If the private Parisian middle school, which encourages its students to make only one wish to join its preparatory classes, remains an exception, other establishments, including in the public sector, retain their best high school students after the baccalaureate.
Stanislas one day, Stanislas always? For this motto to take shape, the private establishment did not hesitate to circumvent the rules of Parcoursup. This is what a report revealed, unveiled by Médiapart on January 20. We learn that Stanislas encourages some of his students “to renounce their other wishes” on the platform in exchange for “guaranteed admission” in one of their preparatory classes for the Grandes Ecoles (CPGE). “In 2023, out of more than 600,000 high school students who made wishes in Parcoursup, there are only 41 candidates who made only one wish” for a CPGE in the establishment where they were in their final year, and “38 are students of Stanislas”, including the son of the Minister of National Education Amélie Oudéa-Castéra. This privilege triggered a call to order for “bypass” from the Ministry of Higher Education, Sunday January 21.
While future high school graduates have until March 14 to express their wishes, the Stanislas controversy rekindles the debate on the mention of the high school of origin in the candidates’ files. “If the name of the school had been made anonymous, the Stanislas case would not have happened. This is what allows small arrangements,” deplores Senator Pierre Ouzoulias (PCF), who has been following the Parcoursup file since its launch in 2018. Because this information is, in the same way as academic results or the professional project, available to higher education sectors, they are free to take it into account or not in their selection criteria.
By promising certain high school students their place in prep in exchange for a single wish, Stanislas remains a very marginal case. “It’s unique in its kind. With our colleagues, we spend time explaining to high school students that the multiple wishes system on Parcoursup will allow them to have something on arrival. An establishment that relies on this, It’s mind-blowing and extremely shocking.”, exclaims Jean-Rémi Girard, president of the National Union of high schools, colleges, schools and higher education (Snalc). Without going so far as to circumvent the rules, other prep classes with a high school draw from their final year students.
A small step between high school and prep
Let’s take Paris, a city in which selective prep courses are concentrated and whose IPS (social position index) of establishments is high. Against all expectations, only 6.5% of those admitted to prep courses come from the same high school (compared to 10.4% for the French average), according to data from Parcoursup 2023, provided by the Ministry of Higher Education. But this figure hides great disparities: in Jean-Baptiste-Say, public high school in the 16th arrondissement, almost half of the students in PTSI (physics, technology and engineering sciences) were in their final year in this establishment. At the prestigious Louis-Le-Grand high school, 35% of PCSI prep students were in their final year together. Two private high schools also draw on the pool of their final year students: Saint-Nicolas and Stanislas.
In high school private Catholic Saint-Nicolas (6th arrondissement), of which 75% of the TSI prep students (technology and industrial sciences) come from the high school of the same name, “It’s not a criterion that we set for ourselves.”assures Cécile Canu, training manager, for whom “the opening” on the exterior remains essential. However, several parameters explain this high proportion.
Out of a total of ten in the capital, Saint-Nicolas has four STI2D technological terminal classes (sciences and technologies of industry and sustainable development), a sort of royal road to integrating the TSI prep. While“There are only two TSI prep courses in Paris”the final year students at Saint-Nicolas logically favor the prep school of the same establishment, explains the head of the establishment Marie-Noëlle Julien.
“They know the teaching team, they are attached to their high school, they have made friends… This counts for the choice they have to make.”
Marie-Noëlle Julien, headteacher at Saint-Nicolas high school (Paris)at franceinfo
Like many prep schools in Paris, Saint-Nicolas does not have a boarding school and not everyone has the means to live in the capital. “This selection happens naturally”, regrets Marie-Noëlle Julien. Requested by franceinfo, the other Parisian prep schools did not respond to our interview proposals.
For Alain Joyeux, president of the Association of Teachers of Economic and Commercial Preparatory Classes (APHEC), it is not “not shocking that a high school keeps some of its students in prep.” “In these high schools, there are already very good students from the first and final years. But of course, the file must be examined in the same way as the others. There is no question of allowing them a straight pass” , he emphasizes. At the Joffre high school in Montpellier (Hérault), where he works, around 20% of first-year economic prep students did their final year in the same establishment.
Proof that “internal recruitment” does not only concern prep schools in the capital, the average number of new baccalaureate graduates admitted to the same establishment is close to 50% in certain academies. This is the case of Guyana (49%) or Corsica (42%). In France, this rate falls but remains higher than the national average of 10.4% in certain academies. Example in Besançon (Doubs), where 17% of prep students come from the same high school. According to the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, contacted by franceinfo, the explanation lies in the more condensed offer of preparatory courses in these territories, for students who do not wish to leave their academy. There are only 13 preparatory classes in the Besançon sector, compared to around a hundred in Paris.
Fear of discrimination and opacity
More generally, the name of the original high school gives information about its reputation. Coming from the Henri-IV high school or an establishment in the Paris suburbs does not have the same effect on the CV. A report from the Court of Auditors, published in 2020, notes that “secondary establishments are then prioritized in the ranking compared to others, on the basis of more or less random criteria, such as that linked to its reputation, or that, more objective, of the percentage of success in the baccalaureate”. According to her, “up to 20% of CEV [commissions d’examen des vœux] of the most strained non-selective sectors use the criterion of the high school of origin in 2019. No figures are given for selective sectors. But prep classes are not the only higher education courses to take this criterion into account.
Pierre-Yves Anglès, director of training at PSL University (Paris), which brings together prestigious and selective establishments such as Dauphine University, believes that the original high school “can be a criterion, provided that it is not unrelated to the rest”. According to him, “respect for prerequisites, grades, positioning in the class and sincerity of the approach” remain the most relevant criteria. “Obviously, when we have very good candidates, we look at where they come from. But we will never choose solely on the basis of the school of origin at the very end”affirms Pierre-Yves Anglès.
But for critics of the mention of the school of origin in the file, discrimination against students from disadvantaged establishments is a real risk. In 2019, the Defender of Rights himself estimated that “THE use the criterion of the high school of origin to decide between candidates by favoring certain candidates, or by disadvantaging others, based on the geographical location in which the establishment is located, can be assimilated to a discriminatory practice, if it results in excluding candidates on this basis.”. The ministry assures that if “the information is available in the Parcoursup file, it is not authorized to use it as a criterion for geographical discrimination”.
“Establishments and their teachers are responsible for respecting the Parcoursup charter, and therefore the principles of equal treatment and non-discrimination, with criteria that they have defined and which they must report on via examination reports applications published each year on the Parcoursup platform.”
The Ministry of Higher Educationat franceinfo
Since 2023, the Ministry of Higher Education has revised its copy to create more transparency on Parcoursup. For a given sector, the candidate knows, for example, whether his academic results count for 40% or 60% of his admission. But according to Pierre Ouzoulias, the criteria revealed do not sufficiently reveal the logic of “pre-classification” at work. “Only a few establishments, like Sciences Po Paris, or sectors like the Staps licenses [Sciences et techniques des activités physiques et sportives]have taken the initiative of making their recruitment procedures completely public”, greets the senator. For him, playing the game of total transparency would also allow “break the general distrust of parents and students towards Parcoursup”.
Towards complete anonymization?
To avoid any discrimination, the Court of Auditors, like the Defender of Rights, recommended anonymizing the high school on Parcoursup, as is already the case for the name, gender and address of candidates. Several “observations argue in favor of anonymizing the high school and replacing it with a more objective criterion which could be calculated directly by Parcoursup”, writes the Court. For Jean-Rémi Girard, “there are clearly effects on the reputation of high schools which are not normal” but strict anonymization would no longer make it possible to take into account the“rating scale”, which is different from one high school to another.
Hiding this information would also reveal “a lack of confidence in the vows examination committees, when they have a real concern to diversify their recruitment”, adds Alain Joyeux. On the student side, Parcoursup is always criticized as a whole. “The mention of the original high school must be removed. But our main demand remains the end of this platform. There is a great disconnection on the part of the ministry. How many students manage to integrate a training in which they flourish ??”, alert Gwenn Thomas-Alves, spokesperson for the High School Union (USL).