and the law. This makes it possible to approach literary or historic texts or cinematic works in a different light afterwards. The use of precise definitions, discursive talk and analogical reasoning, the methods of jurisprudential interpretation, make teaching through law a remarkable training tool. Civics is no longer ‘civic instruction’, a sort of ‘secular catechism’, which was so often mocked. It becomes a training in citizenship through teaching about rights in a democratic society. In this respect, history teachers are particularly well equipped to work on documents, reflect on the chronology of events and institutions and revive the memory of nations. When books on civics—eight French publishers have brought out books devoted to this subject for primary and lower secondary school pupils— deal with decentralization, anti-discrimination law, environmental law or civil liberties, using different legal sources, they present practical cases, set exercises on documents or questions which require the pupil to reason about norms and their application. Does not the law, however, tend to reinforce a technical and esoteric form of language which would go against what civics wants to achieve: the ability to form a personal judgement? ETHICS AND AN INTRODUCTION TO LAW? ‘In order to avoid moral philosophy’, a teacher admits, ‘we fall back on the law.’ Now, the two are not incompatible but they require several problems to be overcome. The introduction to law which civics implies has put more than one teacher off. The lack of training, fear of not being able to master the conceptual tools, the apparently daunting character of legal language and rhetoric have, at first sight, raised difficulties which are sometimes judged to be insurmountable or, at least, to require a lot of energy and time. ‘Volunteers’ for civics have, however, quickly learned to grasp it. Human rights, especially, and the prerogatives attached to fundamental liberties, provide pupils with inexhaustible themes for reflection and a training in dialectics. Pupils who used not to speak discover that they are good advocates. Several teachers testify in particular that young ‘immigrants’ are

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stimulated by civics classes: ‘The ones who so often feel left out in academic subjects reveal a remarkable liking and talent for argumentation in civics. Their involvement in the major social themes or in questions of political philosophy rewards all the effort made’ (collège teacher in Saint-Denis). On the other hand, the chapters devoted to local or regional institutions are considered too arduous. The rights of the individual ‘speak’ to pupils whereas the ‘bureaucratic machine’ seems to discourage them, except when there are organized visits to administration departments and contact with people who work there. On these technical questions, ‘there is a risk of doing to law what Monsieur Jourdain (in Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) did to prose and confuse the administrative red tape with the categorical imperative’, a literature teacher at a collège in Paris acknowledged. The temptation is as much to be a naïve legal expert as an ideologist. At least people believed in this possible drift for civics in 1985. Surveys of teachers show nothing of the sort. As well as the experimental and voluntary aspect that this teaching retains, today the heterogeneousness of the school population requires a tremendous reform of education. Cultural plurality stimulates explanatory work to help pupils perceive, understand and overcome differences. Civics, in fact, proves that the lucid examination of cultural disparities is the surest way of nonviolently resolving contradictions and conflict. TRANSCENDING DIFFERENCES Civics inevitably touches on some major philosophical concepts which produce just as many questions on identity, freedom, justice but also, on the negative side, on intolerance and discrimination. The notion of the person is at the heart of the concept of identity. But which identity? Individual identity or the multiple collective identities which are laid claim to under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, the people, or under a religious banner? Differences of culture or values are expressed from primary school onwards; again they have to be clarified. In disadvantaged environments, growing numbers of young people are defining themselves in terms of origin, affiliation, place, with ethnic or religious adjectives used as nouns, and just as many encompassing systems of reference which stifle free will; these identities are displayed as signs of rebellion against representatives of authority. Pupils give themselves names which objectify them, the name of their area or their origin, or even a nickname—such as the Zulus, the Beurs and the Beurettes—to mock racist words. This ‘labelling’ runs counter to the progress of personal freedom and independence of will; it goes against values advocated by young people from advantaged backgrounds and by the teachers themselves in the plan for a Europe of citizens. By claiming the ‘stigma’ of their exclusion, some young people end up existing through this single outward mark, through a

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disparaged social visibility. Education in civics aims to break this logic of victimization which is imposed and then laid claim to. Through its objectives and methods, civics contributes to a democratic movement. Training in civics in a pluralist society involves a diversity of messages, a plurality of sources and a mastery of material which is itself mixed: from the study of an article of law to an extract from jurisprudence, from a literary text to a press analysis, from writing to video. Civics, which is in essence cross-disciplinary, makes it possible to organize this diversity so as to bring out fundamental principles of social and personal ethics. But we should not count too much on the fine structure of the law, the illusion of order which might cement shared values. The law itself is cracking, under the pressure of a mass of disparate legislation and the weight of institutions, under the push of opposing and badly controlled forces competing to establish norms. The crisis in schools and the crisis in law combine in a situation of conflicting pluralism. The mixture of cultures, the formation of marginalized minorities and strategies for identity7 shake the institution of school as much as the legal structure. Consideration of the function of civics for a heterogeneous school population comes back to trying to untangle the different issues which influence the passing on of values and knowledge. The will to forge common norms to counter the break-up of our societies and a conflicting disparity in social behaviour makes civics an instrument of solidarity. It puts affiliations into perspective and essentialises the freedom of each person in a disparate whole which has to be constantly reconstructed. Whereas teaching seeks a minimum of shared meaning which forms ‘education for all’ and promotes ‘equality of opportunity’, processes which divide developed societies up into ‘dual’ societies are at work. A form of diglossia occurs, which is as much normative as linguistic. Civics lessons tackle, beyond the surface of words, the ‘crisis of identity’ of young people who are being marginalized. There are many misinterpretations, misunderstandings or subversions of meaning, reflected in backslang, graffiti and other codes used outside school. Learning citizenship releases another, more creative and participatory, form of self-expression. THE ADVENT OF ANOTHER KIND OF CITIZENSHIP? The socialization of young people cannot follow the waymarked path of a linear process. While, in the majority of European states,8 education in human rights, law in education, civics and ethics stimulate reforms in teaching, the solutions adopted in each country reveal great disparity. The drift of education in the United Kingdom towards schools marked by ethnic minorities, a real fragmentation of teaching into a plurality of differentialist models, is obvious: how have they reached the point of

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having Pakistani or Bangladeshi schools in which girls are separated from boys, kept out of some lessons and have special swimming pool opening hours negotiated for them so that they can bathe clothed in ‘unsoiled’ water, supervised by women? The ethnicization of social relations in Great Britain leads to a fragmentation of the education system and to its depreciation—otherwise accentuated by drastic limits on funding. The Commission for Racial Equality has begun to state publicly that academic successes must reflect, proportionally, the ethnic or racial composition of the school environment. At the same time, the Netherlands has officially concluded that their policy of ‘emancipating minorities’ has been a relative failure, and Germany, busy with reunification, is trying to find a common shared basis for a concept of civics and democracy. Systems are colliding with each other in a European space which is so difficult to unite. Thinking on education in human rights and on civics thus becomes the only common basis for the fight against intolerance and discrimination. BY WAY OF CONCLUSION The question put by civics is a fundamental one: can democracy be content with formal equality while hoping that it will gradually be assimilated into behaviour and practice? The urgency of claims for real equality in societies divided into new social strata forces us to think through the rights of pupils in terms of citizenship and the conveying of knowledge in terms of training in freedom of thought. This leads to normative choices being made. Schools could not, on the pretext of respect for differences, accept discriminatory and intolerant patterns of culture. Sexism, religious sectarianism, racism, which try to justify themselves through the cultural tradition, appear in the light of civics for what they are: anachronisms which are incompatible with the philosophy of human rights.9 The confusion created by a question which is so essential to the future of democratic societies accounts in large part for the half-heartedness of the authorities when it comes to promoting civics at school. However, when pupils refuse to study Voltaire because he is a ‘blaspheming’ author and compared to Salman Rushdie, assault a teacher because she is a woman or end up admitting that buying a newspaper ‘is a disgrace! We’re not highbrow!,’ it is really a question of fundamental liberties. By having accepted all forms of cultural expressions as equal and at the same time advocating the economic profitability of learning, there is a risk of losing all common sense. However, the success of civics, when teachers have had faith in its educational value, shows that learning citizenship is the surest way of illuminating understanding and of weaving the social good on the web of freedom.

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NOTES 1

For France, see in particular the works of François Dubet: La galère. Jeunes en survie. Paris, Fayard, 1987; ‘Jeunesses et marginalités’, Regards sur l’actualité, No. 172, July, 1991, pp. 3–9. For comparison, cf. Violence et résolution des conflits à l’école by Jamie Walker, Quaker Council for European Affairs. Council of Europe, July 1989, DECS/EGT (89) 24. Council for Cultural Cooperation, Strasbourg, 1990. 2 See J.M.Leclercq et C.Rault, Les systèmes éducatifs en Europe. Vers un espace communautaire? Paris, La Documentation française, 1989, Notes et études documentaires, No. 4899. We would also cite the publication by les Cahiers de l’Union rationaliste during 1991 of monographs of national education systems. 3 See Projet ‘Réussir l’intégration’, No. 227, autumn 1991; Dossier: intégration Pouvoirs locaux, No. 10, 1991; Intégration et exclusion dans la société française contemporaine. Gilles Ferreol (ed.), Presses Universitaires de Lille, Mutations/ sociologie, 1992, 454 p. and in particular ‘Jeunes et banlieues’ by C.Bachmann, ‘De l’éducation nationale à l’insertion professionnelle: les mutations du système scolaire’ by B.Charlot; Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, De l’immigré au citoyen, Paris, La Documentation française, 1990, 160 p. 4 See Éducation civique et philosophie politique, A.Colin et al., 1992, p. 256. 5 Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux, ‘Le droit à l’école. L’expérience de l’éducation civique’, Droit et société, No. 19, 1991, pp. 223–241; ‘Liberté, égalité et civisme au collège’, Migrants formation, No. 86, September 1991, pp. 128–139 and, more generally, the whole of this special issue of Migrants-formation ‘Identités, et communautés’ should be consulted for different points of view. 6 Fr. Audigier and G.Lagelee, Éducations aux droits de l’Homme, INRP Coll. Rapports de recherches, 1987, No. 13. 7 See the survey conducted by Éliane Montconduit in Paris schools, quoted in ‘Le droit à l’école’ above. 8 See Stratégies identitaires (Carmel Camilleri, Hanna Malewska-Peyre et al., Paris, PUF, 1990. 9 See ‘Le droit à l’école’ above. 10 See Laurence Cornu and Joël Roman ‘École et citoyenneté’ in La citoyenneté (C.Wihtol de Wenden et al.), Paris, Edilig/Fondation Diderot, 1988, pp. 309– 320 and two essential works: Claude Nicolet, L’idée républicaine en France, Paris, Gallimard, 1982; Catherine Kintzler, Condorcet, l’instruction publique et la naissance du citoyen, Paris, Minerve, Coll. Folio/Essais, 1987.

Appendix I

Glossary

2ème cycle

Upper secondary

supérieur

Cycle terminal

Final cycle

Diplôme

Diploma

Cycle de détermination

Decision cycle

3rd-cycle doctorate

BAC

Baccalauréat

Training for healthcare

BT

Technician’s diploma

professions

Terminale

Final grade

Medicine

Première

1st grade

Pharmacy

Seconde

2nd grade

Dentaire

Dentistry

FGH

Technological

Maîtrise

Post-graduate

Enseignement

Doctorat 3e cycle Formations de la santé Médecine Pharmacie

Higher education

baccalauréat series F, G, H

diploma (Master’s) Graduate diploma

Adaptation

Adaptation

(Bachelor’s)

Spéciale

Special

2-year university

3e année

3rd year

diploma

2e année

2nd year

Liberal arts

1e année

1st year

Sciences

Sciences

BEP

Diploma of vocational

Droit

Law

Licence DEUG Lettres

studies Terminale BEP

BEP final grade

économiques

Seconde profess.

Vocational 2nd grade

Pluridisciplinaire

Multi-disciplinary

BAC Pro

Vocational

DUT

University diploma of

Sciences

BTS

Economics

baccalauréat

technology

Terminale BAC

Vocational

Advanced techncian’s

Pro

baccalauréat final grade

Première BAC 1st grade

Vocational baccalauréat

diploma IUT

University institute of technology

STS

Advanced technician section

Ecoles spécialisées

Specialized institutes

Grandes Ecoles

Grandes Ecoles

CPGE

Preparatory classes

Second degré

Secondary education

Pro CAP

Certificate of vocational competence

2ème année

2nd year

1re année

1st year

Glossary CAP 3 ans

3-year CAP

3e année CAP

3rd year of 3-year

3 ans

401

Cycle des

Early learning

CAP

apprentissages

cycle

Apprentissage

Apprenticeship at

premiers

en CFA centre

apprentice training

Cours moyen

centre

2e année

Lower secondary

Cours moyen 1e

1st year

Orientation cycle

année

intermediate class

Observation cycle

Cours élémentaire

2nd year primary class

Certificate of lower

2e année

secondary education

Cours élémentaire

Troisième générale

General 3rd grade

1e année

Quatrième générale

General 4th grade

Cours préparatoire

Preparatory class

5th grade

6 ans

Age 6

Sixième

6th grade

Grande section

Upper nursery

Troisième

Work-oriented 3rd grade

1er cycle Cycle d’orientation Cycle d’observation Brevet

Cinquième

Troisième Quatrième

Petite section Examen terminal

3e préparat.

Preparatory 3rd grade

4e préparat.

Preparatory 4th grade

CAP

Preparatory apprenticeship class

CPPN

Streamed

de sortie Principaux flux system

Education spécialisée

Special education

de passage

Premier degré

Primary education

Enseignement

Elementary education

Cycle des

Final examination

Principaux flux Main flows leaving the system apprenticeship class

pre-vocational class

elementaire

Lower nursery school section

Technological 4th grade

technologique

Middle nursery school section

Technological 3rd grade

technologique

1st year primary class

school section Moyenne section

d’insertion

2nd year intermediate class

Main flows through the

Formation

Additional training

complémentaire

(people following

Development cycle

this track are assumed

approfondissements

to have already begun their working lives) Enseignement

Vocational and technological education

Cycle des

Basic learning

professionnel et

apprentissages

cycle

technologique

fondamentaux

Source: Ministerè de l’Education Nationale (1994) The French Education System, background report to OECD.

Index

academic assessment 37–8, 328 adolescence 343–7 Archer, M. 105, 108, 144, 157–8 Arendt, H. 341 art 35 Ashford, D.E. 157 Astolfi, J.-P. 363 Augé, M. 385 baccalauréat: 80 per cent 50, 260–4, 277, 370–1; élitism 8; extended 67, 184, 199, 200, 271, 294–5; geographical access 185–6; participants 12, 66–7, 270; technological 9, 170–1; vocational 10, 262, 277 Baker, K. 95, 112 Balladur, E. 46, 81 Ballion, R. 263 barème 230, 232 Barret, P. 153 Bayrou, F. 16, 45, 46, 47, 81–5 Bell, A. 309 BEP (Brevet d’études professionnelles) 50, 58–9, 106–7, 167, 200, 254, 262, 277–8 Berlak, A. and H. 241, 249 Beullac, C. 16, 257 Bourbaki, N. 145–6 Bourdieu, P. 8–9, 28, 190, 231–2, 256–7, 324, 327 brevet: see BEP Bristol-Aix project 238–41; classroom organization 244–6; implications 249–51; pedagogy 241–4; teacher-colleague relationships 248–9; teacher control 244–6; teacher-parent relationships 248–9; teacher-pupil relationships 246–7

British education: comprehensive schools 98; decentralization 102–4; Education Reform Act 155, 235–6; expenditure 95–6, 99–100, 103; equality 97–8; Local Government Planning and Land Act (1980) 103; National Curriculum 152–3, 154–5, 235–6, 250–1; Nuffield Project 148–9, 160; Plowden Report 147–8; social relations 397; student loans/ grants 110, 114; universities 95, 96, 99, 103, 112; see also England and Wales Brittany 171, 172, 173, 176, 186–7, 351 Broadfoot, P. 217, 226 bureaucracy 119, 120, 126–32 Callaghan, J. 100, 152 CAP (Certificat d’aptitude professionnelle) 50, 106, 167, 200, 265, 277–8, 282 careers guidance 280–2 catchment areas 128–9, 263–4, 351 Catholic schools 84, 85 (n1), 94–5, 171, 350 Catholicism 378–9 centralization 142–5, 157 Chevènement, J.-P. 105–6; baccalauréat 10, 260–1; collèges 97, 391; curriculum reform 98, 153–4, 355–7; private schools 95; republican élitism 46, 56–60; teacher quality 97, 155, 355 citizenship 374, 392, 393–4 civics 388, 391–6 class sizes 220, 232 classes préparatoires 8, 9 classroom organization 216–7, 219–20, 244–6

Index

collège 50–1, 253; academic results 373; culture 259–60; reforms 82–3, 96–7, 100, 264–8, 391; teacher quality 373; teacher recruitment 11 collège professeurs 106 collège unique 9–10, 201, 253, 254, 255–6, 261 collèges d’enseignment secondaire 255 collège de la République 120, 122; see also prefects commune 128–9 Compagnons de l’Université Nouvelle 254, 255 comprehensive schools 98, 253, 254–6 Conseil National des Programmes 261 Constitutional Council 57–8, 84–5, 105 consumerism 339–44, 346 Council of Europe, education report 143 creativity 33, 242–3, 328 Crosland, A. 100, 102 cross-disciplinary teaching 333–4, 392–3 Crozier, M. 121, 157–8, 192, 194 culture 34–5, 267; conflicts 388–90; from schools 13, 191, 194, 259–60, 377; homogenized 29; infantilized 346–7; post-modern 335–7; youth 290, 292, 293, 344–6 curriculum: development 59, 145–7; history in 1; national 154–5, 227, 235–6, 250–1; reform 17, 98, 152–6, 327–34, 355–7 d’Arcy, F. 139 Debray, R. 79–80 Debré, M. 94, 349, 352 débrouillardise 15 decentralization 89, 90, 165–6; adapting to need 167; autonomy 193, 353; backlash 180–1; equality of opportunity 258–60; in Europe 142–5, 157–60; financing 167, 172; legislation 122–3; local authorities 10–11, 57–8, 262; regional surveys 164–5 democracy 128–9, 254, 397 democratization 15, 167–8, 194–5, 255, 267, 272–6, 391 demographic changes 11–12, 26, 167, 199, 270, 274 DEP (Direction de l’Evaluation et de la Prospective) 184, 186, 188, 273,

403

285–6 départements: primary school building 132–3; primary teaching posts 133–5; secondary school building 135–8; secondary teaching posts 138–9 Devaquet, A. 16, 167 differentiated teaching 359–62; conceptual/procedural objectives 363–4; extended 362–7; Legrand report 265–6; in practice 241–2, 266 Direction de l’Evaluation et de la Prospective: see DEP disabilities: assessment procedures 305; educational provision 301–3; integration 303, 307; see also special education discovery-based learning 242–3 disintegration 28–9, 31–2 display material 220–1 District Commissions 305 Duclaud-Williams, R. 105 Durkheim, E. 229, 231 école unique 193, 253, 254–5 education 23–9, 189, 193–4; action plans 372–3; constraints 101, 102–12; content 34–6; culture 13, 191, 194, 259–60; and employment 98; expenditure 93–4, 95–6, 99–100, 123–6, 200–1; flexibility 329–30; human resources theory 271–2, 276–9; individualization 370; legislation 169–70, 175, 272, 276–7; market forces 193–5, 262–3; mass/quality 46, 62–8, 114–15; modular 275–6, 280; modernization 150–1; national 47, 49–51, 81–2, 85, 143, 144; reform 9–12, 82–3, 96–7, 100, 264–8, 391; selectivity 8–9, 372; structure 9–10, 255; technical 106–7; time spent in 11–12, 22, 199, 207–15; vocational/ academic 39–40, 184 Education Framework Act (1989) 10, 45, 49–55, 61–2, 83, 303, 307 Education Ministry 98–9, 106, 122, 176 Education Offices 175, 176, 177, 178–9, 181, 182 education teams 279–80 educational institutions 33, 104–8, 234–5, 295

404

Index

educational policies: changes 93; European 29–31, 40; financing 178–9; ideologies 229–30, 233–4; implementation 119–20; institutions 234–5; local 171–4, 175–6, 178; educational policies: (continued) national 175–6; regional councils 177–80 educational priority zones: civics in 394; compensatory 52, 96, 258; immigration 267; implementation 233, 373; results 372, 375; urban 369 educational systems 142–5, 157–60, 168 educational vouchers 95 elementary schools 7 elementary teachers 106 élitism 8, 46, 56–60, 153, 338 employment, and education 98 engineering 68 England and Wales: Assisted Places Scheme 95, 115 (n4); centralization 142; classroom organization 244–6; Education Reform Act 155, 235–6; local education authorities 96, 103–4, 108; National Curriculum 152–3, 154–5, 235–6, 250–1; National Union of Teachers 100, 107–8; new maths 147–9; pedagogy 241–4; teacher-parent/colleague relations 248; teacher-pupil relations 246–7; teaching practices compared 238–41; see also British education Enlightenment, and post-modernity 342, 343 equality 6, 33, 382, 384 equality of opportunity: decentralization 258–60; in education 6, 51–2, 67–8, 253, 254–6; questioned 256–8; republicanism 5, 56–7, 232; regional 12 ethics 394–5 ethnic minorities 395–7; see also immigration Europe: Council of Europe 143: decentralization 142–5, 157–60; education policies 29–31, 40; education scenario 29–34; educational systems 142–5; homogenization 29, 32–3; training 33

examination system: see baccalauréat, BEP; CAP expertise, local/State 172–4 L’Express 381 extra-curricular activities 365–6 Faure, E. 100 feelings, in post-modernity 338, 345 Fellini, F. 345–6 FEN (Féderation de l’école nationale) 68, 107, 158, 354 Ferry, J. 6–9, 45, 166, 169, 311, 355–6 Forquin, J.-C. 272, 324 foulard: see Muslim scarf Franche-Comté 172 Freudenthal, H. 149, 151, 159–60 Gildea, R. 90 graduates, mobility 31–2 grandes écoles 8, 99, 105, 111–12, 113 Grémion, C. 90, 91, 125 Grémion, P. 120, 121, 129–32, 138–9, 147 Gros, F. 190, 324, 327 Guichard, O. 106 guidance services 37, 71 Haby, R. 45, 100, 109, 233, 255, 257, 261 Hall, P. 102, 108, 125 handicapped pupils: see special education health education 53 hedonism 335, 338, 340 Heidenheimer, A. 102 history 1, 35 home environment: see social background Hörner, W. 158 human resources theory 271–2, 276–9 human rights 390–2, 394 Huteau, M. 281 identity 337–8, 395–6; national 378–9, 380, 389–90 Ile-de-France 170–1, 173, 177–8 illiteracy 24, 27 immigrants 135, 267 immigration 77–9, 267, 377–8, 379–80, 384, 385–6, 389 inequality 53, 165, 183, 232, 390–1 inspectors 230, 234 instituteur 7, 231, 309, 310–13

Index

institutions, for education 33, 104–8, 232–3, 234–5 Instituut Onwikkeling Wiskunde Onderwijs (IOWO) 149–50 integration: handicapped pupils 53–4; immigrants 377–8, 384, 385–6; lycée 199, 200, 288–9, 290–1; social programmes 259–60 intellectuals 341, 342–3 Isambert-Jamati, V. 272 Islam 380–1, 384 Islamic veil: see Muslim scarf IUFMs (Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres) 63–4, 309–10 Japan 25, 41, (n12, n14), 156 Joseph, K. 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 103–4, 154–5 Jospin, L.: baccalauréat 66–7, 277; education, mass/quality 46, 62–3; equality of opportunity 67–8, 93, 227, 233–4, 277; immigration 77–9; learning 64–5; Muslim scarf 73–7, 377, 383–5; primary schools 65–6; Republic 79–80; secondary schools 66; teaching profession 63–4, 72–3; trade unions 68–70; universities 70–2 Jospin Act (1989): see Education Framework Act Joxe, L. 257 Joxe, P. 166 Joxe Act 391 July, S. 385 knowledge: obsolescence 26; teaching of 328–9; transmission 330–2 laïcité 95, 111, 349, 350, 356; see also secularism Lang, J. 16, 45, 347–8 (n4) Languedoc-Roussillon 172, 173, 175–6 Laprévote, G. 313 learning 64–5, 242–4, 364–6 learning difficulties 300–4; see also special education learning environment 220–1 Legrand, L. 67–8, 96–7, 190, 259, 265, 353, 359 Lesourne, J. 22, 190 life sciences 35–6 Lijphart, A. 149–50

405

Limousin 186–7 local authorities 10–11, 56, 57–8, 166, 172–3, 262 loi d’orientation (1989) 278, 279 loi Jospin: see Education Framework Act (1989) Lowe, R. 315 lycée 51, 289–92; democratized 233, 273–4; demography 270, 274; DEP 273, 285–6; experience of 7–8, 286–9; inequalities 183; integration 199, 200, 288–9, 290–1; intakes 52; organization 271, 272–3; pupil councils 45, 54–5; pupil plans 51, 287–8; pupil types 286–94; renovation 9, 270–2, 279–82; selection 65, 254, 288–9, 290–1; social background of pupils 267; social control 296–7; teachers 298, 355; vocational routes 170 lycée professionnel 96, 292–4, 299 (n6) lycéen movement 169, 174, 201 magistère 99 managers, training 32–3 marginalization 17–18, 374 market forces 193–5, 262–3 Massey, S, 158 mathematics 59, 67, 145–52 Matthews, G. 148, 151, 159 Mauroy, P. 95, 110–11, 350 mayors 128–9 media 191–2, 354 Meirieu, P. 265, 325 Mény, Y. 15 Milner, J. -C 153–4, 261 Ministry of National Education 98–9, 106, 122, 176 Mitterrand, F. 1, 94, 100–1, 111, 113, 350 modern languages 35, 41 (n19) modular education 275–6, 280 Monde, Le 381 Monde, Le, de l’Education 20 Monory, R. 16, 45, 47, 107, 190, 260 Morin, E. 30 music 344, 347–8 (n4) Musil, R. 339 Muslim scarf 17, 73–7, 196 (n12, n21), 325–6, 377, 379–85, 386–7 (n3) Nation at Risk, A 156, 261

406

Index

national context, education 216–18, 227–35, 238–41 national curriculum 154–5, 227, 235–6, 250–1 national identity 378–9, 380, 389–90 Netherlands: curriculum reform 153; decentralized 142; educational legislation 155–6; ethnic minorities 397; new maths 149–50, 153; pillarization of education 149 new maths 145–52, 158–9 new sociology of education (NSE) 201, 272, 287 Nord-Pas-de-Calais 172, 173, 178 notable 120–2, 129–32, 140, 302 Nouvel Observateur 381, 382, 384–5 Nuffield Project 148–9, 160 nursery education: age on entry 203–7; assessments 305; and home environment 212; increase in 11, 200; learning acquisition 203–5; nationality 205–7, 212; objectives 50, 51; ZEPs 373 OECD 17–19, 29–34, 143 PACTE 257 PAEs (educational action plans) 372–3 parent representation 190–1, 192, 195 (n6), 351; see also UNAPEL Passeron, J.C. 8–9, 256–7 Pécaut, F. 312–13 pedagogy 241–4, 352–4 Peretti, A. de 190, 353 Perrot, J. 281 philosophes 342 Picardie 188 pleasure principle 342; see also hedonism Plowden Report 147–8 politicians, educational bureaucracy 126–32 post-modernism: anti-racism 337; culture 335–7; feelings 338, 345; intellectuals 341, 342–3; nihilism 336–7 pre-schooling: see nursery education prefects 120, 123–6, 132–3, 182 primary school 50, 51–2, 65–6; building programme 126–7, 132–3; catchment areas 128–9; financing 125; ideologies 228–9; pupil numbers 11; reorganization 199;

special needs 305–6; stages 305–6; see also Bristol-Aix project primary teachers 7, 231, 309, 310–13 priority education zones: see educational priority zones private schools 263; parent-teacher associations 351; participation in 84; pedagogy 352–4; as second chance 263, 351–2; state financing 85 (n1), 94–5, 171, 349, 354–5; teacher recruitment 352; see also Catholic schools professeurs certifiés 106 Programme Prévisionnel des Investissements 170 Prost, A: democratization 255, 267; 80 per cent baccalauréat 261; geographical inequality 183; lycées 190, 353; selection 8; teacher training 314; unemployment 107; values 324–5 pupil councils 45, 54–5 pupils: behaviour 225–6, 286, 296; as consumers 189–90, 263; as cultural actors 288; heterogeneity 264–5, 361–2; lycées 286–94; rights and duties 54–5; and schools 294–8, 363; as social actors 285–6, 287; social background 205–7, 212–15, 217, 267; and teachers 52, 246–7, 370; as users 191, 192 qualifications 38, 50, 62–3 Quicke, J. 154 reading 13, 36, 242 recteurs 11, 122, 123–4, 128, 133, 136–7, 139, 183, 262 redoublement 221–2, 235, 252 (n2), 266, 306 regions: authority 132–9; educational funding 179; educational policies 177–80; primary teaching posts 133–5; secondary school building 135–8; secondary teaching posts 138–9 religious neutrality 379–80 religious pluralism 382–3 republican élitism 46, 56–60, 153 republicanism 79–80, 228, 229, 323, 378–9, 391–2 Revel, J.-F. 354

Index

reward systems 225 Rocard, M. 46 Rose, R. 101 rote learning 243 rural/urban divide 134–5 Savary, A. 258–60; collèges 96; curriculum reform 17; private schools 94–5, 110–11, 113, 153, 263, 350, 352–3; teachers 109 Savary bill 94–5, 105–6, 354–5 Savary Law 45, 99 Schema Prévisionnel de Formation 170, 174 school: activities 365; class sizes 220, 232; classroom organization 216–17, 219–20; competition 263–4, 267; culture 13, 191, 194, 259–60, 377; democracy 254; hierarchy of 17–18; ideologies 230–2, 23 9–40; as institution 19, 287, 343, 375–6; intakes 51–2; populations 167; stages 221–2; streaming 66, 256, 265, 274; timetabling 222–4; values 390–1; violence 373–5, 389 school buildings 126–8, 132–3, 135–8, 219 secondary school 11, 66, 135–8, 164–5; see also collége; lycée secondary school teachers 138–9, 314–16 secularism 6, 349–51, 356, 379, 383–4 sexual equality 382, 384 Sharpe, L.J. 157 Sheriff, P. 147 SNES 107, 374 SNI 107 social background, pupils 205–7, 212–15, 217, 267 socialization 396–7 socially disadvantaged 52, 374–5 sociology of education, new 201, 272, 287 SOS-Racisme 378, 379, 384 special education 53–4, 201, 300–4, 306, 370 specialist teachers 306, 307, 330, 333 Stenhouse, L. 217 streaming 66, 256, 265, 274 student loans 110, 114 student-masters 311

407

subject areas 30, 83, 290, 294 Taine, H. 104 teacher training: Education Framework Act 45; IUFM 63–4, 309–10; primary 310–13; reforms 97, 100–1, 201–2; secondary 314–16 teachers: attitudes 226–7, 231: autonomy 259; barème 230, 232; as civil servants 228–9; demography 12; graded 106, 107; lycées 298, 355; and parents 248; primary 7, 231, 309; and pupils 52, 246–7, 370; quality 97, 155, 355, 373; recruitment 352; role 221; secondary 138–9, 309, 314–16; status 72–3, 107–8; tension 249; violence against 373–5, 389 teaching: autonomy 170; as career 229–30; competence 170, 179; crossdisciplinary 333–4, 392–3; differentiated 265–6, 359–67; French/English study 238–51; history of 359–60; professionalization 317–18; techniques 222, 235, 259 teaching hours 107 teaching-learning process 216–18, 224–5 technical education 106–7 textbooks 13, 146, 150, 158–9 Thatcher, M. 93, 94, 95, 103, 109, 115 (n4) thinking processes 328–9 Times Educational Supplement 103, 149 timetabling 222–4 Tocqueville, A. de 15 totalitarianism 342–3 trade unions 68–70, 82, 100, 107–8, 158, 324, 354, 373–4 training: changes 27; developmental 38; divergent approaches 183–4; and education 39–40, 174, 366–7; Europe 33; vocational 38–9, 104, 170, 184 tutoring 259, 265, 266, 353 UNAPEL 84, 85 (n2), 111 unemployment 8, 18, 62–3, 107, 165, 188, 369, 384 universalism 229–30

408

Index

universities 70–2, 95, 96, 99, 103, 110, 112, 114 USA 156, 261, 317, 318–19

Wilensky, H. 102 Worms, J.P. 121 youth culture 290, 292, 293, 344–6

value systems 28, 324–5 Vedel report 84 Vergnaud, M. 259 violence, in schools 373–5, 389 vocational training 38–9, 104, 170, 184 Weber, E. 90 Weber, M. 309, 310

Zay, J. 255 Zeldin, T. 147 ZEPs: see educational priority zones zoning 16, 351; see also catchment areas ZUPs: see educational priority zones Zweig, S. 345, 346