Upward mobility is faltering, a finding that is shared by all educational professionals.
For example, a French Senate report dated September 2007 declares that a worker's child has seven times fewer chances than a child of a manager or a teacher, of going on to higher studies in France.
In the elite schools, only 11% of the student body are children of workers or employees, while according to the French Statistics Bureau INSEE, these socio-professional categories account for 60% of the working population. Many initiatives have been launched in recent years to remedy this situation. Among them, Institut Télémaque has developed an approach that yields excellent results.
Restoring upward mobility
From its headquarters in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine), Institut Télémaque identifies the good students from disadvantaged circles and accompanies them from secondary school to advanced studies. This approach is conducted through a dual tutorship :
a pedagogical referent and a tutor from a large company.
Target : to graduate with distinction
Institut Télémaque, which was founded in 2005 with the support of the French National Education Ministry, identifies and supports brilliant and motivated young students from disadvantaged families. The originally of its action is based on a concept: dual tutorship. Through a partnership with a panel of major corporations, Institut Télémaque offers the selected students the possibility of being monitored simultaneously by a tutor from the educational team of the school that he attends, and by a paid company tutor, who volunteers to accompany him throughout his studies. Together, the school referent and the company tutor support the student, both for everything related to his school career and for his own personal development.
Apart from connecting Institut Télémaque with the volunteer tutors, the companies help the Institut financially, to enable it to provide for the school needs of its students. At the end of January 2009, 201 students were thus supported in Ile-de-France, in the Rhône-Alpes region and in the Nord district. 91% of them followed the general school system and 9% a professional system. The aim for all was to graduate from high school with distinction.
To supplement this approach, which has yielded excellent results from the outset, Institut Télémaque has decided to open it up to vocational training institutions, with the same demanding standards. And the Veolia Environnement Foundation has decided to accompany this opening. The young students and their tutors selected to plunge into this adventure will be assigned the same objective as the students of the general educational system: to graduate from high school with distinction.
An absolute necessity to finally restore the once famous "upward mobility".
