High expectations, a very long gestation period… The plan in favor of social and educational diversity, postponed to March, then to April, was to be unveiled this Thursday. But the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye has decided to postpone his announcements until next Wednesday when signing a protocol on the subject with private education. He just leaked some information about this Thursday’s meeting with the rectors. Even if it means arousing even more impatience, even disappointment, among the actors of Education. “We have been waiting for announcements since November. If they are postponed, it is undoubtedly because the dossier is politically sensitive, ”comments the secretary general of Snes-FSU, Sophie Vénétitay.
Pap Ndiaye is all the more expected on the subject, as he had undertaken to act on this file as soon as he arrived at Rue de Grenelle. In a column published in THE World in December, he had driven home the point, declaring his intention to “fight against all social determinisms”. “A school which, while promising it, does not grant equality produces not only injustice, but also mistrust and a feeling of anger in the working classes,” he wrote. In addition, the publication in recent months of social position indices (IPS) of schools, colleges and high schools, measuring the social situation of students, had further underlined the social segregation existing in the French school system.
A quantified objective set for public establishments
This Thursday, Pap Ndiaye had therefore summoned the rectors to guide them on the subject. He set them the objective of increasing social diversity in public establishments “by reducing the differences in social recruitment between establishments by 20% by 2027”, reports his entourage. A quantified ambition that Rémy-Charles Sirven, national secretary of SE-UNSA and secretary general of the National Committee for Secular Action (Cnal) salutes: “Jean-Michel Blanquer had not set any objective in terms of school diversity. However, it is useful to set a course and a reasonable time to reach it. »
To do this, the minister asked the rectors to create an academic body for steering co-education, bringing together local authorities, representatives of establishments and parents of students. The goal is to adapt the solutions to each territory. “It is difficult for an experiment in the field to be duplicated everywhere, because the social composition of the establishments is very different from one territory to another”, emphasizes Rémy-Charles Sirven. A roadmap of planned actions will be established at the end of 2023.
Multiply the bi-college sectors
Pending specific announcements, certain elements of the toolbox that the minister intends to offer to the academies are already known. Pap Ndiaye wishes, for example, to develop “sections of excellence” in underprivileged establishments, such as international sections, classes with flexible schedules in music, cinema, theatre. At the start of the school year, sixteen international sections should open, according to the minister’s remarks to the Senate in March. A way to fight against the evaporation of some of the students towards the private sector. But which also arouses criticism: “You have to be careful that these sections do not bring together favored students in the same class, while their less favored comrades would be in other classes”, notes Rémy-Charles Sirven.
The ministry also plans to multiply the bi-college sectors, experienced since 2016 in Paris, under the leadership of the Socialist Minister of Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. The principle is to choose two public colleges that are geographically close, but which welcome students from very different social origins. And to educate their students together, by assigning them to these two colleges. The bi-college sectors already created in Paris have demonstrated their effectiveness. About 200 colleges could take part in this experiment. Sophie Vénétitay has some reservations, however: “In these two-college sectors, the school mix has certainly improved. But the teams report their needs for additional resources, for example, to offer support lessons to students from disadvantaged schools who find themselves mixed with classmates who sometimes have a higher educational level. The initiative set up in Toulouse in 2017 will also be emulated. Segregated colleges in the Grand Mirail district had been closed and their students had been distributed to more favored areas.
The private should be spared…
The government also wishes to involve private education under contract (essentially Catholic), with the State financing three quarters of the budget of these establishments. But the measures that will be announced should be limited, because the subject is highly flammable. The minister seems to have already given up imposing scholarship quotas on private establishments and attaching them to the school map. Philippe Delorme, the general secretary of Catholic education, and Éric Ciotti, the president of the Republicans, having raised the specter of a “school war”. “This brandished threat undoubtedly convinced the government not to impose too restrictive measures on private education which would have plunged it into a political impasse”, believes Rémy-Charles Sirven.
According to the first tracks mentioned, private education should be encouraged to welcome more scholarship holders by allowing families to benefit from social aid from local authorities to finance the canteen in particular. Private establishments will also be encouraged to apply differentiated prices according to family income. Measures that Sophie Vénétitay fears: “They risk leading to an exfiltration of the best scholarship students from the public into the private sector. »
Rémy-Charles Sirven is also skeptical and believes more in the bill of the communist senator Pierre Ouzoulias which invites to condition the financing of private schools under contract to criteria of social and educational diversity.