Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-11
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Yves Reuter, Emeritus Professor of Didactics, University of Lille
In France, more than in other countries, school failure is socially marked. Students affected by poverty in sixth grade have less favorable conditions for entering adult life than other students. How can we transform the school so that it truly becomes a space of equal opportunity?
How can we explain the fate reserved for the most disadvantaged in the French school system and, in particular, the early orientations outside the “ordinary” paths that concern them more often? Could it be, according to a certain number of social representations, a sort of inevitability?
Our research questions some of the most traditional pedagogical practices in school. We show how the explanations, both extracurricular and scholastic, most often advanced are not sufficient to understand this situation if one does not take into account dimensions such as the opacity of school practices, injustices, the marginalization of certain students, or the chain of micro-decisions that lead to imposed orientations.
However, the approaches of certain educational teams, particularly the change in teachers’ attitudes, show that it is possible to combat these harmful mechanisms.
What poverty situations in France?
According to the Insee note of July 7, 2025,The essentials on… poverty, poverty has been continuously increasing in France since the mid-2000s and affected nearly ten million people in 2023.
This poverty massively affects children and young people. According to Insee data from 2024,2,759,000 under 18 years old(that is more than 20% of them) were in a situation of monetary poverty or material deprivation. Furthermore,according to the UNICEF barometer, the number of homeless children is increasing.
This situation is all the more concerning in France because, more than in other countries, school failure is socially marked. It affects the poorest students: poor results, dropping out, imposed tracking, moreover in the least legitimate pathways. Thus, according to the 2023 edition ofReport on inequalities in France“From the youngest age, students’ results are partly linked to their parents’ social background. The gaps widen over the course of schooling.”
An analysis note from the High Commission for Strategy and Planningpublished in 2026 synthesized the results of the follow-up of a cohort of students over 16 years, from their entry into middle school until the age of 26-27. It turns out that the more intense the exposure to poverty in sixth grade, the more unfavorable the living conditions are when entering adulthood: early exit from the school system, increased probability of being neither employed, nor in studies, nor in training, and when employed, receiving a low salary (among the lowest 20% of the cohort).
Can we still talk about inclusive schooling while turning a blind eye to the fate reserved for the poorest?
How to understand this failure that affects the poorest?
What are the mechanisms that could explain this situation? There are well-known extra-school factors such as living conditions, the ghettoization of housing, and the deterioration of public services. There are also factors that affect the school institution as a whole: insufficient resources devoted to education, the lack of recognition given to teachers, the inadequacy of their initial and ongoing training, overcrowded classes compared to other countries, continuous reforms and injunctions.
Beyond these general factors, our research has allowed us to specifythree major mechanisms that generate the failure of the poorest, namely the opacity of the school universe and practices (for example, the multiplicity of acronyms, disciplinary organizations, annotations…), certain rules of imposition (imposition of silence, competition between students, evaluation methods…), and finally, injustices and stigmatizations (regarding the spoken language, regarding the so-called “lack of culture,” to which must be added the defeatist prophecies – “This is not for you,” “You won’t make it”).
The British philosopherMiranda Frickertalks about epistemic injustice towards the dominated. This concept refers to the mechanisms that disqualify certain people in terms of knowledge, for example the discrediting of testimonies (not being believed because one is poor), the denial of contributions (not being considered as genuine producers of knowledge), or even the impossibility of transmission (not having the possibility to pass on one’s knowledge to the younger members of one’s family, because one is prevented from doing so).
To this, one must also add the way in which the school tends to abandon certain students, and more particularly, the most disadvantaged: refusal to give them a voice, lack of stimulation, lowering of expectations, stigmatization of absences when they are due to parents’ administrative support or the necessity to care for younger siblings. For example, on the last day of kindergarten, J. turns to his teacher and says “goodbye, Madam,” and she is surprised, saying “it’s the first time I’ve heard his voice!”
We have also increasingly focused on studying the upstream of the imposed guidelines, especially within the framework of theCipes research(Choose Inclusion To Avoid Segregation), conducted within ATD Fourth World. It is about seeing how theguidance decisionswhich largely determine the academic and social future of students do not happen suddenly but are the result of micro-decisions that occur from the very beginning of schooling: temporary suspensions without make-up for planned work, systematic placement at the back of the class.
Some possible avenues
In the context of the research we are discussing, fatalism no more than determinism is appropriate since failure or success are built through pedagogical interactions and that someinteresting results are obtained by teams of teachers implementing so-called different pedagogical practices.
These practices share the combination of securing and demanding, as well as kindness and stimulation, and are constantly in search of what can be meaningful for the students.
Approaches such as cooperation or projects that alleviate stress related to competition and promote student engagement are proven levers. The same applies to formative assessment arrangements that do not harm self-esteem and can lead to self-assessment.
We will emphasize here the change in the teachers’ stance. This involves, among other things, basing their actions on the principle of educability (all students can learn and progress), abandoning the sole roles of content transmitter and guardian of school order to become facilitators, supporters, and guarantors of learning.
This also involves, and this is essential, putting oneself in a position to listen and learn from both the students and their families. For example, this can help to better understand certain student behaviors: fatigue stemming from a life of shortages, worries, and hardships; self-effacement to avoid attracting attention; constant tension to resist various forms of domination; mistrust of institutions; fear of sharing problems because confidences might be used against oneself; strategies to circumvent unfavorable power dynamics; revolt and confrontations because social anger is constantly present.
It is also important to emphasize a conception of learning as acculturation insofar as school cultures are specific and often break away from the cultures of the learners, especially the poorest.
Through these levers, it is therefore a question of building on approaches that positively take into account what students and their families do and know, and that do not turn extracurricular differences into educational inequalities.
The authors do not work for, advise, hold shares in, receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and have declared no other affiliations beyond their research institution.
–ref. School facing poverty: how social inequalities turn into educational inequalities –https://theconversation.com/school-facing-poverty-how-social-inequalities-turn-into-educational-inequalities-279474