In September 1977, all of France's middle schools implemented the so-called "collège unique" reform in the seventh year, i.e. the elimination of tracking (or streaming) and the mixing of all pupils and teachers for the first year of secondary education. This article examines the genesis and implementation of this reform from the point of…

One of the specificities of French higher education is that there is no single higher education system but two compartmentalised and hierarchical higher education systems comprising (1) universities and (2) "grande école" higher education institutions. Competing for a place in the latter requires that students have succeeded in…

The present document on the Sixty Years of CONFINTEA was inspired by the desire to register the long fecund history of a global movement which has spanned six decades. Official records and documents produced by and for the conferences, in particular the final reports, elaborated by UNESCO were used as an important source. This process of…

This long-awaited synthesis approaches the past three centuries with an eye to highlighting the importance of significant schools, as well as important women educators in the emergence of secondary education for girls. At the same time, each contributor pays careful attention to the specific political, cultural, and socio-economic factors that…

In this essay, a tribute to Jacques Derrida's educational efforts at expanding access to current work in philosophy, John Willinsky examines his efforts as both a public right and an element of academic freedom that bear on the open access movement today. Willinsky covers Derrida's extension and outreach work with the Groupe de Recherches pour…

This essay examines the formation, operation, and social effects of adult education classes in France during the nineteenth century. These classes were created and operated prior to the formation of France's national education system and were part of the expansion of primary schooling for the working class, or more generally for "the…

As yet citizens in the United States have had very little specific and authoritative information from the enemy-occupied countries of Europe and the Far East about what has happened and is happening to the intellectual life of their people. Recognizing these limitations in the information and desirous that the citizens of the United States,…

Explores educational inequalities in France, employing data collected for cohorts born between 1919 and 1973, a period of educational expansion. Findings show a shift in social inequalities, from entry into lower secondary school to entry into "lycee" (upper secondary school leading to the baccalaureate). Policy implications are…

Volume II of the Biennial Survey of Education, 1916-1918 includes the following chapters: (1) Education in Great Britain and Ireland (I. L. Kandel); (2) Education in parts of the British Empire: Educational Developments in the Dominion of Canada (Walter A. Montgomery), Public School System of Jamaica (Charles A. Asbury), Recent Progress of…

The author delineates four distinct sectors of higher education which have developed in contemporary France, and discusses how this system has managed to absorb social demand and deflect challenges to its historically stratified and elitist nature. (SJL)

The traditional European university is now extinct. The conditions in higher education that have succeeded it are highly unstable and therefore transitory, and its eventual replacement is now dimly perceptible on the horizon. The European university is of course an abstraction, meant to approximate the attributes of higher education in Germany,…

The history of women's participation in French higher education, patterns of educational choices and qualifications, and effects on qualified women's entry into employment are examined. It is concluded that while women have better training for higher-level jobs, they also face greater competition with other women and some discrimination. (MSE)

In both France and England, students scored in the middle-to-high ranks on the International Assessment of Educational Progress, with large gaps between low and high achievers. Despite attempts to democratize education, educational achievement in both countries continues to be strongly linked to parents' social background, with limited access to…

The UK 2004 Higher Education Act generated important debates about the relationships between higher education (HE), economic growth and social progress. The range of positions expressed in relation to the increase of annual tuition fees raises crucial questions about the public and private funding of higher education and its individual and social…

The development and influence of new structures in European higher education are reviewed as they relate to the equality of educational opportunity. Part One discusses the evaluation of higher education from 1945 to 1975 in three chapters covering general developments in higher education in the post-war period, the quantitative expansion of higher…