Since the start of the school year last September, Sciences Po Paris has chosen to extend its “priority education” agreement system, hitherto primarily deployed in the direction of the suburbs, to students living in rural areas. This system should allow young students from thirty high schools located far from urban centers to participate in preparation workshops for the IEP. A way for the establishment to try to remedy the difficult access of young people from rural areas to the Grandes Ecoles. But a very long way remains to be covered, because geographical inequalities, already significant in the past, seem to deepen over time. Several associations, such as the Fédération des Territoires aux Grandes Ecoles or Chemins d’Avenirs, are trying to fight against self-censorship and the lack of information that affect these young rural people. The issue is significant, as it concerns millions of young people: more than 3 million under 20s grow up in towns with less than 2,000 inhabitants, and nearly 7 million of them live in towns from 2,000 to 25,000 inhabitants.
The social composition of the Grandes Ecoles has changed little – if at all – since the beginning of the century. “If we compare our figures from the mid-2000s until 2016, we see that the situation has not changed”, observes Julien Grenet, deputy director of the Institute of Public Policy (IPP) and author ofa report on the subject published in 2021. At a similar academic level, a Parisian high school student has many more opportunities to enter a large school than a student from a small town or a rural area. In business schools, for example, students from the Paris region represent 34% of the workforce, when they are 32% in ENS. “This proportion increases when we focus on the 10% of the most selective Grandes Ecoles, notes Julien Grenet. In 2016, half of the students came from only 8% of general and technological high school students, the majority of whom are located in Île-de-France -France, even in intramural Paris”. In total, Parisian students have a “probability almost three times higher of accessing a large school than non-Parisian students”, according to the IPP report.
A geographic… and financial barrier
Several factors explain this distribution. The first is, of course, a geographic barrier: most preparatory classes and Grandes Ecoles are located in Île-de-France. “We must therefore agree to” go up to Paris “to carry out these studies, from the age of 18”, continues Julien Grenet. A psychological barrier, but also obviously a financial one, for students who cannot do without taking accommodation in Paris. Without even taking into account the price of the schools themselves, the cost of living in Paris obviously remains more expensive than elsewhere in France. According to a ranking published in August by the Unef union, the monthly remainder payable by a Parisian student is 1,332 euros, compared to 1,089 euros in Lyon, or 884 euros in Perpignan – one of the least expensive cities in France.
A deep factor of inequalities which the Federation of Territories to the Grandes Ecoles tries to remedy. Created in 2013, today bringing together 52 associations spread across France, the organization has notably distributed until today 594,000 euros in scholarships to future students of Grandes Ecoles. “We give 6,000 euros per high school student. This allocation is allocated according to a social criterion, but also according to academic excellence, the coherence of their project and the ambition of their professional career”, explains Battiste Murgia, member of the office of the ‘association. These scholarships on merit, delivered through a foundation, operate thanks to donations from individuals and companies, such as Crédit Agricole or BNP Paribas.
“A lack of information on their course”
But this financial system is far from responding to all the obstacles encountered by high school students from rural areas. Very often, these students do not even have the opportunity to think about the effect of migrating to the capital on their wallets – because they do not think of going there for their higher education. According to a report by the Orientation and Equal Opportunities Mission in France in rural areas and small towns, published in 2020, 42% of young people aged 17 to 23 from rural areas say they did not have enough information to learn. orientation, ie 10 points more than in the Paris conurbation. “Rural young people are confronted, whatever their orientation, with a chain of obstacles, which begins in particular with a lack of information on their course”, comments Salomé Berlioux, author of the report and Managing Director of the association Chemins d’Avenirs.
Like the Fédération des Territoires des Grandes Ecoles, the organization aims to better guide young people from rural areas in their higher education. Through interventions in high schools or mentoring, the two organizations intend to disseminate better information and fight self-censorship. “I did a degree in history at the Institut Universitaire Jean-François Champollion, in the Tarn, and I wanted to work in Brussels, on European policies, recalls Battiste Murgia, who himself benefited from the support from the Territories of the Grandes Ecoles. They explained to me that Sciences Po was a good way to get there, and a student from the school helped me to build my file, to prepare me for the orals”.
Territorial “quotas”?
But this lack of information does not only come from students and their families. “The preparatory classes – which are the antechamber of the grandes écoles that do not recruit directly post-baccalaureate – often hesitate to take an excellent student from a high school they do not know, because this constitutes a risk factor, explains Julien Grenet. Sometimes they even refuse to take a high school student from the same establishment as one of their former students, who has failed in the past. To remedy this situation, the economist outlines several solutions. “We could use the data present in Parcoursup, the platform which makes it possible to collect the orientation wishes of future baccalaureate holders, to determine which students have high potential, he begins. This would make it possible to direct them towards the corresponding sectors. , or encourage schools and preparatory classes to send them the necessary information”. The economist also hypothesizes possible “quotas” of pupils from the territories in the Parisian preparatory classes. This possibility has already been mentioned for a long time for scholarship holders: last February, the Conférence des grandes écoles, an association which brings together twelve French establishments, for example approved the mechanism of “scholarship quotas” installed on Parcoursup since 2019. “But that does not will not solve our main problems: access to information and the great centralization of our education system in higher education”, he points out.
The development of elite preparatory classes in large regional cities, like those that already exist at the Pierre Fermat high school in Toulouse, or at the Parc school in Lyon, is a solution. “But that involves resources and years of development”, points out Julien Grenet. Sufficient, perhaps, to better distribute the information needed to guide students?