There are other important signs of disenchantment with state schooling, too. An embryonic “free school” movement has sprung into life, and has established two schools of its own in suburbs of Paris and Marseille. Even homeschooling is taking off. It’s still a fringe phenomenon, but the number of families giving it a try has jumped by 70 per cent in 5 years, and now totals more than 5,000. The search for alternatives has become a parental priority because the French state school system has spiraled downward over the past 15 years, with rapidly deteriorating pupil performance and growing social inequality. One in four pupils now leaves school without completing their secondary education. French 15-year-olds are on average mediocre performers in the PISA tests in maths, science and reading comprehension, and the number of pupils who perform very poorly in these tests has been rising. British pupils easily outrank their French counterparts in science, and there are fewer very weak students in maths in the UK, although the average score is about the same. • A French lesson for Britain's independent schools More shocking to many here is that school in France is now more unequal socially than anywhere else in Western Europe, including the UK, and the United States. The French have long considered education to be a great social leveler; the word “égalité” is inscribed on school buildings up and down the country. Yet the reality is quite different: pupils from poor backgrounds are all but pre-destined to do badly, far worse than their peers from middle class or well-off families. In the latest PISA report in 2012, only a handful of national school systems around the world including Bulgaria’s and Peru’s were as inegalitarian as the French one. Anne Coffinier, for one, believes that radical change is needed “to pull our citizens out of the 19th century,” as she puts it. She is the pioneer behind the free school movement, and her surname may be familiar to UK audiences: her husband is the French consul general in Scotland who briefly made headlines during the election campaign when a memo he wrote quoting Nicola Sturgeon was leaked. To promote her cause, Anne Coffinier in 2007 founded a non-profit foundation that is pushing the independent school sector in France. At the foundation’s own schools, needless to say, school uniforms—unknown in the state system—are de rigueur. Demand for places at the school outside Paris is now double the number of places, even though the school has tripled in size in the past three years. “We don’t believe any change is possible in the state system,” Anne Coffinier told me, referring to the frequent failed reform efforts over the past decade. “If something is to happen, it will come about as a result of pressure from families and teachers.” The pressure on the system is now so strong that even the Education Ministry is trying innovate—and has looked to the UK for some inspiration. One of its solutions has been to set up a network of schools for weekly boarders that is aimed at the brightest pupils from run-down schools in the banlieues. The idea is to provide a school atmosphere for poor pupils that would enable them to learn in peace, without the disruptions and distractions of their sometimes-turbulent family life. In the best tradition of English boarding schools, they offer a multitude of sports and other extra-curricular activities. The first one opened in 2009, in a former army barracks. In the meantime, more than 4,000 students are enrolled in 45 of these boarding schools. “I wanted to do for the French proletariat what works for the English bourgeoisie,” says Jean-Michel Blanquer, a former top civil servant in the Education Ministry who came up with the idea, and who now heads the ESSEC business school. Eton and Harrow they are not. But you have to start somewhere. Peter Gumbel is a Paris-based author. His latest book on French education, Ces Ecoles Pas Commes Les Autres, was published in August. It is available in English with the title, French School Without Tears.
New fee - paying schools are set up around France , a country previously known to be fiercely proud of its highly regarded state education system , to meet a new and growing demand for an alternative to the rapidly declining state schools . Last year 51 new private schools were created , and the momentum is growing . French parents are searching for alternatives to state schools as the system has fallen downward over the past 15 years , with rapidly deteriorating pupil performance and growing social inequality , leading to 25 % of French students now leaving school without completing their secondary education .