Social diversity policies at school: are we really targeting the worst pupils?

An analysis of the results of the first year of experimentation for three of them in Paris was published in September (Julien Grenet and Youssef Souidi, Secteurs multi-collèges à Paris : un outil efficace pour lutter contre la ségrégation sociale ?, notes de l'IPP n°35, septembre 2018). The experiments carried out tend to show that by developing "bi-college sectors"[1], it is possible to improve the social mix in the public sector by reducing the "flight" of the most advantaged children to private schools. This particular focus on Paris is obviously justified by the extremely high level of social segregation that characterises the capital. But the particularities of Paris also call into question the scope of the experiments underway, for at least two reasons.

As a recent study shows (Pierre Courtioux and Tristan-Pierre Maury, Private and public schools: a spatial analysis of social segregation in France, Working paper of the Sorbonne Economics Centre, No. 2018-15), it is in medium-sized conurbations that the public/private divide in terms of social segregation is exploding: for conurbations with between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, this divide now accounts for more than 39% of segregation (compared with 34% for Paris). In this context, these trends (and the avoidance behaviour of more privileged families towards less privileged ones) largely point to a trend towards the abandonment of the most urbanised areas in these territories, which needs to be corrected by something other than a new, more or less constrained method of assigning pupils to lower secondary schools.

Secondly, the 'flight to the private sector' does not necessarily mean that the most privileged are preserving their inner circle. In fact, a forthcoming study (Pierre Courtioux and Tristan-Pierre Maury, "Public, privé et éducation prioritaire : une analyse de la mixité sociale selon le secteur du collège, Formation-Emploi[2]) shows that over the past few years, within the least socially mixed collèges, there has been much less of a decline in the intermingling of the most advantaged in the public sector outside priority education than in the private sector, which does better in this respect. However, this social openness in the private sector is limited to the mix of well-off and middle-income categories, and is less and less inclusive of the most disadvantaged. Furthermore, as far as state schools are concerned, these results remind us that a certain number of state schools also concentrate the most advantaged populations, because segregation is not independent of geographical and urban segregation, which it is important to tackle. The schools targeted by these experiments are undoubtedly not the ones where social diversity has the most room for improvement. Policies to promote social diversity at collège may be missing the mark!

References

Courtioux P., Maury T.-P. [2018], Private and public schools: a spatial analysis of social segregation in France, Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Working Papers, n°2018-15

Courtioux P., Maury T.-P. [à paraitre 2018], « Public, privé et éducation prioritaire : une analyse de la mixité sociale selon le secteur du collège », Formation-emploi. Autre version : Courtioux P., Maury T.-P. [2016], « Public, privé et éducation prioritaire : une analyse de la mixité sociale selon le secteur du collège », Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, Working Papers, 2016.48.

Grenet J. Youssef S. [2018], Secteurs multicollèges à Paris : un outil efficace pour lutter contre la ségrégation sociale ?, notes de l’IPP n°35, septembre.

[1] The aim is to challenge the principle of one recruitment sector per collège (as set out in the Carte Scolaire), and to implement other methods of assigning pupils in order to improve the social mix within the perimeter of the two collèges involved in the experiment.

[2] The working paper corresponding to this publication is available in the working paper collection of the Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.