In the early 2000s, a series of studies and reports highlighted a stagnation – or even a decline – in the democratisation of the Grandes Écoles, thereby reigniting the debate on the social composition of student intakes at these institutions in France. This finding fuelled several calls for a proactive policy to promote social access to the Grandes écoles and played a major part in the introduction of a number of ‘social access’ measures targeting various areas: broadening the pool of applicants, changing recruitment procedures, introducing schemes designed to help students from modest backgrounds finance and successfully complete their studies, etc.
Despite the considerable interest generated by the issue of democratising selective higher education programmes, very little quantitative data is currently available to assess changes in the social composition of the Grandes Écoles over the past two decades.
