Does the introduction of optional courses, such as bilingual or European streams, have an impact on the social segregation that exists between classes within the same school? This question arises at a time when the introduction of optional streams in certain disadvantaged middle schools / lower secondary schools is one of the measures being implemented by the Ministry of National Education at the start of this academic year to make these schools more attractive to socially advantaged families and thereby promote social diversity. In order to provide some answers, this paper performs an évaluation of the impact of the abolition of bilingual and European streams at the start of the 2016 academic year on the level of segregation between classes in the middle schools / lower secondary schools affected by this reform.
Attractive options and segregation between social classes: what were the effects of the abolition of bilingual and European streams at the start of the 2016 school year?
Presentation
Key Results
- In France, the level of social segregation amongst Year 7 classes within the same middle school / lower secondary school is 29 per cent higher than it would be if pupils were allocated to classes at random.
- At the start of the 2016 school year, the abolition of bilingual streams led to a 53 per cent reduction (in Year 7 classes) in this excess segregation in the schools affected by this reform.
- The abolition of European streams led to a 33 per cent reduction (in Year 8 classes) in this excess segregation.
- In the majority of schools offering bilingual and European streams, the differences in social composition between classes are of a similar order to those observed in middle schools / lower secondary schools that do not offer these streams. This suggests that it is possible to offer attractive optional courses whilst limiting intra-school segregation.
Method and Data
The anonymised data from the Ministry of National Education and Youth, made available by the Directorate for Evaluation, Forecasting and Performance (MENJ-DEPP) for the purposes of this study, make it possible to identify, over time, the middle schools / lower secondary schools offering bilingual and European streams. In particular, the data provide information for each school year on the subjects chosen by all pupils attending state and state-funded private middle schools / lower secondary schools, the class to which they are assigned, and the social category of their legal guardians.
In this study, a pupil’s social background is measured on the basis of the occupation and socio-professional category (PCS) of their legal guardian. The author calculates a segregation index for each school, based on the composition of its classes. To do this, he makes use of the fact that it is possible not only to ascertain the actual social composition of a school’s classes, but also to determine what other compositions might have existed within that same school had the headteachers opted for a different allocation of pupils across their school’s classes. For each middle school / lower secondary school, the author simulates 500 random allocations of pupils across classes, taking capacity constraints into account, and measures the level of intra-school segregation resulting from each of these allocations.
Partners
This paper was supported by the Chair in Educational Policy and Social Mobility. Established in 2021 as part of a partnership between the Ardian Foundation, the Directorate for Evaluation, Forecasting and Performance of the Ministry of National Education and Youth (MENJ-DEPP) and PSE-Paris School of Economics, this chair aims to promote high-level research and the dissemination of knowledge on education policy and social mobility.