“Every child has the right to an education that (…) contributes to his education. School education promotes the development of the child, enables him to acquire a culture, prepares him for (…) his responsibilities (…) citizen (…) in the contemporary information and communication society.according to article L. 111-2 of the education code.
Being born in a disadvantaged environment almost systematically implies a programmed exit from the general path of education. A young person has a 93% chance of being directed to a vocational school. This rate rises to 169% for the CAP (” Choice of orientation and social origin: measuring and understanding school self-censorship », Nina Guyon and Elise Huillery, Sciences Po-Liepp, 2014). Determinism is a reality, and the facts are, alas, stubborn.
These are the real issues that will have to mobilize educational actors during this new school year, while the vocational education file will be the subject of a reform announced with great fanfare since the presidential campaign.
Fatalism and resignation
Alerts continue to multiply to warn about the social challenge represented by “pro” high schools, which today concentrate more than a third of secondary school students. The former president of the National Center for the Study of School Systems (Cnesco), Nathalie Mons, describes “ghetto vocational high schools, socially, ethnically and gender segregated”regretting that it is modestly said everywhere in educational circles that this path has only one “social function” (“Summary file. Real solutions for vocational education », Nathalie Mons, Cnesco, June 2016).
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) notes that “in their current form, the vocational streams (…) are not very promising for those who follow them ». It is even, for a large number of them, a social and human drama that is being played out there (“ Towards a more inclusive education system in France ? », OECD, July 2015).
The “pro” baccalaureate is the subject on which everyone is prejudiced, but which, paradoxically, has never benefited from an in-depth reform. With, it seems, a touch of fatalism and resignation. Because the semantics that has surrounded it for years is none other than that of work, of employability.
So many words that ring hollow when one bears in mind the daily realities of these establishments in which 72% of students are children of employees, workers, inactive or unemployed, where 60% of them accumulate at least one year of school delay (A committed history of vocational education from 1984 to the present day, by Daniel Bloch, PUG editions) and where 86.96% of secondary school students with disabilities are guided. The desire to respond to an economic situation should in no way deprive us of a lucid look at the paths and origins of those who populate our vocational high schools.
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