At the start of sixth grade in 2022, 41% of children of executives ranked among the top 20% of students in French. Only 10% of children of manual workers reached this level [3]. School did not produce this gap: it received it, and to a large extent, it preserves it. What France has not yet decided is whether the 8 billion euros paid each year to contracted private education should remain without conditions of diversity, or become the lever for a different school architecture.

France, European Champion of School Inequality Linked to Background

France is one of Europe’s most unequal countries in terms of skill acquisition. It is, along with Germany, the country where student performance in mathematics most depends on socioeconomic background.

The results of PISA 2022 are unambiguous. In France, the gap in mathematics scores between advantaged and disadvantaged students reaches 113 points, or 20 points above the OECD average of 93 points [10]. Only Slovakia and Israel perform worse. Social background predicts 21% of the variation in performance in France, compared to 15% on average across the OECD [10].

A manual worker’s child who spends twelve years in the French education system accumulates the equivalent of two years of lost learning compared to their classmate from an affluent background. School amplifies the gap instead of narrowing it.

The Directorate for Evaluation, Foresight and Performance (DEPP) notes that in 2022, the gap between the most advantaged and most disadvantaged moved from 121 to 113 points [2]. This narrowing is due to a decline in the performance of the best students, not progress among the weakest.

The diploma gap confirms the trend. In France in 2024, 80% of children whose parents hold higher education degrees also obtain them, compared to 25% for children of parents without such degrees [3]. This 55-point gap is observed in very few other comparable countries.

Inequality Forms in Primary School, Not at the Baccalauréat

In France, the sorting of students by social background occurs in primary school, not at the entrance to secondary school or after the bac. Gaps in mathematics competency widen from first grade onward and continue to grow throughout the school career [2].

By the end of middle school, students from disadvantaged backgrounds more frequently orient toward vocational education. They do so not only because their skills are on average weaker, but also because they less often aspire to extended studies, at equivalent achievement levels [3]. In 2024, among 25- to 34-year-olds, 15% of manual workers’ children have no diploma or only a middle-school certificate, compared to 2% of executives’ children [3].

This chain has been documented for twenty-five years. Philippe Aghion, 2025 Nobel laureate, formulates the conclusion without ambiguity: reducing overall inequality requires reopening the social elevator, and the entry point of this elevator is primary school [12].

Yet primary school is precisely where France underinvests. In 2024, spending per primary student is 17% below the OECD average. In secondary school, it exceeds the average by 15% [1]. The country spends more where inequalities are already entrenched, and less where they form.

Demographic Decline, Quiet Accelerator of Segregation

A mechanism aggravates the situation in large cities.

Contracted private education is heavily present there. When birth rates fall, private establishments maintain their enrollment by attracting more students from affluent families. Public schools, meanwhile, absorb classroom closures. In Paris, nearly all of the decline in student numbers was absorbed by public schools. The private sector maintained its classes, and its share grew by more than 4 points in first grade since 2016 [8].

Between 2020 and 2024, the share of sixth graders from highly advantaged backgrounds enrolled in a contracted private middle school in Paris rose from 49% to 55% [8]. Under the projection assumptions retained by the Institute for Public Policy, this proportion would reach 72% in 2035. In the nineteen largest French cities, the share of contracted private education in first grade is expected to rise from 19.8% in 2024 to 22.3% in 2030 [8].

Segregation between public and private sectors has worsened over thirty years. In 1989, the share of highly advantaged students in private education exceeded that of public schools by ten points. In 2020, the gap reached 23 points [8].

In 2023, contracted private education received nearly 8 billion euros from the state and local authorities, or about 14% of the National Education budget [5]. In return, no measurable obligation of social diversity is required. The parliamentary Vannier-Weissberg report from April 2024 formulates 55 proposals to correct this gap and documents that the counterparts required of private establishments fall far short of the funding they receive [9].

Conditioning the 8 Billion to Real Service Delivered

The architecture of school financing is the lever France has not yet activated.

In 2023, contracted private education is funded nearly 75% by the state and local authorities [9]. It does not respect the school map. It does not share measurable diversity objectives. Its social segregation increases each year. The 8 billion are paid with no conditions regarding the social composition of establishments.

The possible reform can be summed up in one sentence: subordinate public funding of each contracted private establishment to its actual social composition, measured by its students’ social position index, and adjust it based on the gap with public establishments in the same sector. A counterpart, not a sanction. After such a reform, the school’s financial architecture would function in both directions: fund private education, yes, but in proportion to its contribution to the common mission.

The March 2026 note from the Institute for Public Policy, signed by Pauline Charousset and Julien Grenet, demonstrated the demographic urgency: without a shift in direction, segregation will mechanically amplify itself in the coming decade [8].

This choice carries real political cost. Catholic establishments, families practicing school avoidance, local elected officials for whom private education is a territorial resource: all will resist. But the alternative has a documented social cost. In 2035, in several large French cities, public money will predominantly finance a two-tier school system, one tier effectively reserved for affluent families.

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson showed, in Power and Progress (2023), that the gains of progress go to those holding institutional levers [13]. French schools have illustrated this mechanism for thirty years. The choice of 2027 is to decide whether these levers can change hands.

Sources

[1] OECD, “Education at a Glance 2024,” OECD Publishing, September 2024, https://www.oecd.org/publications/education-at-a-glance-2024_1aabb39d-en.html (accessed 26/09/2026).

[2] DEPP, Fabrice Murat, “Evolution of Social Inequalities in Skills Over Time and Schooling,” Information Note no. 24.21, June 2024, https://doi.org/10.48464/ni-24-21 (accessed 26/09/2026).

[3] INSEE / DEPP, “Social Inequalities in School Education,” France, Social Portrait, 2025 edition, November 2025, https://www.insee.fr/en/statistics/8612522?sommaire=8612596 (accessed 26/09/2026).

[4] OECD, PISA 2022: Results France, OECD Publishing, December 2023, https://www.ih2ef.gouv.fr/pisa-2022-les-resultats-des-eleves-francais (accessed 26/09/2026).

[5] DEPP, Education Account 2024, Ministry of National Education, September 2025, https://www.education.gouv.fr/depp/en-2024-1971-milliards-d-euros-consacres-l-education-soit-68-du-pib-452853 (accessed 26/09/2026).

[6] Paul Vannier and Christopher Weissberg, Report on Public Funding of Contracted Private Education, National Assembly, April 2024, https://www.ih2ef.gouv.fr/financement-public-de-lenseignement-prive-sous-contrat (accessed 26/09/2026).

[7] Pauline Charousset and Julien Grenet, “Demographic Decline and Public-Private Dynamics: Toward Greater School Segregation in Large Cities?,” IPP Notes no. 124, Institute for Public Policy, March 2026, https://ipp.eu/publication/baisse-demographique-et-dynamiques-public-prive-vers-une-segregation-scolaire-accrue-dans-les-grandes-villes/ (accessed 26/09/2026).

[8] Philippe Aghion, “Mobility to Combat Inequality,” interview, CNRS The Journal / Collège de France, 2023, https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/cest-par-linnovation-que-nous-sortirons-de-cette-crise (accessed 26/09/2026).

[9] Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, Public Affairs, 2023.