15. Des effets de la concurrence scolaire

The French school system does not deliver on its promise of equal opportunity. The increase in school enrollment and the average rise in qualification levels does not imply any actual equalities between sections, classes, and, increasingly, schools. Selection is no longer a simple story of insiders and outsiders; it is carried out internally by a more and more complex game of unwanted orientations and strategic choices. Students with the most effective assets to choose the best paths and the best schools, and thus to succeed, are certainly the winners under this system. Social reproduction increasingly involves a school market logic, leading to the social and ethnic segregation of schools. This segregation is largely responsible for the lack of trust in the school system, and even for the chronic crisis it is experiencing.