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Abstract
In this article, we address whether international student comparisons have changed the dynamics of French secondary education policy. We focus on the increasingly significant impact of the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD)’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on France, a country previously known for its aversion to international comparisons and its turbulent relationship with the OECD. We argue that not only are transnational pressures – in our study the perception of PISA – crucial determinants for the fate of potential reform measures, but also the capacity of the state to transform its education system and take corrective measures. Along these lines, we also examine the role of historically embedded guiding principles of education, in the French case most notably that of equality (égalité). We focus, in particular, on efforts of French policy-makers to emulate elements of the recent ‘PISA champion’ Finland.
Notes
1. Despite its more introverted stance, we by no means claim that French education has been previously entirely unaffected by internationalization processes. For example, there are strong parallels between the collège unique and the British comprehensive school and between zones d’éducation prioritaires and ‘education priority areas’ (see Hatcher and Leblond Citation2001).
2. Lycées d’enseignement général et technologiques = general education and technical; lycées d’enseignement professionnel = vocation. Nowadays, both tracks are offered at the so-called Lycée polyvalent.
3. Hereafter MEN = Ministère de l’Education Nationale (National Ministry of Education).
4. This goal was later reduced to 74%.
5. Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de l’école. This institution was replaced in 2005 by the Haut Conseil de l’Éducation.
6. Direction de l’évaluation, de la prospective et de la performance.
7. This was the case between 1997 and 2002 under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, during which socialist party member Lionel Jospin held the office of prime minister.
8. See Sainsbury, Schagen, and Hammond (Citation2004) for a similar argument with regard to PIRLS.
9. This argument is weakened by the fact that the countries with the highest scores come from very different cultural backgrounds (South Korea, Finland, Canada) and that students from similar cultural backgrounds have performed very unevenly (USA and Canada), see Duru-Bellat and Suchaut (Citation2005, 182).
10. Approximately 60% of secondary school students of an age group receive a baccalauréat diploma and approximately 20% a baccalauréat professionnel or technologique. Nearly 20 do not graduate from secondary school (MEN Citation2009).
11. Despite the OECD critique, we can speak of a long-term success in this regard, as only 40% of an age group reached the last school grade to prepare for the baccalauréat in 1968 (Corbett Citation1996, 10).
12. This is also confirmed in Rémond’s analysis of the PIRLS study.
13. These inequalities are generally not necessarily as high as in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but considerably higher than those in Finland and South Korea. Meuret (Citation2007) has identified two different types of inequalities in which France has performed particularly poorly: the proportion of very weak students and the effects of family and social environment on performance.
14. This strong methodology can be traced back to the fact that France has proposed different methodological foundations for the international comparison of student performance since the beginning of the PISA study (Bottani and Vrignaud Citation2005; Mons and Pons Citation2009a, Citation2009b). Advocates of the proposed ‘French method’ criticize, above all, the strong statistical orientation of PISA as well as the fact that the study does not measure the acquisition of knowledge (like other national comparative performance assessments in France), rather learning skills and abilities.
15. The age group (15 years) for which PISA is conducted may also increase performance disparities and inequalities among French pupils. While Swedish students, for example, have been visiting the ‘Grundskola’ for seven years together at the age of 15, French pupils are at the crossroads between the collège and lycée at this age (Meuret Citation2003b).
16. The withholding of the results can also be traced back to efforts of the newly elected Education Minister Jack Lang to appease French teachers and French leftists, who in part perceived the OECD as a neo-liberal organization lacking legitimacy (Pons Citation2011).
17. The Commission proposed diverse action programmes for ‘schools of the future’: to ensure that every student acquires indispensible basic knowledge and finds his/her way to success; motivate students to identify special skills and set foci; promotion of social diversity (mixité sociale); strengthen the capacity of schools to take action and responsibility; redefine the tasks of teachers; stronger incorporation of parents into the academic success of children; partnerships with politicians, associations, enterprises, media, medical service providers, the police and the legal system.
18. The study includes the results of a comprehensive evaluation of the French school system by the Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de l’école and argues for a stronger orientation of French education policies towards international comparisons.
19. Reference figures of the European Council for modern foreign languages.
20. Duru-Bellat and Suchaut (Citation2005, 193) warn that the assumed cause-effect relationship between good performance and school autonomy has not been fully established and may blend out other factors.
21. See Simola (Citation2005) for a more cautious interpretation of the Finnish miracle and the university applicability of its education model elsewhere.
