“A Savoyard college refuses the name of Robert-Badinter… because it would evoke the Intermarché”: this is the unexpected title of an article published by Le Parisien in June 2024, about one of the rare secondary schools not to bear any name. Depriving of such a tribute to someone who worked for the abolition of the death penalty because of the last five letters of his surname says a lot about the sometimes absurd reflections which lead to the choice of the name of an educational establishment.
For the moment, the college of Saint-Étienne-de-Cuines (Savoie), located in the Maurienne valley, is still deprived of a baptismal name, which is rare. In France, according to a study carried out by the School Evaluation Council (CEE) and published in February 2024, only twelve middle schools (out of 5,332) and three high schools (out of 2,445) have not been baptized. On the other hand, this is the case for 27% of schools (11,546 out of 43,359 in 2023). For the most part, when it is necessary to differentiate them from their neighbors, we simply add the name of the locality where they are located.
For 77% of middle schools and 80% of high schools (but only 43% of schools), the name assigned refers to one or more famous people, from Françoise Dolto to Jules Ferry via Coluche and Samuel Paty. It is this type of name that Marion Le Cam (responsible for studies and evaluation at the CEE) and Mustapha Touahir (general secretary of the CEE) are interested in, who signed the survey by the School Evaluation Council, entitled “What are the names of educational establishments?” (PDF). In fact, those which bear the names of trees or geographical areas are excluded from this study.
Men close to the monopoly
Their extensive census shows that Jules Ferry, Jacques Prévert and Jean Jaurès, the three names most given to elementary schools, are less popular in middle school (where they are placed in third, sixth and seventh position respectively) and are not at all popular in high school, since they do not even appear in the top 10. It seems logical that the inventor of the republican school is at the top of the school rankings and stands out less elsewhere. As for the case of Jacques Prévert, we can analyze it by the fact that the school is seen as an institution charged with poetry and creativity, while the high school is seen more as a place of construction and innovation.
At college, Jean Moulin and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are in the lead (ahead of Jules Ferry, therefore). At high school, Jean Monnet beat Jean Moulin and the Leonardo da Vinci – Marie Curie tandem, who shared the bronze medal. The Franco-Polish scientist, the only personality to have won a Nobel Prize in two different disciplines (physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911), is eighth in the ranking of schools as well as in that of colleges. In these two categories, she is the only woman to appear in the first ten ranks; On the high school side, she is joined by Camille Claudel, tied for ninth.
“The ranking of these two personalities should not obscure the relatively low proportion of female names attributed to high schoolsindicates the study by the School Evaluation Council. When an establishment of this type bears the name of a personality, it is a woman in only 16% of cases. The rate of female names is barely higher for colleges (17%). It is a little higher in the first degree, although women’s names remain largely in the minority there. Among schools named after a person, fewer than one in four (23%) honor a woman.”
Between 2017 and 2023, among renamed or newly opened colleges named after a famous person, two-thirds were named after a woman.
This assessment is not irremediable. “Under the main effect of demographic dynamics, some openings, mergers and closures of schools or establishments are observed each year”which leads to name changes. Furthermore, names are sometimes assigned to already existing educational establishments, either because they “did not yet have a name”or because a “name change is decided in connection with a new educational project”. More than 3,500 new names were given between 2017 and 2023, including 3,200 for schools alone.
These late baptisms and other name changes follow the same direction. The authors of the study Marion Le Cam and Mustapha Touahir indeed specify that “for names assigned recently, the trend is towards feminization”. Between 2017 and 2023, among renamed or newly opened colleges named after a famous person, two-thirds were named after a woman. Men are still a slight majority in schools and high schools, but the balance is close. The fact remains that at this rate, parity across all establishments is not for tomorrow, since progress only concerns recent baptisms.
Not neutral names
Among the names most given to educational establishments since 2017, we find Simone Veil and Joséphine Baker, but also Aimé Césaire and Nelson Mandela. The desire to finally draw names from places other than the pool of white men is felt. But their attribution is far from being purely random. To find this out, the authors of the study cross-referenced the names of public schools with the value of the social position index (IPS), an indicator which summarizes the socio-economic and cultural conditions of the families of the students who are hosted there.
It emerges, for example, that “colleges named Rosa-Parks enroll, on average, rather socially disadvantaged students”. In France, in 2023, the GPI of public colleges varied in 2023 between 54.9 (worrying conditions) and 162.5 (good conditions), for an average of around 101. The country’s Rosa-Parks colleges have an average GPI of 84, but the average index of Madame-de-Sévigné, Elsa-Triolet, Pablo-Neruda, Joséphine-Baker, Jean-Lurçat and Anatole-France are also low (below 90).
Seen from the inside, it is quite funny to realize that, very often, students and teachers alike work in an establishment that bears a name about which they know nothing.
On the other side of the spectrum, everything is going rather well for the Françoise-Dolto, Germaine-Tillion, Aliénor-d’Aquitaine, François-Mitterrand, Charles-Péguy, Paul-Bert, Léonard-de-Vinci and Georges-Pompidou colleges, whose average social position index is greater than 107.
Of course, everything is not homogeneous: the data provided by analysts also includes a mention of the standard deviation, which varies greatly depending on the names. But it seems in any case that the student who completes his four years of college at Joséphine-Baker is less predisposed to academic success than his classmates who go to François-Mitterrand college every morning.
The observation made by the School’s Evaluation Council ends there. It is up to everyone to interpret as they wish the possible links between the name of the educational establishment and the socio-economic and cultural situation of the students. In any case, it seems undeniable that the name of an establishment can have an impact on the way in which it is considered. National Education personnel, in particular senior education advisors (CPE) and heads of establishments, know to what extent schools, colleges and high schools are preceded by their reputation, and that the simple mention of their name has Pavlovian effects… College
Seen from the inside, it is also quite funny to realize that, very often, students and teachers alike work in an establishment which bears a name about which they know nothing. Allow me this conclusion in the first person: in eighteen years of teaching, I worked alongside André-Malraux and Charles-de-Gaulle, but I also and above all worked in establishments named in homage to men (yes, only men), about whom I knew absolutely nothing.
Sometimes it took me months, even years, before I finally had the curiosity to do some research on the subject – a curiosity that students generally never demonstrate, even after a long period of time in the same place. Shouldn’t we start by giving meaning to the names of our educational establishments?
