Drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished data, this paper documents trends in admissions to the grandes écoles since the mid-2000s, examining several dimensions: social composition, students’ geographical origin and the gender breakdown. Despite the ‘opening-up’ measures introduced by certain grandes écoles in an attempt to diversify their student body, their recruitment base has remained very narrow and has changed little over the last fifteen years. Whilst their student numbers have risen sharply over this period, these elite institutions have remained almost entirely closed to pupils from disadvantaged social backgrounds; the proportion of students from outside the Île-de-France region has not increased; and girls remain under-represented. This persistence of inequalities in access to the grandes écoles can only be partly explained by differences in academic performance between the groups in question. Its root cause lies, at an earlier stage, in the lack of diversity in recruitment to preparatory classes and post-baccalaureate schools. The failure of the social inclusion measures implemented since the mid-2000s to bring about a democratisation of the grandes écoles highlights the limitations of the approach that has been favoured to date: a proliferation of local initiatives, lacking any real national coordination and rarely subject to evaluation. This acknowledgement of failure calls for a rethinking of the levers that could be mobilised to diversify recruitment to selective courses and promote greater mobility amongst the elite.
Grandes écoles: to what extent have they become more ‘open’ since the mid-2000s?
This paper analyses inequalities in access to the ‘grandes écoles’ at the bac+3 to bac+5 levels. The study also compares admissions to the grandes écoles with those to university courses at the same level of study, and analyses admissions to the bac+1 and bac+2 courses that lead to them (preparatory classes and post-baccalaureate schools).
Reference IPP Policy Brief No. 61
Presentation
Key Results
- The recruitment pool for the grandes écoles is very narrow: two-thirds of their students come from very privileged social backgrounds, one-third completed their secondary education in Île-de-France (40 per cent at the most selective grandes écoles), and boys account for nearly 60 per cent of their student body.
- The likelihood of gaining entry to a grande école varies considerably from one secondary school to another: half of all general and technological secondary schools account for just 13 per cent of students at the grandes écoles, whilst at the other end of the spectrum, 17 per cent of general and technical secondary schools alone account for half of the students admitted to these institutions.
- Differences in admission rates to the ‘grandes écoles’ based on social background, gender or geographical origin are of the same order of magnitude as the inequalities in access to the preparatory courses leading to them: the ‘classes préparatoires’ and post-baccalaureate schools.
- Differences in academic performance account for less than half of the social inequalities in access to preparatory classes and the grandes écoles, and less than 20 per cent of the geographical inequalities in access. A fortiori, academic performance does nothing to explain the under-representation of girls in the grandes écoles.
- Despite the ‘opening-up’ measures introduced by certain grandes écoles, recruitment practices at these institutions have remained virtually unchanged since the mid-2000s.
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