Chartbook 480 France’s schools system may be bad, but we should all be protesting the decline in education!

France's education system has long been a subject of debate, with recent student protests raising questions about its state. To assess the system's performance, one can compare it to that of other countries, particularly the United States and other OECD nations. The data from the OECD's PISA survey in 2025 provides a clear picture of France's shortcomings.

French students rank below the OECD average in basic reading skills, placing them in the bottom 7th out of 24 countries when considering the performance of the bottom 10 percent. Additionally, even the top ten percent of French students underperform relative to expectations given the reputation of France's elite lycées. This indicates a system that consistently delivers poor results across the board, impacting both the weakest students and the supposedly top-performing ones.

In contrast, the US education system performs better in all three metrics. French students' median scores are higher, the bottom performers in France are less disadvantaged compared to their US counterparts, and the top ten percent in the US outperform their French peers significantly. However, the US is not without its issues, and French students' school environment may not be as welcoming as in the US.

So, why the sudden surge in discontent among French students? While France's academic performance is indeed poor, this alone does not fully explain the current unrest. The data suggests that France's education system has not experienced a sudden deterioration. In fact, inequality in academic outcomes between the top and bottom ten percent of students in France has not widened dramatically over the past decade, unlike the situation in the US.

This implies that France's education system has been marred by neglect and exclusion for a long time, and the current protests may be a culmination of these long-standing issues coming to a breaking point.