CHRONIC. A look back at Gabriel Attal’s announcements on the college of tomorrow

Clément Viktorovitch returns every week to the debates and political issues. Sunday December 10: the college reform outlined by the Minister of National Education, in reaction to the poor results of French schoolchildren in the international PISA ranking. A reform which notably proposes the reestablishment of level classes in colleges.

A “shock of knowledge”: this is what France would need to stop falling in the PISA rankings. A formula behind which Gabriel Attal brings together numerous measures: encouraging repetition, making the middle school certificate compulsory to progress to high school, introducing a new math test at the baccalaureate… And, therefore, this flagship idea: introducing groups of levels, at middle school, in French and mathematics.

The idea, at first glance, might seem attractive: allowing the best students to achieve excellence, while not being held back by the rest of the class. And give students in difficulty the opportunity to catch up in small groups, where they could have additional hours of support.

But level classes are an old idea, which has been very well studied by educational sciences. All studies converge to show that it is, in reality, a machine for reinforcing inequalities. We can cite in particular the work of the French sociologist Marie Duru-Bellat. It shows that, in level classes, good students are, it is true, pushed to the top. On the other hand, the students with the most difficulties tend to collapse – whether or not they are in small numbers. The fact of being brought together in a fragile group, unfortunately, convinces them that they are bad. Despite all the good will of teachers, when we look at the results at the end of the year, they are cruel: the good students have become better, the less good ones have even more to catch up on. Moreover, with the exception of the SNALC, which is in a very small minority, all the unions are vigorously opposed to this measure.

The PISA ranking is, moreover, subject to nuance. The work of Fabien Truong, sociologist of education, shows that if France performs less well in PISA, it is in particular because its school system is very massified. He is one of those who keeps the most students in school for the longest time. Which is rather a good thing, but has the mechanical consequence of lowering the average in PISA. Then, what the PISA survey shows above all is that the French school system is terribly unequal. The gap between children from advantaged backgrounds and those from disadvantaged backgrounds is one of the largest in the world.

However, to reduce educational inequalities, while raising the general level, there are plenty of things to do. Recruit teachers, above all, to reduce class numbers. Then, focus on mutual assistance between students of different levels within the same class, as recommended by education science professor Philippe Meirieu. On the other hand, level groups risk increasing already unbearable inequalities.

Clientelist school?

We cannot exclude political ulterior motives: the level classes have, for ten years, been a totem of the conservative right. But there is also a fundamental reason. In presenting his reform, Gabriel Attal said that he wanted to create level groups in particular for middle-class French people, who pay taxes, and want to get value for their money.

But the very principle of a public service is that we all finance it according to our means, and we benefit from it according to our needs. Saying that “French people who pay taxes want a return on investment”, Gabriel Attal deviates, it seems to me, from the very foundations of our public service. The model he claims to follow is that of a clientelist school, which de facto favors the children of those who finance it. To the detriment, therefore, of the ideal of the republican school, the one which should allow young citizens to enter life armed with a common base of knowledge. Alas, I fear that more than ever, we are very far from it.