Towards the Europeanization of the French Education System? Contrasted Insights into School Evaluation

This paper addresses the Europeanization process of the French education system by examining an emblematic element of the new public management model for good educational governing practices that is advocated in several European and international arenas, namely, school evaluation. The data analyzed in this article are derived in part from a qualitative investigation of school evaluation policies in four European countries. Rather than emphasize the “Europeanization” of the French education system, this paper stresses the limited and ambiguous effects of international initiatives, and the national school evaluation policy’s distinctive features. Without denying the existence of occasional borrowings and some references to European governance through ideas or measurement tools, this article focuses on the influence of professional intervention by using examples from other countries and recontextualizing the imperatives of evaluation.