By Claude Goudron.
It will certainly be the reform that will take the longest time. French education is in fact totally unsuited to the needs of a modern economy and presents two issues: national education and vocational training.
National Education
Low level
The last Pisa ranking published at the end of 2019 is not good. It places France between the twentieth and the twenty-sixth rank of the 79 countries present in the surveys, despite colossal sums swallowed up. The country is also recognized as one of the least equal!
Until college it is not the adequacy to the needs of the company that poses a problem but the regular drop in the level of basic knowledge which will handicap the rest of the educational course of our children.
Starting in high school, the results are even worse. Indeed, the student is then supposed to prepare to define his career plan and there is often nothing.
The needs of the company are never taken into consideration and the National Education directs its youth towards closed courses: out of 1,380,000 students enrolled at the university in 2019, 37% were enrolled in Letters and Human Sciences there. where there are no more outlets, against 25% for Sciences where there is a shortage!
The number of engineering schools continues to decrease. They are now 201 who train 37,000 engineers which ranks the country in number / inhabitant beyond tenth place in Europe. Worse, in the ranking by performance there are only two engineering schools out of fifty, the first being in 17th place, against ten for Germany and 17 for Great Britain which trusts the first three places!
According to the OECD, France is also very poorly placed in terms of technical skills: it is in 21st place out of 24 and in 22nd place in terms of language.
The national education budget amounts to 53 billion euros. The French can say that they are not getting their money’s worth, and as always it is the administrative mammoth that is the problem.
Despite state supervision, private schools perform better from primary to university. Moreover, the defenders of public schools very often send their own children to the private sector where the results are undoubtedly better.
Ubiquitous politicization and feedback
Less obvious in the lower classes, the politicization of national education is unfortunately a reality which dates back to the post-war period with the sovietization advocated by a so-called intellectual elite.
I am 18 years old. We had a French professor who made no secret of his adherence to communism: each text studied was either an apology for Soviet communism or a systematic criticism of capitalism and therefore of the United States.
In the program it was foreseen that each student proposes a topic, prepares a presentation on the chosen topic and presents it in front of the whole class.
When my turn came, a little provocative I admit, I announced my theme: “comparison of the USSR / USA standard of living”. The teacher refused it on the grounds that his convictions told him not to accept such a subject. I refused to change it since it was agreed that we were free to choose, and added that he could stick a zero on me. Finally and out of obligation, he accepted this subject. I have never put so much determination to prepare my case, it is true with the support of my father. In support of my arguments, I had brought all the press articles of the time which confirmed an obvious fact that was often overlooked in France.
The teacher recognized the work I had provided but refused to grade it because of his beliefs, and then asked the class to do so. He was surprised at my excellent grade. My only regret is that I should have demanded that he grade me himself.
Nowadays, the Sciences Po Grenoble case confirms that this is still the case!
Programs from another age
This politicization can therefore only be found in the development of school curricula. The company is considered to be the ultimate exploitation of Man by Man. Economics is hardly taught until the Baccalaureate and when it is, it is to make Piketty an idol and Jean Tirole an infrequent liberal.
It should therefore come as no surprise that our political leaders, most of whom come from the ENA, have put France in a situation of virtual bankruptcy.
Ignorance of business needs
Between a pro-company decree and a pro-social decree, the decision will always tend towards more social even at the risk of killing the company.
French industry is in a sorry state. Since François Mitterrand, each president, pushed by a population watered by fake news economic, considered the company as the main source of funding for this social drift in the country.
Professional training adrift
With a budget of 35 billion euros, or two-thirds of that of the National Education which manages 16,000,000 pupils and students, vocational training in France is a real fiasco.
People involved in vocational training fall into two categories:
- Around 460,000 almost full-time apprentices.
- 32% of employees for part-time work (OECD data) and an annual average of 50 hours, ie a full-time equivalent of around 240,000 people.
So there are 700,000 people for an extravagant budget financed by the company, or 50,000 euros per year per participant… And for what result?
To understand this situation we must read the Perruchot report on union money, so explosive that it was banned from publication on pain of a fine of 15,000 euros and one year in prison. It was a fabulous way to finance workers ‘and employers’ unions, and it was when I learned about it that I resigned from the presidency of the CPME.
Conclusion
It is essential to further promote private education and remove the control of education programs from teachers alone by involving entrepreneurs.
As in Germany, it is advisable to prohibit all political propaganda within the National Education under penalty of dismissal.
Vocational training must be optimized and its budget reduced to a maximum of ten billion per year.
