Lisa Kamen-Hirsig is a teacher and columnist.
In an interview with Figaro on April 13, Pap Ndiaye said he expected a commitment from private schools in terms of social diversity.
But what exactly is he waiting for and why this urgency?
The publication, last October, at the request of the Paris administrative court, of the social position index (IPS) drove the National Education officials crazy.
However, it was at their request that the Department of Evaluation, Foresight and Performance (DEPP) created this tool in 2016. But it was kept secret for a long time and was only used to decide on the amount of aid. given to each school.
Calculated on the basis of criteria such as the professions and social categories (PCS) of the parents, the type of leisure in which the child devotes himself, the number of books in his home, etc.
He revealed – What a surprise!
– that children whose environment was
"favorable to learning"
preferentially went to the good establishments, often private ones.
Crazy, right?
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Did you need a clue to realize this?
An index that is all the less reliable in that it is calculated on the basis of questionable elements and a very arbitrary weighting system: a student whose mother is a teacher and whose father is an engineer is awarded a generous 179 while another, whose father did not wish to provide information on his profession and whose mother is unemployed, hardly gets a 37. Does this mean that one has five times more chances of succeeding in his studies than the other?
Or win five times more?
Or encounter five times fewer difficulties? No one can answer these questions, especially not his sponsors, but now that the general public is aware of the existence of this index, Pap Ndiaye is keen to show his determination: no inequality will resist his reign. !
Failing to be able to improve the lot of all, he points the finger at the schools which still escape the disaster and will strive to methodically destroy everything that allows them to get out of the game. He had promised to act in January.
Social and political events have decided otherwise.
Spring has awakened his socialist ardor.
As it is not yet a question of forcing individuals to go where they do not wish to go, Pap Ndiaye has no other option than to threaten private establishments.
Lisa Kamen
But how to oblige the daughter of a couple of business lawyers, passionate about the harp and horse riding, to attend a ZEP school?
How to prevent him from enrolling in a private school that his parents will offer him, very often besides to escape the school sectorization?
How to allow low-income families to access the best schools?
Since it is not yet a question of physically forcing individuals to go where they do not wish to go, Pap Ndiaye has no other option but to threaten private establishments that do not show their good will to no longer pay them all or part of the subsidies they receive under the Lang-Cloupet agreement of 1992.
“It should not be a question of a vague commitment but of a commitment with percentages (…) There will be many progressive quantified objectives. This protocol is practically ready”
.
Percentages of poor people?
illiterate?
visible minorities?
short people?
of Buddhists?
Catholic schools, since they are the ones we are talking about, already welcome children of other denominations and have their share of disabled people or children who fail at school.
The IPS reveals, moreover, that in certain regions or certain districts, they are the ones that receive the majority of so-called “disadvantaged” pupils.
The egalitarian fury always leads to the restriction of freedoms and systematically leads to avoidance strategies and, consequently, to less equality.
Lisa Kamen
The minister knows that these measures are detrimental to freedom.
It obviously doesn't bother him.
Nothing stops egalitarianism.
On the other hand, did he realize that he was playing into the hands of the schools outside the contract, which completely escape these constraints?
Formerly inaccessible for financial reasons, they are in full expansion and are becoming more democratic thanks to foundations, patrons and sound management of their finances.
Did he plan to ban them as his predecessor did for home education, subject to so many constraints that it has become almost impracticable?
It would be giving him bad intentions, especially since he sends his children to the École alsacienne, a free school which, as such, will not be subject to this quota policy.
We could have
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But once again, instead of favoring freedom, abolishing sectorization, restoring to each family the amount corresponding to the schooling of their children to enable them to enroll them in the school that suits them best, at the instead of making the principle of subsidiarity prevail in the management of the school system by granting real autonomy to the heads of establishments, instead of authorizing teachers to move from the public to the private sector and vice versa because the pupils deserve to be instructed by the best, everywhere, the minister decides to show his muscles and to compel establishments to take in pupils qualified as “disadvantaged”.
By force.
The Minister refuses to admit that the school cannot do everything, even if
it waters the schools of the poor and puts the schools of the rich on a diet.
The only question he and his government colleagues should be asking is that of the reasons for the proliferation of these so-called disadvantaged groups.
He decides to apply everywhere recipes that have worked nowhere.
The egalitarian fury always leads to the restriction of freedoms and systematically results in avoidance strategies and, therefore, less equality.
