Altering the way in which social inequality in schooling is handled in France and Germany: Schule macht stark (2019) and Les contrats locaux d’accompagnement (2020) as contrasting examples of layering
Thesis supervised by Agnès van Zanten, Analysis director CNRS/IEP de Paris and Lukas Graf, Professor of Vocational Schooling and Coaching, Swiss Federal College for Vocational Schooling and Coaching. Thesis led in joint supervision between IEP de Paris and the Hertie Faculty and supported by the French-German College.
Thesis protection June sixteenth, 2025, Hertie Faculty.
Jury : Nadine Bernhard, Professor, Technische Universität Berlin ; Lukas Graf (Supervisor), Professor, Swiss Federal College for Vocational Schooling and Coaching ; Michaela Kreyenfeld, Professor, Hertie Faculty ; Rita Nikolai, Professor, Universität Augsburg ; Xavier Pons (Rapporteur), Professeur des universités, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 ; Agnès van Zanten (Supervisor), Directrice de recherche, CNRS‑CRIS.
France and Germany are among the many OECD nations the place social origin most strongly impacts instructional achievement. Whereas the structural causes of this phenomenon have been broadly studied, the institutionalization of its coverage therapy and the room for manoeuvre out there to policymakers to carry change in these two contrasting schooling methods stay underexplored. This dissertation addresses this hole by means of a comparative evaluation of two current insurance policies concentrating on colleges in deprived areas: Schule macht stark in Germany and the Contrats locaux d’accompagnement in France. Drawing on process-tracing, the evaluation of paperwork and 50 interviews, and grounded in neo-institutionalist idea, this analysis reveals that these insurance policies exemplify layering: robust veto gamers constrained policymakers to implement change by means of the addition of experimental initiatives moderately than by means of reform of current insurance policies. These shifts affected coverage orientations—towards larger effectivity in France and larger fairness in Germany—coverage devices—by way of the strengthening of New Public Administration—and governance ranges—with the involvement of the federal tier in Germany. In France, modifications had been speedy however short-lived, marked by the political instrumentalization of experimentation. In Germany, they had been slower however extra enduring, supported by tutorial experience. In each instances, broader initiatives—Conseil nationwide de la refondation and the Startchancen-Programm—have continued these trajectories, illustrating
the relevance of the layering strategy.
