Article entitled “La médiocrité en maths, un drame français” (‘Mediocrity in maths, a French tragedy’) by Jean-Marc Vittori, published in Les Echos on 26 November 2024 (article reserved for subscribers).
In this article, which looks at the decline in French maths attainment at a time when advances in mathematics are a key issue for the future, the editorialist draws on a BETA working paper (‘Le prix des inégalités scolaires’, by Nadir Altinok, Claude Diebolt, Romain Diebolt, BETA working paper, no 2024-34 August 2024) to estimate the extent to which France is falling behind in this area.
Extract: ‘To see the extent of the damage, we need to look beyond the Pisa study, which has been carried out since 2000. Two researchers from the Beta laboratory, Claude Diebolt and Nadir Altinok, have done a great deal of work to establish a database over a long period. They have shown that maths attainment peaked in the early 1990s in primary school, and a decade later in secondary school. Then it began to fall seriously.’
