Les politiques d'éducation prioritaire en Europe

This volume presents the first results from the EuroPEP study in which a comparative analysis was carried out of priority education policies (PEP) in eight European countries: England, Belgium, France, Greece, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, and Sweden. It emphasises the developments which have affected education policies from when they were first formulated as "compensation policies" in the late 1960s. It studies their content and the ways in which they have been implemented and addresses the related debates and knowledge.
Compensation policies were created during a period of optimism where the possibility of a more egalitarian society was concerned and during the extension of political reforms designed to ensure the transition from elitist schools to integrated schools for the masses, where equal opportunities can be guaranteed. Therefore, they are usually localised policies: additional help has to be provided and resources mobilised to combat educational inequality in urban areas where economic and social problems tend to be concentrated. Some of these policies survive to this day; however, they have undergone significant transformations in the name of the struggle against exclusion, whilst new measures based on a whole different philosophy have gradually emerged elsewhere.
The volume describes and examines these developments which involve identifying their beneficiaries, organisation, curricula, teaching activities and aims. Greater use of special measures, the care of “at risk groups”, personalised learning, adjustments to the curriculum to cater for “special needs”, these are just some of the elements which are shaping a new age for “Priority Education Policies” whose bearing on the issues of democratising access to knowledge remains very uncertain.