The impact of Affelnet on the social and academic mix in secondary schools in the Île-de-France region

Over the last decade, the widespread adoption of the Affelnet system for the automated allocation of pupils and the relaxation of the School catchment area (map) rules have profoundly altered the way pupils are allocated to schools after Year 9. This report highlights that the procedures implemented in the Île-de-France regional education authorities to manage allocation after middle school have a decisive influence on the social and academic composition of state upper secondary schools. Under the Affelnet procedure, pupils are invited to submit their preferences for the general and technological stream or the Vocational track/path, and allocation is carried out using an algorithm that assigns pupils to sixth-form colleges based on the number of points associated with each of their preferences. Thanks to this management tool, the three school authorities in Île-de-France (Créteil, Paris and Versailles) have been able to set up a centralised placement system that enables them to manage the distribution of pupils across the various secondary schools with much greater precision than before.