School Inequalities and Peer Influence - Thesis

Widely covered by the media, the PISA "shock" (2012) crowned France champion of educational inequality.

A. Riegert's dissertation revisits sensitive topics such as segregation, inequality, and peer influence in a student's journey in France.

School segregation

Part of the dissertation details a state of the art of segregation, the Ly-Riegert Study, presented at the CNESCO's work on social mixing in schools (June 2015).

Let's recall the main points: a student from an affluent background will rub shoulders with almost twice as many peers from the same social background as a student from a more working-class background ("social" segregation).

Furthermore, a "good" student - a student with grades in the first quarter of the grade distribution - will have 50% more classmates with an equivalent academic level than another student, a difference that becomes even more pronounced in high school (through the choice of majors): "academic" segregation. Among the potential factors of segregation (especially school), the policy of constitution of the "class" group that strongly conditions the social environment that is built around the student.

Peers and the "cordées de la réussite"

The thesis raises two very interesting issues:

• The effect of "peers" - and of a familiar environment - in delicate moments of school transition, such as the passage from middle school to high school: on average, a middle school student finds eight peers in high school, including 1.7 in his or her own class.
  
  By studying a sample of 30,000 students with comparable situations (similar administrative records - average, social origins, choice of modern languages/options etc.), the researcher wanted to evaluate the impact of several factors such as the number of girls, class size, the rate of good students or the number of former classmates.
  
  The results show that a "fragile" (at-risk) student who does not find peers in his or her new class has a higher probability of repeating or not obtaining the baccalaureate.
  
  Hence the interest in thinking in terms of optimizing the composition of classes, taking into account the profiles of the students and favoring a scenario of "familiarity" with the school environment.
  
  

• A mixed impact of "cordées de la réussite"-type programs.
  
  The researcher conducted an impact evaluation of the Talens tutoring program, which was created in 2006 in order to promote access to the pathways of excellence for high school students from less advantaged environments.
  The initial impact analysis is surprising: despite the voluntary participation of the beneficiaries (and their motivation), the program does not seem to have any impact on the results of the baccalaureate or on the rate of access to the preparatory classes of the grandes écoles. One of the possible causes: the time devoted to the program, to the detriment of school work.
  
  Results that show the need for a debate on the effectiveness of this type of actions, which nevertheless aim at equal opportunities ... perhaps without taking enough into account the profiles of students, their rhythms, the adaptation of content etc.

Illustration: PhotoshopScaresMe.com via Foter.com

Reference

A.Riegert. School inequalities, segregation and peer effects. Education. EHESS, 2016. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01333797