A : Recap

Nevertheless, adolescence does have its own specific pressures, and many of these are a result of their lives at school and of the their entry into the world of work, with the taking on of adult responsibilities that it implies. We need to look more closely at the school as an institution. 

B : The French school system - a very brief history

The education dispensed in the two institutions was very different, and it was virtually impossible for a child to transfer from one system to the other. The lycée, as it was instituted by Napoleon, took students in at the age of 8 years old - either their parents paid or they received a government grant. The primary school, originally founded in 1833 by the loi Guizot, was a separate system, with its own masters, programs and administrative system. It was divided into three sections 

- the nursery school, 

- the elementary schools and 

- the 'écoles primaires supérieures'. The latter was particularly strong in the first 50 years of the 20th Century.

Alongside these two systems, a third series of technical schools arose, which developed into the 'centres d'apprentissage' under the Vichy government. 

The idea of a single school system began to make headway after the first world war. First the 'écoles primaires supérieures' were attached to the secondary system proper - once again, under the Vichy government - but it was not until 1959 (réforme Berthoin) that any further progress was made, with the raising of school-leaving age to a theoretical 16 (from 14 - did not actually happen until 1967) and the creation of an observation cycle after elementary education - the basis of the Collèges d'enseignement général. 

The réforme Fouchet of 1963 created a fully integrated school system, but maintained the differences between the sections, with an education of the primary type in the so called 'modern' sections and the 'classes de transition'. 

In 1975, the loi Haby fully unified the CES and the CEG, and did away with sections in 6e and 5e. However, the sections continued to exist from the 4e onward : later reforms have tended in the direction of a greater degree of homogeneity, under whatever government. 

C : The Principle of Secularity

Religious schools developed particularly in areas where the catholic church was strong. As these schools wished to cater for young people of all qualities, they had financial difficulties, and were reduced to demanding state funds - which sparked off a series of school wars. 

In 1959, the loi Debré saw the state as guarantor of ideological pluralism - the private schools were recognized as playing a role in the education of the nation, and thus as being worthy of state finance. A number of concessions were made to the Catholic Church that allowed them to continue providing a specific confessional education while drawing on the public purse. 

The Church, conscious that it needed to maintain its image as a national benefactor, made a great effort to create a school which would be a centre of excellence, and which could rival with the public school on its own ground - that of academic success. This was done by offering a different form of pedagogy, and a greater control over the pupils in their daily lives. 

The most recent of the wars over the school - sparked off by the project put forward by Savary in 1984 - was no longer really about religion, but about the right to choose the school one wanted for one's children. The parents' ability to decide upon a school for their children has become increasingly important as the role of the school as a placement agency has grown.

D: Democratisation and Equality of Opportunity

The creation of different sections has lead to the hiving off of the working class children into those sections that carry the least prestige. Thus, it appears as if the lowering of barriers at the entry into the school went hand in hand with the erection of barriers within the school. 

Let us look more closely at the reasons for this disparity in educational outcomes. First, it needs to be said that part of the explanation lies in the fact that working class children do not appear to be as well prepared for the school as middle-class children are. They do not get the same results as their middle class classmates. However, this does not account for the whole difference: a working class child and a middle class child with exactly similar marks in their class work have different chances of receiving a positive orientation. 

The weight of social class begins to hang heavily from a very early stage. Thus, only 3.1% of children of the upper social classes have to repeat the Cours Préparatoire, whereas 17.9% of the children of unskilled labourers repeat. 

This appears to be largely determined by the educational level of the parents, rather than by their income. The educational level of the mother is particularly important (ping pong, DH Lawrence type families). Equally, despite popular misconceptions, the fact that the mother works is positive in its effects, rather than negative. 

Family size also has some influence on educational attainment: only 6.7% of children from families of one or two children repeat the CP, as against 16.7% from large families - although the effects here are felt amongst working class families rather than middle class families. 

Another variable that influences success is gender : girls succeed more often than do boys: 

110 girls enter the 6e at the normal age for every 100 boys. The difference is more marked amongst the working classes, but is found at all levels of the social hierarchy.

When these different factors are accumulated, they can make a difference of some weight :

 

Taux de redoublement au CP - élèves français nés en 1972, Duthoit M. Education et formation, no.19, 31 - 40. Cité dans Sociologie de l'école, Duru-Bellat & Henriot-van Zanten

These inequalities continue in the secondary school. Today, practically all pupils arrive in the collèges, sooner or later. Important selection effects take place when the pupils are streamed, both during their collège career and at the end, when the selection in troisième can be very severe. This selection has become less marked in recent years, but persists . 

- of children who entered 6e in 1973, 35.4% went on to Terminale. For children entering 6e in 1980, this figure was 45.6%; most of the excess was made up of children who had repeated at least one year.

Taux d'accès en 4e et 2nde par origine sociale, pour 100 élèves entrés en 6e en 1980 : ministre de l'Education Nationale. Cité dans Sociologie de l'école, Duru-Bellat & Henriot-van Zanten.

This selection is determined by the decisions taken in the 'conseil de classe'. These decisions are taken on the basis of : 

the marks obtained by the children, 

on the advice of the teachers, and 

on the demand of the families.

The first of these criteria by no means explains all the differences - in the academy of Dijon, 89% of the children of 'cadres sup.' go through the barrier between 5e and 4e - the figure for the children of working class fathers is 54%. Partly, this is due to the lower results of the working class children - but it is also due to the greater prudence of working class families in their choices when their children's marks are 'just average'. Moreover, it appears that the teachers themselves are influenced by the family background of the children, and are more likely to back a demand from a middle-class family that their child should continue on the path towards the lycée than if the demand comes from a working-class family. 

We have seen that there is a high degree of social selection operating throughout the collège. Once the children arrive in the lycée, the importance of the 'conseil de classe' continues, but now its role is to determine which of the baccalauréats the child will take. 

Almost half of the children of 'cadres sup' pass a scientific bac - C or D, as against only 20% of the children of working class fathers. 48% of the latter end up with a Bac G or F, as against 13% of the former. It is interesting to note that the development of the 'Bac de technicien' has not only permitted the lycées to absorb the newcomers from the lower social classes, but has also meant that some children from these social classes, who in the past managed to go on to take and pass one of the 'classic' Bacs, now find themselves in the G & F sections. 

The gender inequalities continue 

- of 100 children entering 6e in 1980, 51 girls arrived in Terminale, as against 41 boys.

However, the girls find themselves selected into sections A (83%) or B (62%) and out of C (36%) and E(6%) - if they are selected into a scientific section, it tends to be D (52%). As for the Bacs Tech, 67% of girls find themselves in G, as against only 27% in F. 

Duru-Bellat and Mingat have calculated that the accumulated inequalities within the French school system are derived 

- 1/3 from differential success in the primary system 

- 1/3 from differential success in the secondary system 

- 1/3 from the mechanics of the mode of orientation in the secondary system

Much of this is invisible to the practising teacher. Because there are considerably more children from the less successful social groups than there are children from the successful ones, the teacher experiences a class that appears to be homogenous

E : School and the world of work

Taux de chômage des jeunes de 15-24 ans, par niveau de diplôme (%) 1988 (INSEE)

Young people holding a higher diploma have been relatively spared by the economic crisis of recent years. 

Moreover, the kind of job is different too - the higher the diploma, the more likely you are to get a real job, rather than one of the precarious and even part-time jobs offered by the service sector - 66% of young people with low-level qualifications were in this kind of job in 1988 as against 21% of those with a Bac or more. So the level of school success is of some incidence upon the first insertion of a young person into the job market. 

But does the school help a young person to rise in the social system? Does it lead to greater social mobility? 

French society has - like all other industrial and indeed non-industrial societies - always allowed a certain degree of mobility. Much of this is structural - if today many people whose fathers were blue-collar workers are themselves white-collar workers, this is largely because while the secondary sector has shrunk, the tertiary sector has expanded.

However, it does appear that over the last twenty years, there has been some growth in the number of people who move across class lines once structural changes are taken into account. Most of this takes place in the intermediary social groups - there is very little long-range mobility. But only a small degree of this movement can be explained in terms of the qualifications that people receive from the educational system. 

What appears to happen is that the school plays a large role in primary placement - that is, it provides an entry ticket into the labour market at a certain level - but that what occurs subsequently may depend on a large number of other factors, many of which appear to be un-measurable. Thus the American sociologist, Christopher Jencks, concluded that something like 50% of the variation in earning power between individuals could be attributed to luck. 

How much does school add to the society as a whole? 

It may appear that the need for more education is imposed by the need for people with a higher degree of knowledge - school adds value to the individuals who pass through it, and in general, the longer the individual remains within the system, the greater the value that is added. 

However, this may not be the case; some sociologists see the main function of the school as being that of a 'filter'. The level at which the individual quits the system is simply a signal of his basic aptitudes and behaviours, which the employer uses in order to evaluate his possible use by the enterprise. 

In this case, the fact that more people arrive at a higher point in the system does not mean that greater value has been added for the labour market - instead, it leads to a devaluation of the qualifications at each level, which in turn produces further pressure for more school on the part of families and pupils themselves.

The rise in the level of qualification demanded, for example, of a primary school teacher, is not a reflection of the increasing complexity of the task of teaching to young children, but simply of the fact that the employer cannot make a proper choice at the earlier date, because far more young people now possess the diplomas that would have allowed entry into the profession thirty years ago.

Conclusion

In the first place, we have seen that the school is a historically specific formation, which has developed over the last two hundred years, and that traces of that development are still to be found in the system today.

In the second place, we have seen that to a large extent reproduces the inequalities of the social system. We will need to look more closely at the actual behaviour of social agents within the system to understand exactly how this comes about.

Thirdly, we have seen that the school qualifications are an important element in the placement of young people in the labour market, but that the subsequent life-course of the individual is not necessarily strongly determined by his level of qualification on leaving school.

Fourthly, the expansion of the school system has roughly coincided with a certain loosening of the boundaries of social class, and the development of a rather larger degree of non-structural social mobility. Whether the school actually plays a determining role in this process is not clear.

Fifthly, we have seen that there is some disagreement as to what it is that the school actually does - whether it adds value to the pupil that the labour market needs, or whether it simply functions as a filtering mechanism, which sorts people out according to criteria which measure characteristics which the individual brings with him into the system.

Over the next few weeks, we will try to relate what we have learnt to the actual practices of teachers, administrators, pupils and their families, within the establishments themselves. We will be looking at what schools and teachers can do to help their pupils succeed. 

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