The Administrative Obstacle

In 1957 the Ministry of National Education gave the following account of school organization in France: ¹ ‘The hierarchy of the three great branches, Primary, Secondary, and Higher, as conceived by the Constituent Assembly and built by Napoleon—to which was later added Technical Education—remains the basis of our school organisation.’ The article shows beyond doubt that Frenchmen are aware of the nature of the great administrative obstacle to reform. ‘In the course of the 19th century each of these developed as a distinct closed sector having as its mission to teach its own particular clientèle and to recruit it on social rather than scholastic criteria. Instead of following upon each other, the educational sectors paralleled each other. … It has long been the Ministry’s design to put some order into this organisation, to return to the clear notion of “progressive stages” of instruction and to regroup in a rational way the various educational establishments so as to improve the orientation of children and to avoid pointless and expensive competition. … This great educational law is still awaited. In its absence, more restricted laws or administrative measures have amended and continue every day to amend certain anomalies. The present French educational system and the ordering of its administration represent a compromise between the historical structure which still imposes its mould and its vocabulary, and the new ordinance which social and economic evolution calls for, but which the law has not yet consecrated.’