The OECD's Pisa surveys, conducted every three years, show that France is one of the countries where students' social background weighs most heavily on their educational achievement. Faced with this observation, the Minister of National Education will announce this Thursday measures to strengthen social and academic diversity at school. This arsenal, which has been awaited for months, will at this stage concern only public education.

Pap Ndiaye has already mentioned several levers that he intends to mobilize: the creation of "sections of excellence", such as international sections, in disadvantaged territories, the creation of pairs of colleges "geographically close but very contrasted socially", or the participation of private education under contract in this effort. The protocol with Catholic education, which aims to increase the proportion of scholarship holders in its institutions, 75% funded by the State, should also be signed a few days later.

Improvements expected "from September 2023"

This Thursday morning, the minister will bring together the rectors and academic directors of the National Education Services (Dasen) to whom he will "assign objectives to improve gender diversity from the start of the 2023 school year," says the ministry. Pap Ndiaye has made the subject of educational and social diversity, little mentioned by his predecessor Jean-Michel Blanquer, as a priority of his action. Announcements have been expected on this subject since November. They have been postponed several times, notably because of the social protest over the pension reform.

Several initiatives have already been carried out to improve social and academic diversity in schools, particularly in 2016 under the impetus of the Socialist Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem: about twenty experiments were then launched, involving public colleges in partnership with local authorities.

This is the case in Toulouse or Paris, where three bi-college sectors have been created, by merging the sectorization of institutions with contrasting sociology, in the 18th and 19th arrondissements. Also in the capital, a reform of the assignment procedure for high schools (Afflenet) was launched in 2021 to improve gender diversity.

The Ministry of Education was also forced in mid-October by a court decision to publish the Social Position Indices (SPI) of middle schools and elementary schools, indicators measuring the social situation of students. It then broadcast those of high schools in January. These indices had shown large differences between public institutions on the one hand, and between public and private institutions on the other.

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