ABSTRACT

In common with most industrialised countries, France has undertaken an ambitious programme of education reform over the last fifteen years. This book uses key extracts from contemporary writing to examine exactly how and why that process has happened, focusing on all stages of the education system. Sections cover the main characteristics of school reform in France, its aims and objectives, a discussion of the desirability of and politics surrounding the reform process, and explorations of classroom practice, the changing role of parents, standards in schools, and the curriculum. Because of its high quality, wide and up-to-date coverage of the area, this book will be a vital reference text for all those working in this field.

part |2 pages

Part I Context

chapter 1|2 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|17 pages

Secular, free and compulsory

Republican values in French education

part |2 pages

Part II Aims

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter 3|7 pages

The ‘loi Jospin’: The Education Framework Act 1989

The Education Framework Act 1989 (extracts)

chapter 4|5 pages

Work, worth, talent

chapter 5|20 pages

Now or Never

part |2 pages

Part III Actors

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter 7|26 pages

Constraints on policy innovation in education:

Thatcher’s Britain and Mitterrand’s France

chapter 8|23 pages

Policy implementation in the French public bureaucracy

The case of education

chapter 9|22 pages

Challenging the idea of centralized control

The reform of the French curriculum in a European context

chapter 10|19 pages

Decentralizing the education system

A test for the regions

chapter 12|8 pages

A changing focus of power: from the all-powerful state to the user-customer

From the all-powerful state to the user- customer

part |2 pages

Part IV Structures

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter 13|13 pages

Nursery education for the two-year-old

Social and educational effects

chapter 14|22 pages

Educational homogeneity in French primary education

A double case study

chapter 15|15 pages

A lesson in progress? Primary classrooms observed in

Primary classrooms observed in England and France

chapter 16|17 pages

Lower secondary education in France

From uniformity to institutional autonomy

chapter 17|15 pages

The educational renovation of the lycée

Continuity or change?

chapter 19|9 pages

Special education in France

chapter 20|12 pages

From the schoolteacher to the expert

The IUFM and the evolution of training institutions

part |2 pages

Part V Values

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

chapter 23|10 pages

The educational maelstrom

chapter 25|8 pages

Academic failure, social failure

Teaching in the lost suburbs

chapter 26|11 pages

Scarves, schools and segregation

The foulard affair