A new report exposes how uncontrolled, unassimilated immigration is destroying the French education system.
By Lauren SMITH
French schools are failing badly. A report from the Observatory of Immigration and Demography (OID), published this week, lays bare the extent of the education system's struggle with immigration. The report's author, teacher and writer Joachim Le Floch-Imad, delivers the verdict that "immigration is not the primary cause of our schools' problems, but it exacerbates all of their difficulties."
After all, France's demographics have changed at a rapid pace, placing unprecedented pressure on classrooms, teachers and the basic mission of the school system. In 2024, 31% of newborns had at least one parent born outside the EU. Births to two non-EU-born parents are up 74% since 2000. Today, 40% of children under four in France are either migrants or have a migrant background. And more than one in five fourth-grade (aged nine and 10) speaks a language other than French at home.
As the study points out, these students tend to be concentrated in schools in éducation prioritaire (REP or REP+), a programme that allocates greater resources for disadvantaged schools. Such schools are struggling as it is, and are understandably unable to cope with the sheer scale of linguistic and cultural diversity that has been forced upon them. Teachers report exhausting workloads and a growing share of pupils arriving with little or no French.
The consequences of this are visible. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) measures the academic level of 15-year-olds in OECD countries, with the average score expected to be 500 points. PISA shows France sliding steadily down the international rankings in numeracy and literacy. As it is, in 73% of the 92 countries assessed, "students from immigrant backgrounds score lower in mathematics than native-born students," with the average gap being 29 points. In France, however, the gap is even more dramatic. Students from immigrant backgrounds score 47 points lower, and first-generation immigrant pupils fall behind by a staggering 60 points-that's roughly equivalent to a year-and-a-half of school. Crucially, the OID notes that these gaps do not fully disappear even when you adjust for social background. Even among pupils from similar socioeconomic milieus, those from immigrant families continue to lag behind by around 17 points.
The 2023 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) results are even worse for France. French nine-to-10-year-olds had the worst mathematics results of any country in the European Union, sitting, in the wider OECD table, somewhere between Kazakhstan and Montenegro. The picture is no better for literacy. In the 2021 PIRLS study, French pupils came 16th out of 19 European countries. Annual national assessments confirm this trend, showing that fewer than half of ninth-grade pupils (aged between 14 and 15) pupils have an adequate grasp of French and mathematics.
According to Le Floch-Imad, quoted in Valeurs Actuelles, France suffers more because of the specific type of immigration it receives. "If, in France, immigration has a greater downward pressure on the average level than elsewhere in the OECD, it is primarily because our country receives a larger influx of immigrants from outside Europe, often with lower levels of education, fewer qualifications, and from more vulnerable socioeconomic backgrounds, particularly from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa."
This is all bad enough. But the situation is compounded by the systemic reluctance to talk about what the data show. Despite France's schools being in such a dire state, discussion of this is sorely missing from public discourse. In particular, the idea that a rapidly growing immigrant population might be partially to blame for academic underachievement is still treated as strictly taboo. As Le Floch-Imad notes, the impact of immigration on education remains a "blind spot" in public debate, even though more than three-quarters of French people now say they want stricter immigration policy. In the education world, the official rhetoric is still stuck in the mindset of viewing immigration as an 'opportunity' for France, celebrating the supposed cultural enrichment brought by migrant pupils while refusing to confront how mass, extra-European inflows have helped to deepen the school system's crisis. The report explicitly calls for reckoning with these facts, without stigmatising individual children.
This silence surely stems from a fear of being branded as 'racist', 'xenophobic,' or 'Islamophobic.' Teachers are, understandably, reluctant to draw attention to the fact that many new arrivals and even children whose families have been in the country for multiple generations are unwilling to integrate-thus feeding into a cycle that sees children continue to fail. To make matters worse, this omertà is easily exploited by Islamists, who have a concerning and growing influence over the French education system. As the OID report notes, schools have become a "strategic target" for radicals to "impose their political and cultural codes, cultivate resentment among young people, and subvert society." A state-commissioned report on the Muslim Brotherhood earlier this year confirms this fear, warning that the movement is pursuing a long-term strategy of "entryism" into French society. Islamists use associations, mosques and schools to spread political Islam and undermine secular values. Education was identified as one of the priority fields, with dozens of establishments and networks flagged as being in its orbit.
Research suggests that these attitudes are becoming deeply embedded in younger generations. Among high school pupils, 65% of Muslims reportedly place the laws of their religion above the laws of the French Republic, compared with 30% of Catholics. Muslim children are also increasingly willing to prioritise religious explanations for the world over scientific ones. One recent survey shows that 81% of Muslims aged between 18 and 24 believe that "when religion and science disagree on the question of the creation of the world," religion is "usually right."
All this makes French schools a breeding ground for ethnic divisions and conflicts. A poll from earlier this year found that, among all pupils, 16% would refuse to form certain relationships with Jewish students. That number rises to 52% for children whose parents were born outside of Europe. Even more shockingly, 71% of students who had witnessed antisemitic violence and whose parents were born outside of Europe believed the violence to be a positive act. That such views risk becoming normalised shows that France's problems go far beyond just academic underachievement. A lack of proper integration threatens to destabilise French society.
France cannot afford to keep looking the other way. The basic function of any state-run school system is to transmit the values, history, shared knowledge, and language of the nation. Current levels of uncontrolled, and mostly unassimilated, migration means that schools are failing to do the bare minimum. The OID's report is a warning that should be heeded both within France and across Europe. This problem will not go away on its own. As it stands, things are set to get a lot worse before they can get any better.
Original article: europeanconservative.com