This article focuses on analysing the effect of educational differentiation policies of OECD educational systems on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, based on data from PISA 2009. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a definition of two subgroups of disadvantaged students: those that achieve high scores, and those obtaining scores…

Begins by reviewing widely-perceived ills of France's lower secondary schools and noting the political nature of any decision to change. Outlines the official 1982 four-point program of reform designed to move toward genuine democratization of the schools. Notes obstacles to change, but provides guidelines for a number of practices deemed helpful…

In France, technology is a compulsory school discipline at the junior high school level (ages 11-15). Technology studies were initiated at the beginning of the 1960s when school attendance until the age of 16 became mandatory and when it was decided to delay vocational training because of the irreversible drive towards technical modernity, a…