> but has lowered the level of kids actually going to university (especially at engineering schools and elite institutions)
Come on, of course it hasn't. Entry requierements haven't changed.
The highschools providing the largest contingents of students to these elite institutions respect neither the national curriculum nor the ban of sorting students by ability without any consequences. Unsurprisingly the two most famous of these highschools are also exempt from the French purely geographical students draft and the places most politician children attend. As usual in France, the rule for all is not the rule for the elite.
In effect, the dumbing down of the national curriculum has just made a system which was already one of the most unequal in Europe even more unequal. But everything is fine. The French system only uses entrance exams and entrance exams are always fair, aren't they?
I remember being in my engineering school with prepa intégré and the teachers lamenting that we had not studied vector space in high school like students used to 15 years ago. I have a friend teaching at a math sup/math spé who complains about the lowering of the level. So yes, the level has been lowered and entry requirements have changed. I do know that in both prépa intégrés and math sup/math spé they try to compensate for the lower level out of high school by condensing all that should used to be done in high school within those two years. Of course those two most famous high school are an exception but those are such a small percentage of the total number of engineers.
All countries use entrance exams, it's not something that specific to France and of course there's an inherent unfairness to them, kids from better educated families are always going to get better results. In fact if we were talking about fairness then the disappearance of boarding schools (internats) have actually increased inequality. There was a time when a lot of kids spent the week in boarding schools, for kids from families with less focus on education (like my grandmother who kept telling my mum that she should stop reading because it'd cause her headaches), it removed them from non-optimal environment and put them in situation where they had better access to education. But I'm not sure that's desirable or optimal :)
Come on, of course it hasn't. Entry requierements haven't changed.
The highschools providing the largest contingents of students to these elite institutions respect neither the national curriculum nor the ban of sorting students by ability without any consequences. Unsurprisingly the two most famous of these highschools are also exempt from the French purely geographical students draft and the places most politician children attend. As usual in France, the rule for all is not the rule for the elite.
In effect, the dumbing down of the national curriculum has just made a system which was already one of the most unequal in Europe even more unequal. But everything is fine. The French system only uses entrance exams and entrance exams are always fair, aren't they?