School-linking processes. Describing and explaining their role in the social closure of French elite education.

Autor/inn/en	Buisson-Fenet, Hélène; Draelants, Hugues
Titel	School-linking processes. Describing and explaining their role in the social closure of French elite education.
Quelle	In: Higher education, 66 (2013) 1, S. 39-57Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0018-1560; 1573-174X
DOI	10.1007/s10734-012-9587-3
Schlagwörter	Schule; Hochschulsystem; Ausland; Frankreich
Abstract	In France, while schools are supposed to be sources of social mobility, as in any democratic society, it appears that children from privileged socio-economic categories are increasingly overrepresented in preparatory classes for the Grandes Écoles. The French studies trying to understand elite reproduction have mainly focused on family inheritance overlooking the fact that social privilege is also mediated through institutions, as highlighted by the scientific literature on selective admissions in the US. Following such line of inquiry, this article aims to show how patterns of "school-linking processes" allow for social closure in France's first-class higher education. It presents a comparative case study research which is both descriptive and explanatory in design. Results combine quantitative data to identify the secondary schools that feed the elite paths of three major high schools offering preparatory classes; and qualitative data in order to understand the strategies of these three major high schools to select their applicants. The findings suggest that access to French elite education is clearly shaped by school-linking phenomena but that the forms of these links depend on the preparatory classes' geographical location and catchment areas inducing different types of strategies from the selection committees. The conclusion highlights that these French specificities in terms of institutional linkages lead to different practical implications from those of US research. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).
Erfasst von	Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, Bonn
Update	2014/1