Report presented to French Education Ministry

In October 2018, the Educational Disadvantage Centre, Institute of Education, hosted and organised a visit from a group of French secondary school principals from Zone d’Éducation Prioritaire schools in areas of high poverty in Paris.

Their visit was to investigate aspects of a positive school climate in Irish DEIS schools and its role in early school leaving prevention. This followed on from Dr. Paul Downes’ keynote presentation, Early school leaving: taking a holistic, differentiated and systemic international perspective on the issue, at the International Comparisons Conference on Early school leaving, jointly organized by the French National Council for Evaluation of the School System (CNESCO) and the International Centre for Pedagogical Studies (CIEP) Sorbonne Universities, Paris, 9-10 November 2017. In this presentation, Dr. Downes highlighted how school climate issues of a sense of belongingness were 50 percentage points below the OECD average for France in PISA, with regard to socio-economically marginalised students.

The French principals’ report to the French Education Ministry on school climate learning from Irish contexts based on their visit can be accessed here »