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Abstract
Increased academic attention has been drawn to democratisation in higher education, following the implementation of affirmative action in America. However, the models of Access policies presented by certain European educational systems deserve more attention. France and Britain share a common position on elitism, although they define it according to very different principles: on the one hand, France emphases the old model of meritocracy through academic performance, whereas in Britain, some institutions still tend to favour a more hereditary transmission of ethos. A comprehensive comparison of ‘positive discrimination’ and Outreach policies allows us to try and rebuild the political conditions (and debates) around the implementation of these policies, which now target individuals rather than the usual macrosocial or territorial categories. Regulation patterns – although not yet finalised – reveal to some extent a general willingness for ‘potential and ability assessment’, which would make recruitment systems for higher education in both France and Britain less socially exclusive.
Notes
1. In this perspective of openness and diversity of American students, an annual report by the Institute of International Education underlines the rising internationalization of American campuses and their attractiveness in comparison with their European counter‐parts, although they only represent 3.5% of the total student population in the USA.
2. We will understand the term ‘promotion of diversity’ as an expression exported from the private sector field. It could be defined as a process of promotion of different individuals, each of them and their talent being an asset for economic performance. Contrary to the notion of antidiscrimination, the term of diversity does not refer to an equality of rights between individuals.
3. Founded in the eighteenth century, at the same time as the military academies with a strong meritocratic recruitement, the preparatory classes to the ‘Grandes Ecoles’ (also known as ‘Classes préparatoires aux Grandes Ecoles’ or more simply as ‘prépas’) are the spindle of selective education in France. They are installed within the secondary schools and brought together 77,600 pupils in 2007–2008, which represents less than 8% of all students.
4. In France, the Baccalauréat is the first form of the final degree of secondary education: it allows registration in any of the public Universities. The baccalaureate is also the necessary degree to enter the scolarly‐selective public system that has developed since the end of the eighteenth century: ‘the Grandes Ecoles’.
5. The term ‘Grande Ecole’ is not formalized, but indicates an establishment acknowledged by the State but independent of the University, whose entry is on competition, directly after the Baccalaureate or at the end of two years of schooling in a preparatory class. At the end of a curriculum at a ‘Grande Ecole’ (five years after the Baccalaureate), a Master certificate is delivered. The French Department of Education assesses the number of Grandes Ecoles at 431. Institutional actors met in the course of the research tended to differentiate the ‘top Grandes Ecoles’ (L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, l’Ecole Normale supérieure, l’Ecole Polytechnique, l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration etc.) from the rest of the ‘Grandes Ecoles’.
6. The Russell Group is a formal group composed of twenty research‐led universities. Created in 1994, it aims at giving a formal forum of exchanges between the best universities on shared interests. According to some authors, it could be considered as a British ‘Ivy League’ (Boliver Citation2006).
7. As well as, to some extent, certain selective Grammar schools. Public schools are prestigious, traditional independent secondary schools, privately funded by tuition fees.
8. The reference to the Malthusian logic refers, in an academic context, to a belief that only a restricted access to traditional places of elite production will produce economic growth and social welfare.
9. ‘Networked from birth’ by J. Harris, The Guardian, May 9 2008, Education section. It is important to note the role of the media in the survival of the theme of ‘elitism’ in British higher education.
10. The concept of ethnicisation of French school refers to the high density of ethnic minorities in a few schools, which corresponds also to a social segregation silently organized by the schools themselves (for more details, see Felouzis, Liot and Perroton [Citation2005]).
11. Although they don’t differentiate from the others, CPGE by their training, preparatory classes rooted in a local community are aimed at recruiting local ‘gifted and talented’ pupils who wouldn’t have access to the most selective CPGE and enable them to enter ‘Grandes Ecoles’. The original aim of these classes was to improve pluralism in higher education institutions but soon proved its inability to do so and a tendency to widen the socially‐segregative gap between the best CPGE aiming at preparing access to the most prestigious institutions and the local CPGE who could prepare to less prestigious higher education institutions or a late access to university.
12. After graduating from Harvard University, Laura Spence has obtained a post‐graduate degree from the University of Cambridge.
13. In 2001, Sciences Po., a prestigious Parisian university specialised in social sciences, started to implement a programme aiming to diversify its student body, ‘the Conventions d’Education Prioritaire’. Changing the entrance examinations procedures for pre‐selected applicants from non‐traditionnal backgrounds, this scheme was launched by the institution itself, proving its potential autonomy towards the state. It is funded on its own resources with the help of private fundings. So far, more than 300 students from French EAZs have been admitted through this programme.
14. In 2002, ESSEC, a prestigious business school located in the outskirts of Paris, initiated the first ‘Outreach programme’ in France. Called ‘A preparatory course, a prestigious school, why not me?’ it is based on the belief that good students from deprived backgrounds needed both to enhance their general culture and raise their self‐confidence to succeed in their entry to Higher Education (under the influence of Bourdieu’s sociology). Therefore, it offers a three‐year course aiming at compensate their cultural and social capital. Like Sciences Po’s programme, it was created on the sole initiative of the school, highlighting the relative autonomy of this type of schemes towards the State. However, it is heavily funded by the state, which recognizes it as an accurate measure of antidiscrimination, with complementary help from private funding.
15. In France, the only case of ‘legitimate inequality’ has been implemented by Sciences Po through the described ‘Conventions of Priority education’, the traditional principle of equality between individuals in access to the ‘Grandes Ecoles’ where everyone takes the same selective exams in similar conditions whatever their background (on the basis of the meritocracy system) has been discussed by the institution that implemented a derogatory examination, reserved for pupils from a deprived‐background/EAZ based schools. In Britain, the only similar cases known refer to universities that recruit students to certain departments on lower prediction of A‐level results, on the condition of following a mentoring scheme ante their A‐levels at Bristol or Birmingham universities, for instance.
16. In 2007, Yannick Bodin, a French Socialist Party politician and a member of the French Senate, was charged by a select parliamentary committee to write a report on social diversity in French selective Higher Education. The latest significant official report on this issue, it was aimed at evaluating the widening participation schemes recently launched by the Grandes Ecoles. It advocates to ‘put an end to the insider trading’ (Mettre fin au délit d’initiés as it is entitled.) where only a small number of middle‐class families share the accurate information on access to top higher education institutions.
17. A ‘rectorate’ is the main local education authority in France. Its purpose is to implement national policies as a regional level as well as defining the local performance objectives for education services. It is also in charge of their local Human Resources management and ensures a partnership with different actors involved in Education such as city councils.
18. The Sutton Trust is a private trust created in 1997 and funding Access and Widening Participation projects in order ‘to challenge educational inequality’. Its best known funded project ‘the Sutton Trust Summer Schools’ aims at ‘giving selected pupils an accurate idea of life as an undergraduate student thanks to one‐week taster courses’. The programme started in 1997 at Oxford. The Trust has subsequently expanded the scheme to Bristol, Cambridge, Nottingham and St Andrews Universities. (http://www.suttontrust.com/about.asp)
19. ‘Track effects’ refers to an informal link between two institutions based on a tendency to recruit the student coming from a similar type of secondary institutions into higher education institutions. This effect is simultaneously due to an intensive preparation aimed at specific types of institutions and the apprenticeship of similar skills (sometimes by the same pedagogue) that enables a pathway between two institutions, despite the selective exams.
20. The ‘Pathways to Law’ programme is a widening participation initiative providing opportunities for students from state schools in England who are interested in a career in law and will be first generation attendees at university. Established by The College of Law and The Sutton Trust in 2001, the programme targets pupils from underrepresented backgrounds and provides support throughout years 12 and 13 and beyond into university. (http://www.pathwaystolaw.org.uk/).