Draft:Scientific Council for National Education in France

The Conseil Scientifique de l'Éducation Nationale, or the Scientific Council for National Education, (CSEN) , is a scientific council attached to the French Ministry of National Education, whose purpose is to provide advice and guidance in the field of national education in France, and to promote scientific research into educational practices.

According to the French Minister for Education, "the Council, which has advisory powers and is made up of some twenty leading figures working in different scientific disciplines, may be consulted on any subject in order to provide relevant insights into educational matters".

Operation
This council was created and established in Paris on January 10, 2018, and set up "under the Minister" by ministerial decree on March 15, 2021.

The decree specifies that the Minister is responsible for appointing the chairman, members and secretary general of the CSEN.

More concretely, the CSEN is an "associated body" of the Ministry of National Education, which means that it is not placed under the "authority of the Minister" (as are the various directorates of central administration, the general secretariat of the Ministry, the Inspector General, the Defense and Security Service), but neither is it an "independent body" (this is only the case for the High Council for the Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES) and the Ministerial Budgetary and Accounting Control Service).

In short, the CSEN is not "independent" in the legal sense, but it does have real "autonomy".

The CSEN's mission is to facilitate, through its expertise, the incorporation of scientific research, testing and international comparisons into educational policies, and to this end, it independently examines any issue it deems relevant to this mission, and makes any recommendations it deems appropriate. It may also be consulted by the Minister, but decisions are not bound to the body's stance.

Composition
The chair is Stanislas Dehaene, Professor at the Collège de France and holder of the Chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology.

The secretary general is currently Patrick Debut.

Board members include:


 * Philippe Aghion, Professor of Economics at Collège de France and INSEAD.
 * Pascal Bressoux, Professor of Education at Grenoble Alpes University.
 * Gérald Bronner, Professor of Sociology at Paris Diderot University.
 * Anne Christophe, Director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Sciences and Psycholinguistics, Department of Cognitive Studies, ENS, Paris
 * Nuno Crato, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Lisbon (Portugal).
 * Jérôme Deauvieau, University Professor and Director of the Social Sciences Department at ENS Paris.
 * Stanislas Dehaene, Professor of Experimental Cognitive Psychology, Collège de France.
 * Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, CNRS research director, pediatrician.
 * Marc Demeuse, Professor at the University of Mons (Belgium), Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences.
 * Rodolphe Durand, professor of strategy and organization theory at HEC-Paris, founder and academic director of the Society and Organizations Institute.
 * Éric Guilyardi, CNRS research director, oceanographer and climatologist, lecturer at the University of Reading and the Institut Pierre-Simon-Laplace.
 * Marc Gurgand, Director of Research at the CNRS, Professor of Public Policy and Development at the Paris School of Economics and ENS Paris.
 * Pascal Huguet, CNRS Research Director, Director of the Social and Cognitive Psychology Laboratory at Clermont Auvergne University.
 * Caroline Huron, psychiatrist, research fellow at Inserm and member of the Learning Planet Institute.
 * Stéphanie Mazza, Professor, Inspe, Claude-Bernard-Lyon-I University.
 * Monica Neagoy, author, international mathematics consultant.
 * Elena Pasquinelli, cognitive science philosopher, head of research and evaluation at Fondation La main à la pâte.
 * Joëlle Proust, Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS, member of the Institut Jean-Nicod (philosopher, specialist in metacognition).
 * Franck Ramus, director of research at the CNRS, professor at the École normale supérieure, and co-director of the master's degree in cognitive science (ENS-EHESS-Université de Paris-Descartes).
 * Luc Ria, University Professor of Education and Training, Director of the Institut français de l'éducation in Lyon.
 * Emmanuel Sander, Professor, University of Geneva.
 * Elizabeth Spelke, Professor of Behavioral Psychology at Harvard University.
 * Liliane Sprenger-Charolles, CNRS emeritus researcher in the cognitive psychology laboratory at the Aix-Marseille University, linguist and psycholinguist
 * Camille Terrier, Professor of Economics at Queen Mary University of London
 * Jill-Jênn Vie, research fellow at Inria and member of Soda
 * Johannes Ziegler, CNRS Research Director, Director of the Cognitive Psychology Laboratory at the Aix-Marseille University.

Former members may participate in ad hoc commissions, such as:


 * Esther Duflo, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Reduction and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and former Professor at the Collège de France.
 * Michel Fayol, professor of cognitive and development psychology at Blaise Pascal University in Clermont, France.
 * Étienne Ghys, mathematician, director of research at the CNRS, perpetual secretary of the Académie des Sciences.
 * Véronique Izard, CNRS research fellow and member of the Centre de neurosciences intégratives et cognition at University of Paris.
 * Aurélie Jean, PhD in materials science & expert in artificial intelligence.
 * Sid Kouider, CNRS research director, teacher-researcher at ENS Paris in cognitive science and developmental psychology.
 * Núria Sebastián-Gallés, professor of cognitive science and bilingualism at the University of Barcelona.
 * Yann Algan, Professor of Economics at HEC Business School.
 * Julien Grenet, Director of Research at CNRS and Associate Professor at the Paris School of Economics.
 * Élise Huillery, Professor of Economics, Université Paris-Dauphine.

Finally, Anne Valat (Mission Leader), Anne Lenglet (Study Manager) & Sébastien Hamon (Communications Advisor) have been enlisted to promote the body's work and productions.

Partnerships
CSEN organises the Chercheurs en actes (Researchers in action) prize in partnership with the insurance company Garantie mutuelle des fonctionnaires.

Ambitions
"The new body is expected to play a complementary role to that of other structures that already exist within the French Ministry of Education, being the Direction de l'évaluation, de la prospective et de la performance, the Inspection générale de l'éducation, du sport et de la recherche, or the Inspector general for Education, Fitness, and Research (IGESR) (which was formed from the union of the Igen, Igaenr, Igjs and Igb), the Conseil national d'évaluation du système scolaire, or the National Evaluation Council for Schooling, (created by the 2013 School Refoundation Act) and the Conseil supérieur des programmes, or the Higher Curriculum Council." .

Through this new Council, the French Ministry of Education intends to forge closer ties with research and promote a culture of experimentation and innovation, so that schools can benefit from the contributions of research, particularly neuroscience, and develop digital technologies.

The general functions assigned to the CSEN are :


 * Inform political decision-making on major educational issues.
 * Complement the work of the Conseil national d'évaluation du système scolaire, or the National Evaluation Council for Schooling (CNESCO), and the Inspectors General, by contributing to interdisciplinary thinking on educational issues.
 * Make recommendations to help teachers better understand the mechanisms behind how students learn.

The Council's five specific areas of focus are assessment and intervention, training and teaching resources, pedagogy, minimisation of inequality, and choosing child-friendly learning strategies.

For the 2019-2020 European school year, the CSEN also narrowed its focus onto digital and artificial intelligence for education, kindergarten, language immersion & educational resources, and guidance and sustainable development.

National Assessments
The CSEN oversees the design of the annual national assessments for pupils in CP, CE1, sixième and seconde, or during the first, second, seventh and eleventh years of schooling.

In 2019, some members of the CSEN were calling for an assessment that would consider not only skills, but also well-being and the environment as well as forms of cooperation within schools; some also fearing that these assessments could play the role of a self-fulfilling prophecy, indicating that certain students are "at risk" too early on. Finally, Frank Ramus in particular points out that evaluations are not an end in themselves, but that their value lies in how they are used.

From 2018 to 2020, national assessments gave rise to concerns and protests, as well as "strong reluctance", which related in particular to their relevance in the risk of instrumentalisation - a 2015 DEPP (Direction de l'évaluation, de la prospective et de la performance) report indicating a phenomenon of teachers overestimating their pupils, particularly in the private sector - or organisational problems. In 2018, a teachers' union called for a moratorium on these assessments.

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