In this paper, we analyse the trajectory of the French testing policy in education since 1973. Regarding its statistical tradition and its ability to produce its own evaluation tool, France may be regarded as an interesting case to interrogate the capacity of national educational systems to meet international standards of testing. Anchored in a…

The research brought forward examines the evolution of the selective social processes that have accompanied educational expansion over the long term, referring to the case of France. It is based on an original index which addresses the issue of assessing inequality within the selection process for access to various educational levels. The results…

The International Commission on the Development of Education set up by UNESCO in 1971 was chaired by Edgar Faure. The conceptualisation of a new social contract in his work between the 1960s and 1970s had a strong influence on the final report prepared by this commission. Published in 1972, Learning to be: "The world of education today and…

This article examines French and English average performances and educational inequality in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) between 2000 and 2018. It asks why English average scores in 2018 are much higher than those of France when they were fairly similar in previous PISA assessments. It questions why the impact of…

The aim of this report is threefold. Its first section provides an overall sketch of the situation across Europe and the underlying mechanisms for the differences in European countries. The second section focuses on the heterogeneities within each country. It examines the disparities among students in order to understand which of those correlate…

Focused on the period between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, this paper explores the pan-European dissemination of policy proposals articulating "éducation permanente" as involving reforms in the architecture of initial and post-initial education in the direction of promoting 'a long life of learning'. It seeks to identify the key…

The UFR Lansad (Language centre teaching languages to specialists of other disciplines) was created in 2014 at the University of Lorraine. The process leading to its creation was led by a small number of teachers and researchers, from the pre-existing teams of the previous Lorraine universities (Molle et al. 2019). It is the result of didactic…

This technical report presents the results of a cross-case analysis of the eleven case studies conducted under the Higher Education for Smart Specialisation project during the period 2016-2020. The analysis identifies key themes and innovative practice examples from across case studies, developing a structured typology of innovative practices for…

Today, the Common European Framework of Reference (2009), and with it the action-based approach, underlies English Language Teaching (ELT) curricula throughout Europe. However, actual teaching practices are likely to vary according to factors such as the educational level and supra-national differences, including legal guidelines and the level of…

This paper presents an ongoing comparative study of secondary teachers' education programs in France, Greece, and England, with a primary focus on strategies aimed at cultivating a positive learning environment in schools. Recent studies have underlined the significance of teachers' pedagogical competence formation as a determinant element which…

This essay presents the French educational programme 'Ecole et cinéma' in terms of its guiding principles. By examining the history of its creation, as well as the various levels at which this complex programme operates -- from government agencies to pupils, by way of educators and organizational leadership -- we begin to understand the…

This article focuses on the family language policy (FLP) of second-generation Turkish immigrant families living in France. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 families to observe their language ideologies, practices and management strategies. The thematic analysis shows that despite generational differences of parents,…

This article focuses on article 28 (right to education), article 29 (goals of education) and article 30 (children from minority or indigenous groups) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and their implementation in the several national policies of Western Europe, especially the UK and Ireland, and to a lesser extent,…

Across OECD countries, individuals without tertiary-educated parents tend to be considerably under-represented among entrants to tertiary education. However, inequalities tend to accumulate throughout an individual's educational career. In particular, the period from starting upper secondary to entering tertiary education is critical in…

The Problem: In the field of English as a Second or Foreign language, Borg (2003) observed that studies of teacher cognition can be divided into two broad curricular areas of grammar and literacy. Notably, however, there is limited research on the cognitions of foreign language teachers of English within the intercultural dimension of language…