VIDEO. A drastic social selection in Stanislas, or how to obtain 100% success in the baccalaureate

One hundred percent success in the baccalaureate and, this year, 97% “very good” and “good” grades. The Stanislas high school offers, for around 2,400 euros in tuition fees per year, a most enviable educational environment. “Very high quality teaching, very interesting teachers, very educational, who took the time, no disruptive students…” On the infrastructure side, the establishment nestled in the heart of the beautiful Parisian districts, between Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Montparnasse, offers “huge buildings, very well maintained, gymnasiums, swimming pools…”.

Cécile discovered this privileged world described by a former student in “Additional Investigation” after sixth form in a public college. These ideal study conditions had won over his parents, “bourgeois, a little right-wing, not quite Stan’s milieu but not too far either”. She joined a single-sex class, as the establishment offers in college.

In Stanislas, it is not the only type of diversity that raises questions. The private school financed in part by public money (private establishments under contract are on average subsidized more than 70% by the State and local authorities) is one of those where social diversity is the most weak.

For to situate Stanislas in relation to other educational establishments, “Complement of investigation” crossed two indices published by the Ministry of Education. First the IPS, the social position index. The higher it is, the more the students come from a privileged social background. Then, the social heterogeneity index. The lower it is, the less social diversity there is in a high school.

A graph was produced from these two indices, where all the high schools in France were positioned. “Additional investigation” showed it to an economist specializing in educational inequalities. Julien Grenet firstly emphasizes that social composition is significantly better in private high schools than in public establishments. And among these very favored private high schools, Stanislas stands out for its “extremely favored social composition” which, with its IPS close to 150 (one of the highest in France), places it at the tip of the cloud formed by these establishments on the graph.

At the college level, he emphasizes that “of the 1,300 students (of Stanislas), there are less than 10 who are children of workers or people without professional activity”, compared to 24% on average in Parisian public colleges. Julien Grenet sees in this social selection the “problem embodied by this establishment, and many others in France. Given the social determinism of success at school, they know that the simplest way to monopolize the best places in the baccalaureate rankings, for example, is simply to select students from advantaged social backgrounds, who go very do well in school – Besides, wherever they go.”