School choice and its regulation in France

Abstract

The Conseil Constitutionnel, roughly speaking the French equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote in a decision handed down in 1977 that "liberty of teaching" (la liberté de l'enseignement) is "one of the basic principles recognized by the laws of the Republic" and one on which the Constitution of 1958 has conferred constitutional status. Moreover, according to the Constitution of 1946, to provide "free, public" education is "a duty of the state." Currently, about 65 percent of students in France's primary and secondary schools (that is, K-12 schools) attend the public school to which they are assigned by local educational authorities according to the catchment area in which they reside, which is defined by the carte scolaire (school district map). Fifteen percent attend a public school other than the one assigned, usually because they or their parents requested a "better" school, and 20 percent attend private, predominantly Catholic schools, which receive public funds for more than 80 percent of their costs. This chapter explains the current situation, which resulted from violent and chaotic episodes in France's political history. It then discusses the status and regulation of private schools and the issue of choice among public schools. The focus in both instances is how regulation seeks to preserve social cohesion and promote the public interest. The conclusion considers what other school systems, particularly those of the United States, might learn from France's experience with publicly funded and regulated school choice.

Full text

The Conseil Constitutionnel, roughly speaking the French equivalent of
the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote in a decision handed down in 1977
that “liberty of teaching” (la liberté de l’enseignement) is “one of the basic
principles recognized by the laws of the Republic” and one on which the
Constitution of 1958 has conferred constitutional status.1Moreover, accord-
ing to the Constitution of 1946, to provide “free, public” education is “a
duty of the state.”
Currently, about 65 percent of students in France’s primary and secondary
schools (that is, K-12 schools) attend the public school to which they are
assigned by local educational authorities according to the catchment area in
which they reside, which is defined by the carte scolaire (school district map).
Fifteen percent attend a public school other than the one assigned, usually
because they or their parents requested a “better” school, and 20 percent
attend private, predominantly Catholic schools, which receive public funds
for more than 80 percent of their costs.
This chapter explains the current situation, which resulted from violent
and chaotic episodes in France’s political history. It then discusses the status
and regulation of private schools and the issue of choice among public
schools. The focus in both instances is how regulation seeks to preserve
social cohesion and promote the public interest. The conclusion considers
what other school systems, particularly those of the United States, might
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School Choice and Its Regulation
in France
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learn from France’s experience with publicly funded and regulated school
choice.
State, Religion, and School Choice in France
The current guidelines for school choice in France—which make it easy to
choose between private and public schools and hamper one’s ability to choose
among public schools—are somewhat unusual. How today’s options came
into being can be better understood after examining the historical and philo-
sophical background of the French educational system.
Historical background
Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the public-private split within
the French educational system was financial, not religious: private schools
were those paid for by parents, and public schools were those subsidized by
the state. Public schools were to be found only among primary schools. In
both private and public schools, many teachers were members of religious
orders.2The Ferry Law (1882), the first to make schooling obligatory (from
ages six to thirteen), did not change this situation.
In 1886, however, a new law stipulated that public school teachers could
no longer be members of a religious order. This abrupt shift occurred because
the educational system was viewed as a crucial battleground in the long
struggle between the French state and the Catholic Church. To understand
why this law came into being, one must recall that at this time demand for
education did not come from individuals or families, but from the state and
the Catholic Church, both of which saw education as necessary for the sake
of public life and public order. The leaders of both camps regarded education
as having a decisive influence on the mind and spirit of students: whoever
ran the schools would form the spirit of the nation.
Meanwhile, many regarded the Catholic Church of this period not only as
one of the most powerful enemies of the republic, but also as an enemy of
“modern civilization, progress, industrialism, capitalism, urbanization and
almost every new phenomenon, which were denounced as a sources of temp-
tations, degradation, and immorality.”3Prost, an education historian, writes
that private schools “owe their existence to the rejection by nineteenth-cen-
tury Catholics of the philosophical principles of free inquiry and open criti-
cism, which are at the roots of the public school.”4Their conflict with the
republicans, for whom the school was an instrument of reason and progress,
could not have been stronger.
As a result of the 1886 law, the former religious teachers began to open
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private, fee-based schools. At the beginning of the twentieth century, more
children attended Catholic schools than public schools. In reaction to this
trend, the French government under the presidency of Emiles Combes
passed laws between 1901 and 1904 that closed all schools operated by reli-
gious congregations. For the republicans, these laws seemed necessary to pro-
tect the republic. For the supporters of the Catholic Church, of course, they
meant state dictatorship and ruin. This situation did not last long, however,
because during World War I members of both camps had to fight and suffer
together. After the war, it was impossible to keep these restrictive education
laws in place.
By the start of World War II, private (mostly Catholic, fee-based) schools
enrolled about 15 percent of primary and 45 percent of middle-school
pupils. (The latter figure is high because, at the time, public middle schools
also required parents to pay for their child’s education.) At the high school
level, public schools, which were not free but had a better reputation than
most private ones, held sway, their dominance challenged only by a small
number of very famous Catholic schools. By this time the Church had
dropped the pretense that it was the only institution entitled to educate chil-
dren. The Church’s revised position was that Catholic children had to be edu-
cated in Catholic schools. This idea was the doctrine of Rome, expressed in
the encyclical letter Divini Illius Magistri, and according to Prost, it has never
been formally abandoned, even if it has been in abeyance.5
The Vichy regime had strong links with the Catholic Church, and so edu-
cation policy shifted once again in 1940. Both public and private schools
were required to teach children of their “duties toward God.” The regime
reauthorized the monastic orders to open schools, allowed localities to create
private schools, and allowed private school students to receive public grants
to help pay their school fees. Interestingly, the bishops proposed a voucher
plan long before Milton Friedman.6But both the public and some parts of
the regime itself were reluctant to finance private schools, and the financial
help the schools received remained partial.
After the liberation, even that partial help was eliminated, and the situa-
tion of the Catholic schools became more precarious than ever because public
secondary schooling had been made free. The Catholic Church responded by
launching a strong public opinion campaign, arguing that Catholic children
should not be educated anywhere other than in a Catholic school, which was,
as mentioned, the Vatican’s doctrine.7This was a challenge to the French con-
ception of laïcité, or secularism—an ideal not unlike that of common school-
ing in the United States—which holds that children from all religions should
be educated together in a religiously neutral space. Still, the Catholic
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school choice and its regulation in france 241
Church’s campaign was successful. A pro-Catholic government was elected,
and in 1951 two laws were passed, the Loi Marie and the Loi Barangé, which
allowed for some public subsidies for private schools. The former allowed for
public grants to private school students, the latter to associations that were
themselves authorized to add to the pay of private school teachers.
The decades since World War II have been marked by continuous
attempts by private schools to obtain more subsidies from the state and at the
same time more protection for their religious identity (caractère propre). In
1959, with the Loi Debré, they gained the most important concession, full
funding for teachers’ salaries; in 1971, funding of some parts of their operat-
ing expenses; and in 1977 (Loi Guermeur), full funding of the retirement
pensions of their teachers.
When the left came into power in 1981, Education Minister Alain Savary
tried to combine private and public schools in a proposed General Public
Service of Education, in which the distinction between public and private
schools would have been weakened and the autonomy of public schools
enhanced. He almost succeeded in finding a compromise with representa-
tives of the Catholic schools, but the law that finally came up for discussion
contained, under the influence of the more extreme leaders of the secular
camp, some elements that the Catholics did not accept. As a result, the
Catholic Church organized massive street demonstrations, and the project
was shelved in 1984.
Philosophical background
In spite of their long rivalry, public and private schools in France share some
important features. Their similarities derive from the philosophical roots of
the French state, which grew out of the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau rather
than John Locke, meaning that society is viewed first and foremost as a polit-
ical community. For Rousseau, the “normal” state of affairs is one of domina-
tion, envy, and fear, not of individual freedom, free association, and exchange
based on mutual interest: “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in
chains.”8Individual freedom therefore can proceed only from a political act,
the contrat social, “a form of association that will defend and protect with the
whole common force the person and goods of each associate and in which
each, while uniting himself with the others, may still obey himself alone, and
remain as free as before.” In this view, other people represent a threat more
than an opportunity and can be turned into the latter only by the political
act of the contrat. The body created by this act is the Republic.
It would be unfair, both to France and to Rousseau, to consider the
French state as a pure application of Rousseau’s ideas. However, it is likely
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that Rousseau’s legacy explains in part the fact that in France state action is
conceived in a framework in which society is supposed to proceed from the
state—without the state, society would end in barbarism and chaos immedi-
ately—while in the Anglo-Saxon world the state is supposed to proceed from
and to be subordinate to society.
The idea that other people are a threat is common to Hobbes and
Rousseau, and legitimates both Rousseau’s Republic and Hobbes’s abso-
lutism. That in turn may help in understanding Tocqueville’s observation
that the French Revolution perpetuated absolutism as well as it destroyed it,
resulting in “enhancing the might and rights of Public authority.”9
As a consequence, in France, individuals have to show that they are wor-
thy of their institutions more than institutions have to show that they serve
individuals. Donzelot gives an example of this inclination in a comparison of
U.S. and French urban policies: while in the United States ethnic communi-
ties generally are considered to be helpful in integrating their members into
the wider society, in France they are considered the worst obstacles to inte-
gration.10 While U.S. urban nonprofits like community development corpo-
rations aim at the empowerment of people who live in deprived areas, poli-
cies like the Développement Social Urbain in France aim at allowing
institutions (schools, police, justice, employment institutions, and so forth)
to reclaim their place and due respect in deprived areas. While in the United
States the citizens associations in these areas are built from the bottom up, in
France they come from the top down—that is, they are used by national
institutions to reach and educate underprivileged populations.
These differing orientations toward institutions and individual interests
have had powerful consequences for the educational system. One conse-
quence is that the French educational system is strongly oriented toward
achieving civic aims and preparing children for the role of citizen. It is a way
of “providing to each child the symbolic framework for his belonging to the
national community.”11 This may be related to Montesquieu’s conception of
republican government, which is grounded on virtu—that is, the subordina-
tion of one’s personal interest to the public good—and “which has the great-
est need for education.”12 This also explains, perhaps, the authoritarian
aspects of the traditional concept of schooling in France, through which chil-
dren would be pulled out of the traditional world of the “provinces,” out of
the ancient languages and superstitions, and enlightened by reason.
Of course, American education also has concerns about preparing chil-
dren to become citizens, but they are somewhat different. First, despite the
recent revival of Montesquieu’s idea of republican government in American
thought and politics, the liberal tradition still has a stronger influence on
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school choice and its regulation in france 243
education. In this tradition, there is no place for subordination of the indi-
vidual to an externally defined public good : “Only by being true to the full
growth of all the individuals who make it up can a society by any chance be
true to itself.”13 Civic education itself therefore aims for the full growth of
the individual. To some extent as a consequence of this position, civic educa-
tion is designed to fight selfishness and extreme individualism more than
superstition.14 In the United States, education is linked to the notion of
development of the child’s innate abilities. In France, the child’s mind tradi-
tionally is considered either a repository of superstition and false ideas that
must be eradicated or as shapeless clay that must be given form.
A second consequence of these different orientations is that, in the most
traditional form of the French system, the idea that education has to meet
children’s needs, to say nothing of parents’ demands, is considered nonsense.
One of the current opponents of this parental-rights model, R. Debray, has
written that “a teacher owes himself only to the logic of the subject he
teaches.”15 Insofar as public education is oriented toward collective civic ends
rather than individual interests, it is not so far from the most traditional
Catholic conception of teaching, wherein “schools for the mass of the people
are created mainly for giving religious instruction to the people, to lead them
to a true Christian morality and piety.”16 The educational elite of the public
system, those who go to Normale Sup or Polytechnique, could be seen as kinds
of secular saints: like saints, they contend that it is possible to live here on
earth according to the Principles of the Superior Order, which give the ordi-
nary world its true significance and meaning.17
A third consequence, a decisive one for the relations of state and church
regarding education, is that to a certain extent, in the traditional French con-
ception of the state, church and state have a similar mission. Each party
thinks it has a calling, reason on one side, faith on the other: for the state,
that calling is to move society away from chaos; for the church, it is to move
society away from evil. Their historic rivalry also is explained by their similar-
ity: state and church are all the more rivals because they assign themselves a
similar mission, a mission that presupposes a certain weakness of human
beings. To put it simply: in the French mind, individuals are weak, so for the
state (or the church), the church (or the state) is a threat; education, there-
fore, is all the more important.
This explains why the principle of “liberté de l’enseignement” has to be
understood as “liberty to provide schooling” rather than as “liberty of school-
ing.” That is, it is the right of the Catholic Church to teach its values in its
(publicly supported) schools, rather than the right of parents to choose a
school that accords with their values. Of course, as discussed later, both rights
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are identical for about 6 percent of families: the traditional Catholics who
enroll all their children in Catholic schools. But these families are a minority
(about 20 percent) among private school users. School choice in France is
not a matter of satisfying parents’ educational preferences, but rather a matter
of two great institutional forces allocating the power—and the market—to
themselves.
Against this idea, it might be argued that parents have a choice not only
between private and public schools but also among private schools, as if the
church, unlike the state, were in favor of parents’ freedom to choose the form
of schooling that their children receive. But in fact, the aim of Catholic
schools is to provide an education inspired by the Catholic religion; to pro-
vide a choice among different versions of a Catholic education would mean a
choice of different versions of Catholicism, which would contradict Catholic
doctrine. The diversity provided by Catholic schools derives from the differ-
ences between them and public schools far more than from any differences
among Catholic schools. The differences among private schools, like those
among public schools, come primarily from the socioeconomic background
of their students or from their degree of academic rigorousness far more than
from their pedagogical or educational options.
The current political situation
The sharing of influence by church and state in fact explains why Catholic
schools easily accept the obligation to admit children whatever their religion
or absence of it: it is a way to transmit and increase the influence of Christian
values. It also explains why, among modern Catholics, a majority have their
children in public schools: they share with more traditional Catholics the aim
of increasing the influence of Christian values, but they think that religious
convictions should come from the personal decisions of individuals—a result
that they believe is better guaranteed by enrolling their children in public
schools than in Catholic schools. Moreover, they are eager to introduce their
children to the wider society.
In addition, it explains why almost all French political parties accept that
parents can choose between public and private schools, but not among
schools inside the public sector. If the basic concern were to provide for
parental choice or to allow families to find schools that suit the personality
and interests of individual children, then these two forms of choice—to
choose a private school or to choose among public school—would be equally
valuable, but only the first form of choice is needed if the interest at stake is
that of the Church as an institution. As a result, while most parents and even
most teachers declare in polls that they are in favor of school choice, no one
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school choice and its regulation in france 245
among the large political parties proposed extending choice during the 2002
presidential election campaign. Only two “parties” propose wider school
choice in France. One is the small and politically marginal libertarian party
of Alain Madelin. The other is Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front, which
seems to have the support of some white people living in economically
depressed areas who want to avoid sending their children to school with the
children of some immigrants. In addition, some of Le Pen’s supporters are
moved by a kind of populist rejection of the state altogether.18 Note also that
the current government, although pro-market in its general orientation, does
not promote choice or accountability among its education policies. Rather, it
promotes the devolution of the management of nonteaching staff to regional
authorities (there are about twenty-eight regions in France), which would
have no consequences for students. This is another example that what is at
stake in French politics is less the best way to serve people than the relative
weight of institutional bodies—this time, not the state and the church, but
national and regional bodies.
So far, we have presented two approaches to the question of choice in
France, one historical, the other political. The historical vantage point shows
the opposition between state and church, while political analysis displays
their similarity. Both the opposition and the similarity help explain why a
centralized educational system emerged: only the state was strong enough to
challenge the power of the Catholic Church. This differs from the situation
in the United States, where a mosaic of different religious denominations
coexist relatively peacefully within a democratic state and where nearly all of
the Protestant denominations historically have supported the idea of com-
mon schooling—as indeed they have done in France, but without great con-
sequence since Protestants represent only 1 percent of the population.
It has to be said, of course, that today Catholic bishops no longer chal-
lenge the political primacy of the republic, and the public school camp does
not ask for the suppression of Catholic schools. However, the church-state
conflict remains fundamental to education policy in France, and that
explains why, when the title of a book is La Question Scolaire, the French
reader understands that it deals exclusively with the Catholic/public school
question.19 And only the continuation of this conflict can explain why the
main street demonstrations in France for twenty years have been on that
question—to prevent what was perceived as the integration of private schools
in the public system in 1984, and to prevent what was perceived as an open
door for a large increase of the Catholic share of the pie in 1993. The first of
these two demonstrations led to the resignation not only of the minister of
education, Savary, but of the whole Mauroy government, which was the first
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left-oriented government in France in the Fifth Republic. The conflict still
burns under the ashes. The current situation is a standoff, stabilized by overt
regulation, the aim of which is to guarantee the adherence of the Catholic
schools to the values of the republic—and a more covert but widely felt
resolve to keep the two system’s respective shares of the pie in their current
proportions.
The idea of choice among public schools is of recent vintage, and it also is
contrary to some fundamental features of the French educational system. Vari-
ous features of French educational policy aim at limiting public school choice.
Public Regulation of Subsidized Private Schools
The regulation of private schooling in France is considered first, then its
prevalence and what is known about its social effects.
Regulation
Currently, the cost to parents of private schooling is about three times the
cost of public schooling, which is to say about three times nothing. The only
available figures indicate that, in school year 1991–92, the entire annual edu-
cation-related cost to parents per child in primary or secondary school was
approximately 1,900 FF (about $300) for those who go to a public school in
their catchment area, 2,800 FF for those who go to another public school,
and 5,500 FF for those who go to a private school.20 This has to be com-
pared with the total educational cost (including public contributions), which
at the time was about 26,000 FF per child.21
Private schools currently are funded as follows: the Ministry of Education
pays the wages of the teachers and provides a grant (le forfait d’externat) that
entirely covers the wages of nonteaching staff. Elected regional bodies (con-
seils régionaux, conseils généraux) provide a grant to pay operating expenses
(heating, furniture, and so forth); this grant has to have the same value per
student as the one given to public schools. Family fees and also some private
grants pay for capital expenses (building construction and repair). Under a
1850 law that was never abrogated (Loi Falloux), regional bodies can pay up
to 10 percent of the amount provided by family and private grants for the
capital expenses of a school each year. Conseils that are ideologically in favor
of private schools give 10 percent of that amount every year, whatever a
school’s true capital expenses. Other conseils subsidize the cost of the school’s
true capital expenses within the 10 percent limit.
Moreover, under the Loi Debré, private schools can be publicly subsidized
only if they provide for a “true educational need” (“un besoin scolaire reconnu”).
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Therefore only private schools that have been in operation for at least five years
are eligible for any kind of public subsidy; however, in areas where the popula-
tion is increasing, the waiting period has been reduced to one year. Moreover,
private schools sometimes request special concessions, which are granted if the
local political climate is favorable to private or Catholic schools: for instance, a
new school may be presented as an annex of an existing school rather than as a
new one, thereby avoiding the waiting period.
Under the current public-private compromise, then, existing private
schools are almost fully financed through public money, while it is somewhat
difficult but not impossible to create new ones. This situation can be inter-
preted as follows: people do appreciate having private schools as an alterna-
tive to the public system; therefore they support public subsidies to private
schools. However, they are not sure that they would like Catholic schools to
become too powerful; therefore they are satisfied with a rule that guarantees
their existence and their relative autonomy but hinders their growth. Propo-
nents of private schools are aware of all this, and they accept the fact that
their share of the market will not increase.22 This is also why Catholic schools
may be seen as a brake on the extension of private schooling across the coun-
try: they are seen as providing a sufficient safety valve.
As this makes clear, financing restrictions and general sentiments that pre-
vent the expansion of private schooling constitute an implicit form of regula-
tion. Public subsidies bring in their wake a variety of other forms of public
regulation, which are strikingly extensive:
—There is one national curriculum for all schools. The content of aca-
demic schooling (not only the core curriculum) is the same in private as in
public schools, but private schools may add religious courses, provided that
they remain elective.
—Publicly subsidized schools cannot exclude any student on the ground
of his or her religion, lack of religion, or ethnic origin. This is why religious
education in subsidized schools cannot be compulsory.
—Private school teachers undergo, according to the Loi Debré, the same
review by the same inspectors as public teachers. However, according to a
personal communication to the author from a specialist in the field, they are
reviewed only once, at the end of their probation period, while a public
teacher undergoes review about ten times in his or her professional life.
—Similarly, private schools are in principle subject, like public schools, to
administrative inspections by inspecteurs généraux de l’administration. How-
ever, according to a personal communication from the specialist mentioned
above, only about twenty-five secondary private schools have been inspected
since the Loi Debré was passed in 1959.
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—More important, there is one set of national examinations for all
schools. The true constraint on the curricula of private schools is that they
must prepare students for the same examinations as do the public schools.
These examinations, especially those for the baccalauréat, which allows a sec-
ondary school student to enter an institution of higher learning, can take
place only in public schools.
—When a public school decides that a pupil has to repeat a year of
school, the decision applies to private schools as well, so private schools can-
not be used to avoid repeating a grade.
—Private school teachers are recruited among persons who, in brief, pass
the same kind of examinations, in front of the same juries, as do public
school teachers. Salaries also are prescribed, and they are the same for public
and publicly subsidized private schools. However, public and private teachers
generally are not trained in the same institutions and do not belong to the
same trade unions because of the strong anticlerical orientation of public staff
trade unions.
At this point, in light of this extensive array of regulations, the reader may
ask to what extent subsidized private schools differ from public schools. They
do so in the following ways:
—Heads of private schools are chosen by the Catholic organization for
private schooling, provided the recteur (the representative of the minister of
education at the regional level) agrees.
—Private schools used to hire their teachers from among those who met
the official qualifications, while public schools have no influence on who, in
particular, comes to teach in them. Recently, however, the Catholic regional
body has begun to hire private teachers, so the difference between the school
systems is less striking.
—Private schools claim to make a difference through extracurricular activ-
ities, an academically oriented school climate, stronger discipline, and a dis-
tinctive ethos oriented toward certain moral values. Students report a more
“familial” climate in private schools.
There are not many studies of the educational differences between public
and private schools in France. Most of the existing studies deal only with
how many and which children enroll in private schools, as discussed below.
How Many Students Attend Private Schools and Who Are They?
As can be seen in table 9-1, the proportion of students enrolled in the private
sector has not increased since 1980. During this time enrollment in second-
ary schools grew rapidly, and the intake of private schools grew in the same
proportion as that of public schools. As noted, this is not the result of a
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school choice and its regulation in france 249
deliberate, detailed policy, but of the difficulties involved in funding and cre-
ating new private schools and also of the fact that few people are dissatisfied
with the public system.
About 95 percent of private schools are Catholic. The Protestants, whose
schools were closed by the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685 and reauthorized
after the Revolution, gave almost all their schools to the state at the beginning
of the twentieth century, with the idea that their best protection was state
schooling and the policy of laïcité. About ten Protestant schools do exist, and
there are a few Jewish schools. Only two Muslim schools, a middle school and
a primary school, exist. A Muslim high school with only thirty students in a
single ninth-grade classroom opened in September 2003 in Lille, in the north
of the country, inside a mosque. Its promoters, who are said to be fundamen-
talist, protest that “courses will follow the national curriculum and will be
open to all” and that “girls will be accepted with or without hijab.” Such com-
pliance is, as noted, among the conditions for receiving public subsidies.
It is important to note that a lot of students are “zapping” between private
and public schools. While, as shown in the table, the share of students
enrolled in private schools is about 20 percent, only 9 percent attend private
schools for their entire primary and secondary school career, whereas 67 per-
cent attend only public schools and 24 percent change from one to the other.
This zapping means that about one-third of the French student population
receive at least some private schooling during their school years. Moreover,
only in 60 percent of families is every child enrolled only in public schools,
while only in 6 percent of families is every child enrolled in private schools.23
The explanation for this is that often children enroll in private schools
when they meet some difficulty in the public sector and may come back a
few years later, which means that most parents, rather than being strong pro-
ponents of either private or public schools, have a more utilitarian relation to
the school system.
Some authors, especially sociologists, argue therefore that enrollment in
Catholic school is mainly a way for people of higher socioeconomic status to
Table 9-1. Proportion of Students Enrolled in the Private Sector
1980–81 2001–2002
(percent) (percent)
Primary school (6–10 years) 15 15
Middle schools (11–14 years) 19 20
High schools (15–17 years) 23 20
Source: Ministère de l’Education Nationale, Repères et Références Statistiques (2002).
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250 denis meuret
find “better” schooling, not a religious matter.24 However, Héran (1996),
using more sophisticated regressions, showed that the desire to feel a sense of
belonging to the Catholic Church as a community was one of the strongest
predictors of private enrollment. It may be observed that a lot of French
declare themselves to be Catholic without really practicing the Catholic faith:
according to a March 2003 poll conducted by the CSA Institute, 62 percent
of French adults declare themselves to be Catholic, 6 percent Muslim, 2 per-
cent Protestant, and 1 percent Jewish, while 26 percent declare no religion.
At the same time, only 24 percent of the sample are certain that God exists,
while 34 percent believe that it is likely.25
What are the other characteristics of private school users? Children from
more affluent families are more likely to enroll in private schools, although
this bias has decreased.26 Other predictors of enrollment are a mother who
received a post-secondary education, high income, and—especially—not
being a foreigner. The proportion of foreign students is 9 percent in the pub-
lic sector and only 2 percent in the private sector.27 High socioeconomic sta-
tus is also a strong predictor of “zapping” between the two sectors.28
When techniques similar to Heran’s were brought to bear on a more
recent year (1998), using a slightly different set of variables, predictors of
enrollment in private middle schools included having a level of achievement
that was neither very low nor very high; living in a town with a population of
20,000 to 100,000; being a child of farmers, shopkeepers, entrepreneurs, or
service-class parents; and having a mother with a college degree.29 This over-
representation of entrepreneurs and the service class is still more pronounced
in high schools. In addition, Tournier observed in a local survey of 1,400 stu-
dents in five private and five public high schools that right-wing as well as
practicing Catholic students were overrepresented in private high schools in
the département of Isère.30
From a geographic point of view, two features are salient: private school-
ing is stronger in Catholic regions of France (Bretagne, Pays de Loire), and
the higher the social status of a place the higher the proportion of private
enrollment.31 In the most exclusive districts of Paris (VXIéme and VIIéme
arrondissements), the proportion of private enrollment may reach as high 60
percent, and the proportion of janitors’ children is very high in public
schools. So the opportunity to choose private schools is not evenly distrib-
uted across the French public.
The Impact of Private Schooling on Students and Society
Liensol and Meuret (1987), using value-added indicators, observed private
high schools to be slightly less effective in preparing students for the bac-
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school choice and its regulation in france 251
calauréat than public schools in one eastern region of France.32 However,
Langoet and Léger (1994, 1997), using data on student school careers during
the 1970s, found that after controlling for the social status of the parents,
private school students had better school careers than public school students
and that the finding was especially pronounced for children from more eco-
nomically disadvantaged families (workers and clerks) who attended private
schools (they attained the baccalauréat degree in higher proportions when
enrolled in private schools). Some researchers have pointed out that this did
not necessarily mean that private schooling was more effective for these
groups, for two reasons. First, there is the familiar problem of selection bias:
parents whose child attends private school are probably more interested in
their child’s achievement and more active in helping the child succeed. In
addition, pupils who remain in private schools during all the middle-school
years are the highest achieving of those who enroll in them.33
They seem to be partly right. Chloe Tavan observed that during the
1990s, after controlling for the social status of the father, education of the
mother, enrollment in preschool and kindergarten, family educational expec-
tations and involvement, and time spent on homework,
—public and private school students’ level of achievement at the end of
primary school was the same, but obtained with less frequent grade repeti-
tions in private schools
—both groups’ level of achievement (that is, the probability of a successful
school career) was the same in middle schools, but obtained with less fre-
quent grade repetitions in public schools.34
So the effectiveness of public and private schools appears to have been
about the same. However, in regard to social equity, Tavan’s more sophisti-
cated analysis confirms the results of Langoet and Léger: there was less aca-
demic inequality between children from high- and low-status social back-
grounds in private than in public schools. However, there are no comparisons
of private and public schools based on true measures of achievement in sec-
ondary schools. One reason for the absence of such studies is probably that
both sides, content with the status quo, prefer not to know.
Whatever the effectiveness of the two sectors, it is clear that parents in the
private sector are more satisfied. Several studies have made this observation
for primary as well as secondary education.35 Teachers are deemed competent
by 85 percent of families that have all their children in the private sector but
only by 69 percent of those whose children are in the public sector. Teachers
are deemed receptive by 68 percent in the private and by 54 percent in the
public sector.36
The same is true for students themselves. In a study that controlled for a
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252 denis meuret
large number of variables, private middle-school students more often saw
their school as a “big family” and less often as a “court,” a “factory,” or a “cir-
cus” than did students in the public sector.37 As a consequence, the reputa-
tion of private schools tends to be better than that of public schools, includ-
ing on measures of effectiveness. In a 1984 campaign to influence public
opinion, the private school camp, for the first time, used the ineffectiveness
of the public sector as an argument against what it perceived as a threat to
Catholic schools.
That parent and student satisfaction is stronger is the only thing known
about the impact of private schooling. There are no studies on the long-term
impact of type of school on students in term of their social values (tolerance,
sense of solidarity, sense of belonging, adherence to democratic values, feel-
ings of responsibility, absence of arrogance, commitment to equity), personal
attributes (ability to take initiative, imagination), or religious beliefs (Do
Catholic children who enroll in private schools remain Catholic more often
when they grow up?). Therefore there are no data on the impact of school
type on social cohesion. Likewise, the impacts of type of school on students’
professional careers cannot be compared (For a given diploma and a given
social origin, do former private school students find a job more easily? Do
they find a better-paying job?). It has to be recalled that the answers to some
of these questions are presupposed in the criticisms that each camp makes of
the other. For instance, opponents of Catholic schools charge them with
teaching charity rather than solidarity or equity and with organizing a subso-
ciety based on a network of Catholic groups and organizations. Catholic
school proponents, meanwhile, argue that public schools teach knowledge
but not moral or social values. No systematic research has yet addressed these
important topics.
An important exception, however, to the general lack of knowledge is that
Tournier (1997) observed that not only were right-wing students and fami-
lies overrepresented in private schools, but also that children in private
schools were more apt to become right-wing irrespective of whether their
fathers were right- or left-wing. In Catholic schools, some influence—peers
or the school environment more generally—seems to be able to reorient,
mostly to the right, the political ideas of children. Having tested and rejected
alternative explanations, he concluded that the role of private schools in
political socialization has probably been underestimated. So the attitude of
right-wing local authorities, who tend to favor Catholic schools, appears to
be rational.
In addition, private schools have effects on the public schools that com-
pete with them. Here again, there are no systematic data. In two regions,
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school choice and its regulation in france 253
more than 35 percent of primary students attend private schools, while this
proportion is about 10 percent in the other regions. These two regions (Bre-
tagne and Pays de Loire) are among those where the performance of pupils at
the end of primary schooling is the highest, but other regions with far less or
even very little private enrollment (Midi-Pyrénées, Rhône-Alpes, and
Aquitaine) are similarly high-performing. The same applies to the rate of
attainment of the baccalauréat and to the dropout rate.38 So competition
does, perhaps, have a positive effect, but a true comparison should hold con-
stant features like socioeconomic status and language spoken at home. To my
knowledge, no rigorous comparisons of this sort exist.
Discussion
The situation of the private school system in France is quite paradoxical. It is
generally welcomed as a safety valve for the rather rigid provision of public
schooling, as the high percentage of “zappers” demonstrates. (If a child does
not succeed in a public school, the parents cannot try another public school,
or, at least, they will find it very hard to do. Therefore the opportunity to
send the child to a private school is welcome, even if the private and the pub-
lic school curriculums are the same.) Nobody asks openly for its suppression,
and most people—even among those who vote for the left—accept the fact
that it is publicly financed. At the same time, the private-versus-public school
issue remains highly contested in French political life: the right is, as shown,
more favorable than the left to private schools. This is likely to be because the
right has closer ties to the Catholic Church and because it is more skeptical
about state institutions. The public-private issue is contested, but it also is
commonly acknowledged to be a highly sensitive political topic: the general
sense is that the less it is talked about—or researched—the better it is for
everybody.
My interpretation of this situation is that the Catholic Church profits
greatly from its position as the only entity allowed to provide an alternative
to those who fail in the public system or who cannot abide it for whatever
reason. The Church profits especially through its position as educator of the
social elite. Indeed, I would guess that the narrower the definition of the
elite, the higher the proportion of enrollment in private schools. Catholic
schools therefore allow the Church to exercise an influence on society and
government that is far greater than it would be otherwise, given diminished
religious observance among a nominally Catholic population.
Let us say that acting as safety valve is the first social function of private
schooling. Of course, the benefits of this function are ambiguous: while it is
clearly desirable in the current public system, it also can immobilize criticism
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254 denis meuret
and prevent improvement within the system. Private schooling is accepted by
those in the public system itself, perhaps because it makes the public system’s
rigidity more tolerable. If there were no private schools, for instance, it is
likely that parents or students would more readily protest the worst schools
and teachers, and indeed they might insist on more diversity inside the pub-
lic sector, according to the “exit or voice” mechanism that Hirschman
described.39
A second major function of the private school system is that it provides
some families a more “familial” environment and perhaps also better teaching
conditions. Since this appears to be especially beneficial to children of low
socioeconomic status who attend private schools, it favors equality of oppor-
tunity. But this issue probably is more complex. It also may be seen as nega-
tive in the same way that Dobb and others found charter schools negative:
choice schools may skim the best students among the disadvantaged—or
those with more involved parents—and therefore, because of school effects,
be detrimental to the other schools and students in deprived areas.40 It also is
clear that private schools in France reinforce ethnic segregation, since they
enroll so few immigrant children.
Another function of private schools is that they allow social groups that
distrust the state, either for political reasons (les personnes à leur compte—
farmers, self-employed craftspeople, shopkeepers, and professionals, who are
prone to think that the state coddles people who do not pull their weight) or
religious reasons (the 6 percent of traditional Catholics whose children
attend only Catholic schools) to escape state schools.
Perhaps the public system is stimulated through competition, given the
evidence of its good performance in areas where private schooling is strong.
In any case, if it is true that the prevalence of the private sector is maintained
at a constant level for political reasons, it is clear that its role as a competitor
is limited accordingly, and the geographical distribution of any benefit of
competition is quite uneven.
Choice among Public Schools
For primary schools in the public sector, a 1882 law makes the local authori-
ties (communes) responsible for the organization of the carte scolaire—the
map that defines the catchment area for a school. This law explicitly allows
local authorities to opt for parental choice of school, but only one or two
local authorities, among the more than 10,000 in the country, have done so.
For public middle and high schools, the carte scolaire was not imple-
mented until 1963, during the Gaullist period, for the simple reason that
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school choice and its regulation in france 255
only then did the growing number of students in secondary schools make it
the easiest way to regulate enrollment. School catchment areas are defined by
the regional offices of the National Education Administration (les rectorats) in
agreement with the authorities of the régions or of the départements (les con-
seils régionaux ou généraux), which are elected bodies with general authority
for the governance of their jurisdiction.41 These areas are periodically rede-
fined to take into account the evolution of the population in the various edu-
cational sectors. Sometimes, but not always, they are redefined to enhance
social mixing, to the extent that it is possible considering the pervasive diffi-
culties created by urban social segregation. The idea that some exceptions to
this rule could be tolerated—that is, that parents could ask that their chil-
dren attend a public school other than the one in their catchment area—was
first expressed in a 1980 decree.
However, Alain Savary, the Socialist education minister, was the first to
make the carte scolaire more flexible, a change that resulted from his attempt
in 1984 to integrate the Catholic schools into a General Public Service of
Education. It was unthinkable either to suppress any choice in the proposed
general service or to restrict it to some schools (the former private schools), so
choice had to be extended to the entire public sector.42
However popular the idea of choice was among parents, Savary proceeded
very cautiously—the proposal was presented as an experiment in only four
areas of the country. More surprisingly, perhaps, right-wing prime minister
Jacques Chirac, even in his quasi-Thatcherian period (1986–88), did not give
up the experiment but cautiously extended the pilot programs.
Linked with this experimental feature of public-public choice is the fact
that no legal text fixes any rule for making exceptions to mandatory assign-
ment rules. The precise procedures are decided at the regional level, and they
are not published. It is difficult for anyone to know what the criteria for
obtaining an exemption really are.43 One thing that skilled choosers know,
however, is that it is generally preferable not to say, even if it is the truth, that
they want to avoid a school because of the poor quality of its climate or its
students’ performance.
So, the first question to address is why the idea of choosing has come so
late, so cautiously, and so stealthily, especially since most parents polled say
that they prefer having a choice. The explanation is twofold. First, education
is considered—especially by those teachers, intellectuals, and newspapers that
decide what is acceptable discourse on education—not as a service that stu-
dents receive in order to enhance their social or natural abilities (education as
empowerment), but as a privilege to be given to those who show that they are
worthy of it, offering them access to skills and knowledge that, while not
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256 denis meuret
necessary for life in society, are required to realize a superior conception of
life (education as sorting). As shown, this is common to Catholic and state
schools. Since education is not a service, the burden of proof rests on the stu-
dent’s shoulders, not on the schools, and there is no presumption favoring
individual choice. In fact, the carte scolaire is so well suited to the principles
of the educational system that most people think that it is as ancient as the
system itself. Those who administer the carte scolaire operate with the convic-
tion that parents who try to avoid a given school are pursuing their own
interest at the expense of the common good. There is, indeed, some evidence
that the overall effectiveness of the system is better guaranteed by mixing
pupils of different levels of academic ability, at least at the beginning of mid-
dle school.44 This is also the conviction of some parents, who therefore feel
torn between the common interest and what they think to be the interest of
their children.
Second, in the last twenty years, schools—which in France, unlike in the
United States, receive equal funding throughout the nation—have been
given somewhat more autonomy precisely in order to be able to adapt to
meet the needs of every child, so there is no reason to think that one school
will suit a child better than another. To adapt to every child means to allow
each child to learn how he or she learns best. This has occurred because par-
ents see choice far more as the opportunity to enroll in a “better” school than
in a school that promotes other values or cultures—and also because the con-
cept of laïcité (secularism) does not make much room for the idea that par-
ents with different cultural or religious backgrounds should be provided with
a school attuned to their preferred culture or religion (in sharp contrast with
the case in the Netherlands, as other chapters in this volume make clear). The
idea is not, of course, that parents have no right to educate and socialize their
children according to their religion or culture. But for this kind of socializa-
tion parents have a whole host of other options outside the schools: newspa-
pers and magazines, youth associations, summer camps, radio and TV sta-
tions, media events, catechism courses, and religious retreats, processions,
and pilgrimages. The idea is that the role of the school is precisely to gather
and mix these children, who are educated from different points of view at
home, and teach them to live together—because, as adults, they will have to
share the same country.
I am myself a good example of this role of the public school. The son of a
minister, I was educated in a strong Protestant environment (family, friends,
Sunday school, scouts, summer camp, and so forth) and was all the more
glad to meet, in the public schools, friends who were Catholic or Jewish or
who belonged to families with no religious affiliation. French Protestants
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school choice and its regulation in france 257
generally believe that only “men of little faith” fear the consequences of their
children associating with young people of other religions or with agnostics. I
learned concretely at school that other faiths and cultures did and do exist.
One might argue with John Rawls that faith-based or communitarian schools
should be welcomed provided that they teach their students that they are free
to think as they wish and to prepare them to be independent members of
society.45 But I regard this as not very realistic. Certainly the concrete experi-
ence of diversity is the best way to learn that other cultures and faiths exist
and have value. This experience is nowhere provided better than in public
common schools.
That is why schools that want to receive public subsidies in France must
first be open to all.46 And that is why the question of the foulard islamique
(hijab) has been so difficult. Most teachers in France feel it is wrong to accept
in their classrooms such a symbol of the domination and humiliation of
women under fundamentalist Islam (as opposed to Islam as such, which does
not require the hijab); they see it as contradicting the essential meaning of
what they teach—freedom through reason and critical thinking. However,
the Conseil d’Etat ruled that girls wearing the hijab had to be accepted in
school, provided they attended all courses and that they did not use their
hijab as a means of proselytizing. But most school directors found it very dif-
ficult to decide when proselytism began and asked for a law forbidding the
hijab in school. Supporters of the hijab argued that laïcité means also that
schools should accept girls who wear the hijab, provided that they wear it of
their own free will.47 Another argument was that if these girls were not
accepted in public schools, it would favor the development of Islamic
schools, which would be far worse for them than wearing the hijab.
However, a majority of policymakers were persuaded after numerous hear-
ings of the Stasi Commission that the girls’ wearing of the hijab had less to
do with their free will than with the will of the fundamentalists who system-
atically proselytize through these young girls. They consequently passed a law
stating that “in public primary and secondary schools, the wearing of
emblems or clothing that conspicuously demonstrates a student’s religious
affiliation is forbidden.”48
Regulation of Choice
In the first areas where choice was authorized, students had to choose three
schools, in order of preference. Their choices were then examined by a com-
mission representing the parents’ association, the head of the school, and the
district administration. The rules were, first, that families that asked for the
school in their sector had absolute priority, and second, that the number of
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258 denis meuret
staff assigned to a school would be calculated according to the number of
pupils it should enroll according to the carte scolaire. As mentioned, it is not
clear whether these rules are the same today.
Families could choose among all “ordinary” schools. With the exception
of a half-dozen “experimental schools,” in France there are no public schools
such as charter or magnet schools. Parents may prefer a school that is differ-
ent from the one assigned, not because the curriculum is different—it is
not—but because it is more convenient, because the interaction among stu-
dents or between student and teachers is better, or because the schooling is
more demanding.
The first reports of researchers on these experiments estimated that “all
effects were negative.”49 Competition, they stressed, did not result in emula-
tion but in ignoring weak pupils, which had negative effects on the global
effectiveness of the system. Competition was harmful for equality of oppor-
tunity because of its segregating effects (for example, through implementa-
tion of tracking in order to attract or retain good students). Schools became
inclined to use resources for objectives other than improving the teaching of
weak pupils: these included maintaining “elite” courses (like Greek or Ger-
man) at high cost, again to attract or retain good students; offering extracur-
ricular activities such as special field trips and in-service training programs in
companies; and so forth. The authors recommended better regulation, espe-
cially so that parents would not be obligated to choose—that is to say, par-
ents would be given a place in their sector school, although they could ask for
an exception. These recommendations were embraced by the educational
administration, in spite of a significant potential drawback: making choice
optional rather than requiring all parents to choose runs the risk that choice
will tend to be exercised mainly by an elite of “skilled choosers” rather than
parents as a whole. In addition, some mayors in small, rural areas who feared
that some small middle schools in their locality would have to close forced
the experiment to end.50 The current regulation, issued in 1998, is clearer on
principles and objectives than on procedures and criteria. Its two main aims
are said to be to preserve some mixing of social classes in the schools and to
protect schools from the “often unfair effects of cursory judgments [of
schools by parents].”51
Because the carte scolaire may in fact be designed either to compensate for
or to accentuate existing segregation, its obligation to limit social segregation
is clearly expressed. Exceptions have to be used to encourage schools to coop-
erate and collaborate to offer students the school that suits their needs best,
rather than to make schools compete to attract the best students; such “com-
petition among schools is forbidden.” The regulation states that “objective is
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school choice and its regulation in france 259
to preserve or institute social mixing as much as possible” and that “private
schools have to cooperate in this attempt.” Exceptions are authorized only to
take certain uncommon courses or courses that are infrequently offered.
Of course, parents are apt to use this opportunity to ask for a place at cer-
tain renowned schools, but the regulations warns schools not to use parental
choice to attract better students. As there are no studies on this topic, I can
give only an account of my personal experience in Paris: at the middle-school
level, sectors are designed to enhance the school mix to the (small) extent
that urban segregation allows it, and exceptions are very rare. However, at the
high-school level, student rank their preferences for three high schools, and
the high schools with the best reputations choose the better students.
Prevalence of Choice
In 1990, 50 percent of middle schools and 27 percent of high schools were
located in areas where the carte scolaire was softened by the possibility of
obtaining an exemption from a mandatory local assignment. Until then, the
names of these schools were published, but that is no longer the case. There-
fore, how many schools are now involved or how the regions interpret the
idea of exemption is not really known.
In 1992, a national survey asked 5,300 households about their experience
with public school choice. Answers indicate that of primary school pupils—
who, as noted, should almost never attend a public school other than the
one in their sector—15 percent attended schools other than the one
assigned. The corresponding figures were 12 percent for middle school and
20 percent for high school students.52 These figures have to be considered
approximate: for middle schools, Ministry of Education surveys indicated
that 10 percent were choosers in 1991 and that 9 percent were choosers in
1998.53 These figures at least suggest that public sector choice does not seem
to be increasing.
These percentages were a surprise for the Ballion-Oeuvrard study, which
deemed choosers in the experimental area to constitute only 10 percent of
the total. So the prevalence of choice was about the same, for middle schools
at least, in areas where the carte scolaire was and was not weakened. This was
confirmed by studies in the Parisian suburbs, where in principle the carte sco-
laire is not at all weakened and where nevertheless a lot of Paris students
study in order to avoid the schools closest to their homes, which have reputa-
tions for violence, poor schooling, and large immigrant populations.54 In
brief, it is most likely that the same percentage of students choose among
public schools, irrespective of whether the administrative procedures formally
accommodate choice or not.
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260 denis meuret
Impact of Choice
Has the weakening of the carte scolaire increased student segregation? In
2000, 5 percent of students in French middle schools were foreign, and the
dissimilarity index—the proportion of foreign students who would have to
be displaced to obtain an even distribution—was 50 percent. Forty-three per-
cent of middle school students were of low socioeconomic status, and their
dissimilarity index was 28 percent.55 So there is some segregation in the mid-
dle schools, but it is difficult to know how much the weakening of the carte
scolaire is responsible.
Two different kinds of middle schools seem to be requested by choosers:
renowned schools and ordinary ones. The latter are requested by parents who
want to avoid schools with a very bad reputation. This represents on one
hand a positive strategy—seeking excellence—and on the other hand a
defensive move to avoid supposedly bad schools.56 This is in line with
research on the stability of school effects on student learning. This research
(for example, Thomas and others 1997) has shown that school effects are
strong and stable only for very ineffective or very effective schools.57 So,
regarding equity, two criteria are important: the equality of opportunity to
attend quite effective schools and the equality of opportunity to avoid quite
ineffective ones. To what extent poor students use choice to enroll in very
effective schools is not known; what is known is that middle-class students
most often avoid quite ineffective schools, whether by formal or informal
means, and that bright students benefit from access to better schools.
There are two others indications of the impact of choice on segregation:
—Primary and secondary teachers are the most frequent users of public-
public choice: 15 percent of the children of primary teachers and 19 percent
of the children of secondary teachers attend a middle school that is not in
their sector, while only 9 percent of the population as a whole does.
—Segregation of working-class children has not grown in French middle
schools since 1984, while segregation of foreign children and of weak stu-
dents has increased.58 But it is not known to what extent these effects may be
attributed to the weakening of the carte scolaire. Most likely its effect is quite
small. If one supposes that teachers’ children tend to be high achievers and
that the high percentage of teachers’ children outside of their school sector is
a result of that policy—which may not in fact be the case—the weakening of
the carte scolaire process has perhaps had a small responsibility in academic
segregation.
It is interesting to note that in the United Kingdom during the same
period, social and academic segregation decreased slightly (see Gorard, chap-
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school choice and its regulation in france 261
ter 5 in this volume).59 Choice was easier, but perhaps also more regulated,
than in France.
Discussion
As with public-private school choice, the main aim of government regulation
is to restrict choice within the public sector rather than to control its undesir-
able consequences. As a result, the opportunity to truly choose is highly
dependent on the academic achievement of the student, which may result in
increased academic and social segregation overall.
In the United Kingdom, for instance, choice is considered a means to
enhance the effectiveness of the schools and therefore is associated with proce-
dures that pursue this objective (“fresh start,” inspections, and so forth). In
France, it is considered a concession to pressure from parents, and most often
in practice it becomes a matter of schools choosing students by their academic
performance. This choice of students by schools, while theoretically excluded
by administrative regulations, is in fact consistent with the meritocratic con-
ception of justice that pervades the French system. An effect of this could well
be an increase not so much in inequality among social groups as in the gap
between the performance and careers of the least and the most able students.
In general, segregation, whether socioeconomic or academic, seems to be
more acceptable in France when it caused by academic tracking—for
instance, by the distinction between vocational and general tracks—than
when it is caused by choice. That is because the right to distinguish students
is claimed in the first instance by the institution, and an institutional claim is
generally regarded as more legitimate than a claim of parents or students.
This is consistent with the assertion that choice’s main effects lie in tracking,
as previously stated. Finally, I would add that the idea that “some parents”
cheat with the carte scolaire—an idea that is generally accepted—probably
has a negative impact on public confidence in the institutions in the country.
Concluding Remarks on Both Types of Choice
One feature is common to choice in both publicly funded private schools
and public schools in France: embarrassment. These are things about which
it is preferable not to talk, hence the absence of research on the impact of pri-
vate schools and on the consequences of the weakening of the carte scolaire.
Hence also the preference for a de facto “hidden choice,” which cannot be
regulated in order to promote social and academic equality of choice.
This embarrassment is caused mainly by what I have called the nature of
the French educational system and the nature of the acceptable “discourse”
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262 denis meuret
that surrounds its governance, including conceptions of what is considered
possible. According to this discourse, choice is judged to be intrinsically per-
verse. However, it has to be tolerated because of the necessity of having a
“safety valve” and because of the strength of the groups that ask for it: the
Catholic Church and the middle class.
Of course, discourse is not reality: I am not sure that the proportion of
students who choose their schools is less in France than in the United States
or perhaps even in England. However, the reigning discourse influences what
can be overtly admitted, studied, praised, and regulated by principles on
which everybody claims to agree. Some parents choose schools through their
choice of housing, others by cheating on the carte scolaire, others, when pos-
sible, through official procedures. This situation seems to result in a system
that favors high-income people, independent workers, teachers, right-wing
people, and bright students. As such, it probably undermines the optimal
functioning of political society by fostering some resentment toward those
who figure out a way to choose or those who cheat.
One lesson to take from France is the importance of discussing the ques-
tion of choice openly (which seems to be the case in the United States in any
event), although, of course, open discussion will not eliminate the difficulties
of implementing an effective and equitable form of choice.
Another lesson could be to develop choices among public schools as well
as publicly funded private schools. If not, a clear advantage is given to private
schools. This advantage may be reduced, as in France, by regulations that
hinder the development of private schools, but such regulations in turn limit
the positive effects of emulation between the two sectors. One kind of
choice, particularly, has to be regulated: parents and students should know
whether a school does or does not offer a minimum quality of education. If
this is not done, the French example shows that it is quite impossible to pre-
vent those who have adequate resources from escaping schools that they
deem to be bad, which reinforces the existing social hierarchy if they are right
and unfairly undermines the morale of teachers and other students and the
effectiveness and equity of the system if they are wrong.
A final lesson would be that the most effective regulation of private
schooling is provided by the baccalauréat, which ensures that the same cur-
riculum is taught in all types of schools. That inspections provide a very weak
control, if any control at all, already has been documented by an American
observer, Frances Fowler.60
More generally, of course, the question of laïcité is not the same in a coun-
try where many denominations peacefully coexist and where religious com-
munities are considered part of the political body and not as a threat to it.
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However, as I see it, the French and United States cases are perhaps not so far
apart. First, no natural law protects the United States from the hegemony of
a given religion or at least from particular religious sensibilities, and it may be
thought that the stronger a religion is—or the stronger religions, taken
together, are—the more hegemonic it is or they are. So the relations between
church and state in France are perhaps not so exotic as they appear at first
glance. The tremendous growth of the influence of the religious right in the
United States during the last twenty years argues for this thesis. Second, com-
munities in the United States are part of its civil society insofar as they are a
bridge between individuals and the whole society. If they split their members
from the whole community or if they do not consider themselves part of
wider society, there is no reason why they should peacefully coexist. So their
schools deserve public subsidies only to the extent that they act as intermedi-
aries, and some preference has to be given, for civic reasons, to those schools,
private or public, where several communities meet.
A last possible lesson is that the government should, as in France, be
obliged to offer schools of equivalent quality to people, no matter where they
live, who do not want to go to a religious school. No one should be pressured
into attending such a school by the absence of a good public school option.
Notes
1. Conseil Constitutionnel, Décision du Conseil 77–87 (November 23, 1977):
“Le Conseil Constitutionnel . . . ,
1. Considérant qu’aux termes de la loi . . . , les maîtres auxquels est confiée
la mission d’enseigner dans un établissement privé lié à l’Etat par contrat sont
tenus de respecter le caractère propre de cet établissement
2. Considérant, d’une part, que la sauvegarde du caractère propre d’un
établissement lié à l’Etat par contrat . . . n’est que la mise en œuvre du principe
de la liberté de l’enseignement
3. Considérant que ce principe, qui a notamment été rappelé à l’article 91
de la loi de finances du 31 mars 1931, constitue l’un des principes fondamen-
taux reconnus par les lois de la République, réaffirmés par le principe Préam-
bule de la Constitution de 1946 et auxquels la Constitution de 1958 a conféré
valeur constitutionnelle.”
2. For the discussion in this chapter, I have used primarily A. Prost, Education,
société, et politiques (Paris: Seuil, 1997); A. Prost, “Les écoles libres changent de fonc-
tion,” in Histoire générale de l’enseignement et de l’éducation en France (Paris: Labat,
1982), pp. 413–43; T. Zeldin, France 1848–1945: Ambition, Love, and Politics
(Oxford University Press, 1973); and T. Zeldin, France 1848–1945: Intellect, Taste,
and Anxiety (Oxford University Press, 1977).
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264 denis meuret
3. Zeldin, “Religion and Anticlericalism,” in France 1848–1945: Intellect, Taste,
and Anxiety.
4. Prost, “Les écoles libres changent de function.”
5. Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, encyclical letter (Vatican, December 31,
1929); Prost, “Les écoles libres changent de function,” p. 413.
6. In fact, another voucher plan was proposed by a parliamentary commission as
early as 1872, but it was finally rejected. W. Van Vliet and J. A. Smyth, “A Nine-
teenth-Century French Proposal to Use School Vouchers,” Comparative Education
Review (February 1982).
7. “Il n’y a pour le Chrétien d’école pleinement satisfaisante que l’école chréti-
enne. Le devoir que fait l’Eglise aux parents catholiques de lui confier leurs enfants
apparaît ainsi dans la logique même de la foi.” Déclaration de l’assemblée plénière de
l’Episcopat, 1951, quoted in Prost, “Les écoles libres changent de fonction,” p. 427.
8. Jean Jacques Rousseau, “Du Contrat Social ou Principes du Droit Politique
(1762),” in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 3 (Paris : Gallimard, 1964).
9. Alexis de Tocqueville, L’ancien régime et la revolution (1856) (Paris: Gallimard,
1967), p. 79.
10. Jacques Donzelot , Faire Société (Paris : Seuil, 2003)> Donzelot supports his
thesis with field research in Boston and in Marseille and also cites P. Grogan and T.
Proscio, Comeback Cities (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 2000) in support of his
arguments.
11. M. Fumaroli, “Non, Claude Allègre, l’Amérique n’est pas le modèle idéal,” Le
Monde, December 17, 1998.
12. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois (Paris: Gallimard, Idées, 1970), p. 80 : « C’est
dans le gouvernement républicain que l’on a besoin de toute la puissance de l’éducation
.... [en effet] la vertu politique est un renoncement à soi-même, qui est toujours une
chose très pénible. »
13. John Dewey, “The School and Society” (1899), in D. A. Archambault, ed.,
John Dewey on Education (Chicago University Press, 1964,) pp. 295–310.
14. Eamon Callan, Creating Citizens (Oxford University Press : 1997).
15. R. Debray, “A M. le ministre de l’education,” Le Monde, March 3, 1998.
16. Syllabus, encyclical letter (Vatican, 1864) quoted in Zeldin, France 1848–
1945: Ambition, Love, and Politics .
17. D. Meuret, « Intérêt, Justice, Laïcité, » Le Télémaque, vol. 14 (1998), pp.
53–65.
18. The libertarian rejection of the state is grounded on an opposition between
the state and the individual, while the “populist” rejection of the state is grounded on
an idealization of the people as a collective body, a more “holistic” position. One
could not equate Le Pen with Madelin (or Nozick).
19. J. P. Visse, La question scolaire (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion,
1995).
20. F. Héran, “Ecole publique, école privée: qui peut choisir?” Economie et statis-
tiques, vol. 293 (1996), pp. 17–40.
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21. These expenses include fees, insurance, meals taken at school, school buses,
books and other school supplies, and private lessons. Most of these expenses are likely
to be higher in families whose children enroll in private schools. So, the difference is
not only in the amount of the private school fees.
22. “There is no rush toward private schools. The number of students has
remained the same for twenty years, and we still lost some students this year. We are
not here to pluck the public chicken.” Eric de Labarre, chairman of the private school
parent association, 2002, quoted in Nouvel Observateur, October 2, 2003, p. 27
(translation by the author).
23. G. Langoet and A. Léger, Le choix des familles: école publique ou école privée?
(Paris: Editions Fabert, 1997).
24. R. Ballion, “L’enseignement privé, une école sur mesure?” Revue française de
sociologie, vol. 21, no. 2 (1980); G. Langoet and A. Léger, Ecole publique ou ecole
privée? Trajectoires et réussites scolaires (Paris: Editions Fabert, 1994).
25. X. Ternisien, “En une décennie, les croyances ont reculé en France” (“In a
decade, religious beliefs lost ground in France”), Le Monde, April 17, 2003.
26. Langoet and Léger, Le choix des familles.
27. J. L. Auduc, Le système éducatif (Paris: Hachette Education, 2001), p. 287.
28. Héran, “Ecole publique, école privée.”
29. C. Chausseron, “Le choix de l’établissement au début des études secondaires,”
Note d’information 01-42 (Ministère de l’Education Nationale–DPD, 2001).
30. V. Tournier, “Ecole publique, école privée: Le clivage oublié” (“Public school,
private school: The forgotten divide”), Revue française des sciences politiques, vol. 47,
no. 5 [au: year?], pp. 560–88.
31. J. B. Champion and N. Tabard, “Les territoires de l’école privée et de l’école
publique,” Economie et statistiques, vol. 293 (1996), pp. 41–53.
32. B. Liensol and D. Meuret, “Les performances des lycées privés et publics pour
la préparation au baccalauréat: Etude sur l’académie de Nancy-Metz,” Education et
formations, vol. 12 (1987), pp. 31–42.
33. C. Ben Ayed, “Familles populaires de l’enseignement public et privé,” Educa-
tion et sociétés 5 (2001).
34. Chloe Tavan, “Ecole Publique, école privée: Comparaison de trajectoires et de
la réussite scolaire,” Revue française de sociologie, vol. 45, no. 1 [au: year?], pp. 133–65.
35. Chausseron, “Le choix de l’établissement au début des études secondaires”;
Héran, “Ecole publique, école privée”; Langoet and Léger, Le choix des familles.
36. Langoet and Léger, Le choix des familles.
37. C. Choquet and F. Héran, “Quand les élèves jugent les collèges et les lycées,”
Economie et statistiques, vol. 293 (1996), pp. 107–25.
38. Ministère de l’Education Nationale, Géographie de l’école (1998).
39. A. O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, Loyalty (Harvard University Press, 1970).
40. C. Dobb, G. Glass, and C. Crockett, “The U.S. Charter School Movement
and Ethnic Segregation,” paper prepared for a meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, New Orleans, 2000.
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266 denis meuret
41. What follows is partly inspired by D. Meuret, S. Broccolochi, and M. Duru-
Bellat, “Autonomie et choix des établissments scolaires,”Cahiers de l’IREDU, vol. 62
(2001).
42. A. Prost, “La loi Savary: les raisons d’un échec,” in Alain Savary: Politique et
honneur (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2002); J. P. Obin, “Le projet d’établissement
en France: mythe et réalité,” Politiques d’éducation et de formation, vol. 1 (2001), pp.
9–28.
43. The author and colleagues asked in 2000 for appointments with six rectorats
to ask questions on that topic. Four refused. Of the two that agreed, one agreed
because of personal acquaintance with one of us. Some interviews showed the agents
in charge to be strongly devoted to the carte scolaire as an expression of the common
good, but we have no idea of how representative they were.
44. M. Duru-Bellat and A. Mingat, “La gestion de l’hétérogénéité des publics
d’élèves au collège,” Cahiers de l’IREDU, vol. 59 (1997).
45. J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
46. This condition is not without problems. It can be respected by a church that
wants to exert a general influence more than convert the souls of the children. This is
the case, in France, of the Catholic Church. But how is one to think that an Islamic
school following Islamic principles, in which 80 percent of girls wear the foulard,is
“open to all,” even if it formally accepts anybody who wants to enroll? Clearly this
principle means also that the environment and teaching in the school should be
acceptable by all. This problem has not yet been fully seen in France because of the
small number of “hard” religious schools.
47. T. Ramadan, “Pas de loi contre le foulard,” Libération, May 7, 2003.
48. Loi 2004-228 du 15 mars 2004 encadrant, en application du principe de laïc-
ité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appurtenance religieuse dans les
écoles, colleges et lycées publics, Journal official du 17 mars 2004, p. 5190.
49. Robert Ballion and Françoise Oeuvrard, Le choix du lycée (Ministère de l’ édu-
cation nationale, 1989).
50. Auduc, Le système éducatif, p. 287
51 Ministère de l’Education Nationale, Circulaire 98-263 du 29-12-1998, Bul-
letin Officiel de l’Education Nationale 99-1 du 07 01 1999, p. 9.
52. C. Gissot, F. Héran, and N. Mannon, Les efforts éducatifs des familles, Con-
sommation et modes de vie 331–32 (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes
Economiques-Résultats, 1994), p. 253.
53. Chausseron, “Le choix de l’établissement au début des études secondaires.”
54. S. Broccolichi and A. Van Zanten, “School Competition and Pupil Flight in
the Urban Periphery,” Journal of Education Policy, vol. 15, no. 1 (2000), pp. 51–60.
55. D. Trancart, « Evolution de la ségrégation sociale dans les collèges publics »
(Université de Rouen, 2001).
56. R. Ballion, La bonne école (Paris: Hatier, 1991), p. 258.
57. S. Thomas and others, “Stability and Consistency in Secondary Schools’
Effects on Students’ GCSE Outcomes over Three Years,” School Effectiveness and
School Improvement, vol. 8, no. 2 (1997).
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58. Trancart, Evolution de la ségrégation sociale dans les collèges publics.
59. For primary schools, see H. Glennerster, “United Kingdom Education 1997–
2001,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy, vol. 18, no. 2 (2002).
60. Frances C. Fowler, “School Choice Policy in France: Success and Limitations,”
Educational Policy, vol. 6, no. 4 (1992), pp. 429–43)].
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