About the DEPP

The Directorate of Evaluation, Forecasting and Performance Monitoring (DEPP) is both:

• a directorate of the Ministry in charge of national education and, as such, it participates fully in the Ministry's work and discussions
• the ministerial statistical service in charge of education statistics and, as such, it is part of the French and European public statistics. Its activities are monitored by the Public Statistics Authority. The Depp complies with the principles of the European Statistics Code of Practice (independence, integrity, accountability, relevance).

This dual position ensures relevance, objectivity and responsiveness of the statistics and studies produced by the DEPP.

Finally, the DEPP is the national authority for the production of European statistics in the field of education. The DEPP is recognized by Eurostat as an "ONA" (Other National Authority): as such, it is responsible, alongside the National Institute of Statistics, for "the development, production and dissemination of European statistics".

Click here for more information about DEPP's missions.

Education in Europe

International comparisons play an increasingly important role in public debate and policy support in the field of education. It is therefore necessary to master their quality and relevance in order to use them wisely and to draw valid interpretations from them. The DEPP has long chosen to be involved, through its technical and statistical expertise, in the construction and production of international data, but also in their appropriation by public actors and the educational community as a whole. It includes international comparative data in its publications and publishes studies such as Education in Europe: Key Figures, which provides a set of indicators on most common dimensions of the education systems in the European Union.

DEPP contributes to the development of international education indicators. To this end, it collaborates actively within the networks of the OECD, the European Commission (and Eurostat in particular), UNESCO and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). In France, it pilots the international surveys on student skills, PISA with the OECD, TIMSS, PIRLS or ICILS with the IEA, and the TALIS survey on teachers with the OECD.

European targets in education

Thematic studies on education in Europe

• The Europe of education - A territory with multiple and evolving profiles, Review Education & formations, n°102, June 2021, DEPP.
• "Sustainable Development Goal on education: where do girls and boys stand?", Note d’information n° 21.13, March 2021, DEPP.
• "Teachers careers in europe", Note d'information n°19.19, June 2019, DEPP.

Eurydice: European network on education systems

DEPP also contributes to putting European statistics into perspective, to the exchange of information between the countries of the "Erasmus +" programme and to the comparison of their education systems. In this context, it plays an active part in the Eurydice network and coordinates the work of experts who participate in the network's international reports on behalf of France.

Click here for more information about Eurydice's studies

The 2020 health crisis and its impact on education

In order to shed light on the consequences of the 2020 health crisis, the DEPP's priority was to establish objective findings, but also to evaluate the impacts and account for inequalities. To do this, the DEPP has put in place different approaches. In May 2020, it conducted seven specific surveys among the families of pupils of the various actors in the education system: teachers, school heads, chief education advisors and inspectors. In addition, it has added a crisis-specific section to the existing statistical systems (pupil panels, exhaustive national assessment, etc.). The first results from these various sources were published in 2020 and 2021 (more will come later).

Click here for more information about the evaluation of the consequences of the health crisis conducted by the DEPP.

Education system in France

General Overview

 

Students and apprentices

Each year, the DEPP takes a census of all students and apprentices, and forecasts the expected developments over the next five years. It describes the training they receive and their examination results. It also conducts a large number of surveys among students and their parents, to find out about their backgrounds and relate these to their living conditions. This enables it to analyse pathways, factors of school success, social inequalities and territorial disparities. The DEPP designs and implements standardised assessments of pupils, whether exhaustive or based on a sample, national or international. Thanks to these sources, the DEPP can have multiple "views" on the achievements of pupils just as it can report on the performance of the French education system over time and in comparison with other countries

Teachers' working conditions

Teachers' well-being at work can be assessed based on numerous survey data collected by the DEPP. These data refer to their feelings about the impact of their job on their health, the quality of social relations in the exercise of their profession (including the school climate and the classroom climate), their job satisfaction, their sense of personal effectiveness or the stress and exhaustion associated with the performance of their duties.

School climate

The school climate’s analysis sheds light on the quality of relations and teaching, as well as on the environment and the feeling of safety and belonging. In the Spring of 2021, a statistical survey of school climate and victimisation was conducted for the first time in primary education among pupils in grades 4 and 5, as well as among staff in national education schools. Since 2011, the DEPP has regularly conducted this type of surveys among secondary school students. In Spring 2019, a survey was conducted for the first time among secondary school staff. All these surveys have a dual objective: to assess the school climate and to measure any harm suffered, whether or not these acts have been reported inside the schools or to the academic, police, judicial or administrative authorities. In addition, the staff surveys have addressed issues of working conditions in schools since the beginning of the school year.

Performance indicators of upper secondary schools (IVAL)

In France, the valued-added indicators for lycées (IVAL) measure the ability of  secondary  schools  to  support  their  pupils  until  they  obtain  the  baccalaureate  (A-level). Since 1993, the DEPP disseminate results in this area to the general public. In addition to the examination pass rate alone, the ‘added values’ associated with the raw indicators facilitate comparisons between heterogeneous schools, by taking account of educational and socio-economic disparities between schools. Since the creation of the IVALs, in principle unchanged, the methodology has evolved, adapting to institutional challenges and available data. Although sophisticated, it has been chosen in such a way as to be understandable to the general public.The release of the indicators is a media event that also contributes to their informed dissemination. The media, which used to produce rankings based solely on the gross success rate, are now moving more towards plural approaches. As a result of this pedagogy, the philosophy of the IVALs is becoming better and better understood, both within the Ministry and externally. Although institutional skateholders are already using them for the education steering purposes, this should be even more the case in the future, with a view to the overall evaluation of secondary schools.

Professional integration (InserJeunes)

The InserJeunes information system calculates and disseminates each year and at the level of each school (when the number of students is sufficient), the following indicators: the rate of continuation of studies; the rate of interruption during training; the rate of employment of school leavers from the school concerned, following the training provided; the added value of the school given this employment rate. The InserJeunes information system also disseminates, for apprenticeship training centres, the proportion of apprenticeship contracts interrupted before their end.

InserJeunes makes it possible to come close to exhaustiveness and to construct integration indicators at very fine levels. These indicators are available for young people, 6 months after the end of their studies. The employment rate indicator is also calculated at 12, 18 and 24 months.

Territorial inequalities and segregation

Knowledge of territories is essential for understanding educational policies and their results, and for steering these policies in the different national territories. The DEPP produces a wide variety of indicators and analyses on the education system, which are broken down by territory in order to confront the multiple dimensions at stake in educational success. The publication 'Géographie de l'École' provides indicators offering a mapped view of our education system, with its specificities and characteristics according to territories. The DEPP regularly invests in new methods and approaches to shed light on educational policies and provide steering tools that take territorial disparities into account. In recent years, this methodological investment has resulted new tools for characterising territories, such as the typology of urban and rural municipalities.

 

Investment in education

The DEPP pays particular attention to the importance of investment in education and approaches it from a broad perspective.  Its Education Account, which exists since the late 1970’s, makes it possible to bring precise and accurate answers to the questions of what the cost of education is, which economic agents provide the funding or what the average expenditure per pupil or student for a given level or pathway is. The Depp also studies particular factors of expenditure and their evolution over time, for example, the number of pupils per teacher. Finally, it sheds light on the effectiveness of investments in large-scale interventions and policies, for example those related to the use of certain digital equipment or to the class-size reduction.