Education Reforms in France

Abstract

The objective of this article is to determine the incidences of immigration and globalization on the French educational values and reforms. To explore these two dimensions, it is necessary to give a historical perspective through the reforms since 1958 to the present and to specify the French educational values through a content analysis of the Extracurricular Educational Activities Act (1984), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and the two secularism charters (1883 and 2013). The study finds that the education reforms reveal a continuous back-and-forth movement between principles of openness and closeness to new audiences with immigrants and to liberal school policy with PISA and PIRLS results in the context of globalization. The article concludes with major implications: France, with the diversity of religions, reaffirmed the secularism principle in 2013 and got an attitude of closeness. France, with its long history of public service, also has an attitude of openness with liberal reforms issued from international evaluations.