The ESL situation in France

Embedded in the European context of the Europe 2020 strategy reducing early school leaving (ESL) is one of the major issues of French society and, as such, a national priority (MEN, 2014a). The volume of different policy and operational documents on the topic of ESL in France is impressive, indicating this topic has indeed received significant political, professional and public attention in recent years. The process is ongoing, resulting in new policy and/or operational documents being published regularly (e.g. the ESL action plan for 2015/ 16, MEN, 2015a).

The aim of this article is to give an overview of the complex state of affairs as well as recent trends regarding ESL in France. In the introduction, some characteristics of the French education system relevant to ESL are presented (i.e. transitions, length of compulsory education, grade retention; for a literature review about relevant system characteristics, also see EC/EACEA/Eurydice/Cedefop, 2014; Nesse, 2010; PPMI, 2014), including some relevant recent reforms. This is followed by statistics on ESL and an insight into the French ESL situation with a focus on multi-professional collaboration related to ESL. The purpose of the article is to elucidate the context in which experiments within the TITA project are taking place, thus guiding the interpretation and generalisations of the findings.

The article draws information from European documents (European Commission – EC, Eurydice), Eurostat, ministerial documents on ESL and other documents and reports available online (prepared by French local governments or institutions). A search for scientific articles was conducted using the key words ‘early school leaving’, ‘drop-out’ and ‘France’ in the ASU Libraries search engine, resulting in very few hits (only one was relevant to this article). This supports Berthet and Simon’s (2012) claim that up until very recently only a few academic works had examined this topic in France (academic articles in English are even rarer; for an exception, see the review by Thibert, 2013). A search was also conducted using the backward procedure.

Education in France is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 16 (Eurydice, 2014). This period is marked by two transitions: from primary school (école élémentaire, ages 6–11 years) to lower secondary education (collège, ages 11–15 years) and then to upper secondary education (lycée, ages 15–18 years). Streaming begins after the end of collège with the transition to lycée at age 15; the first year of lycée is part of the compulsory education. Lycée can be general/technical, professional or can serve as an apprenticeship. Grade retention is possible, but under a new law (Guidance and Programming Law, 2013-595) this became an ‘exceptional’ practice (Eurydice, n.d.). Moreover, early childhood education is strong in France; children over 3 years are legally entitled to a free place in écolle maternelle; over 99% of children attend (EC/EACEA/Eurydice/Eurostat, 2014). Schools are obliged to provide education and career guidance services; these are provided by school staff and guidance counsellors outsourced from the Information and Orientation Centres (EC/EACEA/Eurydice/Cedefop, 2014).

Another special feature of the French education system is the educational non-teaching educational staff conseiller principal d’éducation (CPE – chief education advisor). The CPE is senior staff responsible for ensuring that school life runs smoothly and supports pupils’ learning (Eurydice, n.d.). These responsibilities mainly cover running of the school (organisation of day-to-day life within school), collaboration with teaching staff, and educational facilitation (ibid.).

Several reforms in school and vocational education have taken place in France since 2013 that hold implications for preventing ESL, but do not directly address it: e.g. reforms of early childhood education, school timetable, initial and continuous teacher education, priority education (related to schools in disadvantaged areas), assessment (see Eurydice, n.d. for details). On the other hand, some reforms have been directly related to ESL (see below for details).

In relation to governance, the French education system is by tradition centralised, although the process of decentralisation over the last three decades has led to the increasingly significant role of local authorities (i.e. 26 regions, about 100 departments and over 36,000 municipalities). In partnership with académie (i.e. administrative district in national education systems, generally corresponding with regions), they implement state policy as the most appropriate to local context (Eurydice, n.d.). This implies that also in relation to tackling ESL local authorities and academies are in charge of the local implementation and adaptation of central-level measures, leading to tensions between governance levels (Berthet & Simon, 2012).

Two national definitions of ESL are in use alongside the Eurostat one: ’non-graduate leaver’ (students who leave education without having obtained an upper secondary qualification) and ’drop-out’ (students who leave education before completing a programme they are attending below upper secondary education) (EC/EACEA/Eurydice/Cedefop, 2014). In addition to collecting data for Eurostat, France also collects data in accordance with the national definition. There has been some debate as to whether the ministry collects data on ESL in an unbiased way (for details, see Thibert, 2013).

Figure 1 shows Eurostat’s ESL rate in France in the last two decades. A steady decline can be observed, even though comparability over time before 2005 (at EU level) and even after 2013 (France-specific methodological changes, EC, 2014b) is limited. The ESL rate in France has traditionally been below the EU average.

The ESL rate in France dropped below the Europe 2020 target of 10% for the first time in 2013 and below the national target of 9.5% in 2014. In 2015, the ESL rate was 9.3% (Eurostat, 2016b). Despite the relatively low overall rate of ESL, there are large discrepancies linked to socio-economic and cultural factors and between regions (i.e. from 5.8% in Midi-Pyrénées to 14.8% in Picardie in 2014; Eurostat, n.d.). The share of early leavers was higher for foreign-born versus native-born (17.8% versus 9.1%) and for males versus females (10.7% versus 8.7%) in 2014 (EC, 2014a). The same was true in 2015 (14% and 8.1% for foreign-born and native-born; 9.5% and 7.4% for males and females, respectively; EC, 2015). This is relevant to tackling inequality in France.

Figure 1. France: time trend of share of the population aged 18–24 with at most a lower secondary education and not in further education or training (Eurostat, 2016a)

Note. Lower secondary education refers to ISCED (International Standard Classification of Education) 2011 level 0-2 for data from 2014 onwards and to ISCED 1997 level 0-3C short for data up to 2013. In 2012, France changed methodology.

Up until the early 2000s ESL was not high on the political agenda in France, but this has changed in the last decade. ESL has become a public problem and was even directly addressed in the presidential campaign in 2012 (Berthet & Simon, 2012; MEN, 2014a, b). It is important to note that some French academics have challenged this view, more specifically they have highlighted the steadily decreasing number of ESLers (also see Figure 1) and at the same time there is ever more talk about ESL as a problem; moreover, they have challenged the idea that increasing people’s qualifications will solve the problem (e.g. Bernard, 2013; Bernard & Venart, 2013; Berthet, 2013; Berthet & Simon, 2012; Dubet, 2015; Huart, 2013).

As a result of the attention to the issue of ESL, many measures/actions/bodies/institutions/networks/tools have been reinforced in the field of prevention, intervention and compensation (see Table 1 in the appendix), advancing France’s strong compensation tradition (Thibert, 2013). The overview of measures shows there were many opportunities for cross-sectorial multi-professional and/or multi-agency cooperation at the school/local level in relation to ESL that also included external partners to offer more personalised and transversal responses.

The main policies and measures involved: (1) fighting against absenteeism; (2) supporting the integration of migrants (test of scholarly and linguistic competencies and provision of support for instruction language); (3) preventing school drop-out for socially disadvantaged youth (priority early childhood education and care enrolment, additional teacher in schools in disadvantaged areas, individualised pedagogical support); (4) ensuring adequate orientation of students, especially in vocational education; (5) specific structures (MLDS – Missions de lutte contre le décrochage scolaire) that identify youngsters who dropped out of school and offer them different options; and (6) local associations (Missions locales pourl’insertion des jeunes) that provide professional and social integration support to ESL youngsters (EC/EACEA/Eurydice/Cedefop, 2014). Since 2011, a detection system (SIEI, an interdepartmental system of information exchange) has made it possible to identify young school leavers. Data are used by local platforms to identify ESLers and support them in finding a solution (a personalised return path) for further education and training (EC, 2013). It should be noted that SIEI is not used to collect statistical data on ESL (EC/EACEA/Eurydice/Cedefop, 2014).

Moreover, in the reforms taking place in 2013 (see Guidance and Programming Law, 2013-595; also see Eurydice, n.d.) a significant measure was Formation Qualification Emploi (FoQualE), a network that coordinates stakeholders working at the local level with ESLers (different organisations offering education and training programmes outside the regular mainstream education system); it aims to offer a personalised return path to education and training. Another measure was the introduction of ‘ESL officers’ (décrochage scolaire) who are appointed in secondary schools with high truancy and ESL rates. They coordinate the prevention action taken by the education staff, including the CPE and social and health staff, within ESL-prevention groups. The third measure was related to truancy as an early sign of potential school leaving. Some other important measures were (for a detailed description, see Eurydice, n.d.): families are given the final decision regarding the type of lycée a student will attend (to avoid unwanted streaming to vocational programmes linked to ESL; Bavoux & Pugin, 2012), a website where ESLers can find information regarding training was set up (http://www.onisep.fr/), an advisory phone number for (potential) ESLers or parents about training solutions was made available, versatility in training and flexibility for tracks was increased, external partners were included in educational alliances to offer more personalised and transversal responses, a plan to educate education staff on ESL was developed etc.

Altogether, over 30 policies were implemented with numerous local projects or initiatives (also see Guigue, 2013) and the coexistence of different type of actors (government departments, local governments and local structures/networks). Numerous measures and instruments were loosely coordinated, quickly outdated, decommissioned and scarcely financed at the national/systemic level (Berthet & Simon, 2012). The collision of national and local agenda has impacted and sometimes destroyed local experimentations (ibid.). The authors also find that the voice of the students in these projects was not heard (pupils had no information about the projects, projects bore no value to them, they were forced to participate), sometimes also due to constraints in the education system (not enough places at the chosen school).

In 2014, the Ministry of Education prepared an evaluation of the partnership policy against ESL and proposed a systemic action plan (MEN, 2014, a, b). A coordinated and coherent action public policy to prevent ESL was launched in November 2014 in the form of a national strategy to tackle ESL (Tous mobilisés contre le décrochage – Together against ESL; MEN, 2015b). The strategy brought different ESL policies and measures together, and systemised them along three key areas. According to the strategy (MEN, 2015b) the three key areas are:

1. all mobilised against ESL (accountability/empowerment of all actors – schools, teachers, educational non-teaching staff, parents, youth, external actors; ’staying in school is everyone’s business, and every young person needs daily encouragement’);
2. more emphasis on prevention (ESL modules in initial and in-service staff training, educational alliances between schools and external partners to provide adequate support, new teaching practices and learning methods); and
3. a »new chance« to become qualified; i.e. return to education or training (greater modularity and flexibility of the education path).
   The strategy further defines specific measures within each key area, conditions (levers) needed for the success of the strategy and timeline. In the following section, we present the two measures/actions most related to the multi-professional collaboration in the focus of the TITA project – the ESL-prevention groups and the ESL officer.

The GPDS (Group de Prévention du Décrochage scholaire – ESL-Prevention Group) is the prototype of multi-professional collaboration which is in the focus of the TITA project. It is a collegial internal (within-institution) multi-category body (MEN, 2015c). The GPDS is a measure/action aimed at students showing signs of ESL (at collège and lycée), previously known as GAIN (Groupe d’Aide à l’Insertion – Integration Support Group; MEN, 2014a).

In the national strategy against ESL (MEN, 2015b) the GPDSs are embedded in the key area of prevention, in the measure of strengthening collaboration between teaching and educational staff to provide better support for young people in an ESL situation; thus the GPDS is focused on within-school collaboration.

The national strategy against ESL allows/aims for the proliferation of ESL-prevention groups in all secondary schools (MEN, 2015b). It is a group around the head of an institution bringing participants of the educational community together: school management, teaching staff, the CPE, the guidance counsellor, the social and health worker. They are brought together in order to analyse the situation of a youngster and find suitable support (MEN, 2014a). The GPDS coordinates the identification of the potential ESL and monitors the implementation of prevention activities (MEN, 2015c). The ESL-prevention groups should be managed and steered by the head of the institution/school directors or the ESL coordinator (national education inspector); however, this role needs to be consolidated in the coming years (MEN, 2014b). The ministry (ibid.) has identified the following three priority domains to be systematically addressed by the ESL-prevention group:

1. the existence of cognitive (learning) difficulties;
2. diagnostic of possible disorders, pathology or disease (e.g. school phobia); and
3. attention to harassment (maltreatment or abuse in all forms, inside and outside of school).
   Diagnostic tools for identifying ESLers remain to be generalised (MEN, 2015b); guidelines for sharing information and confidentiality have been issued (see MEN, 2015c).

The ESL-prevention groups are closely linked to the establishment of educational alliances, which has been put forward in the national strategy (MEN, 2015b), followed by an implementation guide for educational alliances (MEN, 2015c). The ESL-prevention groups can be seen as an internal educational alliance (micro-level and meso-level) since alliance can be internal to the school (institution) or can include a variety of external partners (macro level; associations, communities, companies from social, medical, health, legal services/institutions to entrepreneurships) (MEN, 2015c; Thibert, 2013). The alliance (thus also the ESL-prevention group) can vary in its configuration according to each student’s needs in both its composition and scope (ibid.).

ESL officers (référent décrochage) were appointed in autumn 2013 at secondary schools with high levels of truancy and ESL (Bulletin officiel, 2013). They have been generalised since August 2014 when a decree was issued that allowed for the appointment of an ESL officer within each secondary school (MEN, 2014b).

The work of ESL officers is situated in the centre of the ESL-prevention measure. From the first signs of ESL onwards, they mobilise and coordinate the prevention action conducted by the ESL-prevention group. The ESL officer takes action under the head of institution alongside other members of the ESL-prevention group. The ESL officer is active in four work areas: prevention axis (e.g. identifies the youngsters concerned from the first signs of ESL onwards, collects all useful information), compensation axis (e.g. involved in research of solutions for a return to initial education and ensures a youngster is monitored (care, support, etc.)), communication (conveys and ensures the circulation of information between actors – management team, CPE) and evaluation (e.g. writing the annual report of proposed actions) (Académie Poitiers, n.d./a). In the prevention axis, their work includes help in setting up the ESL-prevention group; the ESL officer is also its joint-coordinator (ibid.). ESL officers have various profiles – generally they are CPEs, but not always – they can also be e.g. heads of institutions, education assistants, guidance counsellors (Académie Poitiers, n.d./b; MEN 2014b). The ministry aims to assure the promotion of teaching staff in the ESL officer role, formalisation of a dedicated job description for an ESL officer, an increase in their competencies focused on ESL-prevention, enhancement of their role as the link among the actors involved (inside and outside of school, horizontally and vertically with local authorities).

This overview of European and French national and local policy and/or operational documents on ESL demonstrates the considerable attention this issue has received in France in recent years. The declining ESL rates show that the efforts have been efficient to some extent; however, tackling the disparities among regions and subgroups remains a challenge.

With regard to multi-professional collaboration in tackling ESL it can be concluded that ESL-prevention groups are a promising measure. In the future, raising the awareness of all actors involved and empowering teachers to be partners on an equal footing in these groups is warranted. Moreover, issues like time and budgetary constraints as well as group composition and training need to be considered. Although the official documents imply that ESL-prevention groups are essentially internal alliances composed of school staff, practice shows that in some schools the functioning and linking of the ESL-prevention group has been extended to include external partners, institutions (Maillard et al., 2016). This indicates that in some schools the ESL-prevention group is already taking the form of a macro-level educational alliance.

It seems that in the following years the challenge with multi-professional collaboration will be to put into practice what has been envisioned in the national strategy and supporting documents. As already mentioned, an important step towards that goal is to evaluate their functioning in practice, as is being conducted within the framework of the TITA project.