Program Evaluation and Educational Populism in France

A Configurational Approach

Abstract

This article begins with the following question: how can we explain the rise of educational populism in France, given that policy evaluation is both relatively regular and diverse in this long-standing democracy, which places education at the heart of its republican model of political integration? To answer this question, we focus on the heuristic case of the fight against school absenteeism, which we study from a policy sociology perspective based on interviews and documentary analysis. We show that while evaluation on the subject is indeed regular and diverse, it has virtually no influence on the public debate, which focuses on a burning political controversy: should family allowances paid to parents of absent children be suspended or withdrawn? Although it has hardly been evaluated, this measure regularly provokes opposition from various intermediary bodies, while being supported by public opinion polls, thereby fuelling educational populism. Drawing on the sociology of Norbert Elias, we show that the advent of this populism, as well as its persistence, are the product of a specific configuration of sayability that enshrines the dominance of political and media discourse over expert or intellectual one.