French Paying Students to Show Up at School

You know something has gone seriously wrong when you have to pay students to attend class. But that’s precisely what a few French vocational high schools are doing to boost their crummy attendance: they’re offering the kids who show up a little something, you know, for the effort.

Velodrome Stadium in Marseille. Photo by FredGLLS.

Last week, comments on the website of the French daily Le Parisien erupted into a veritable ire storm, when it was reported that a pilot program at three vocational schools in the Parisian suburb of Créteil would be awarding up to €2000 a month (which is just shy of 3000 bucks) to several classes based on their attendance record and their “vie de classe“, meaning whether or not they behave. “Scandalous! Inept! Outrageous!” was the overwhelming reader response. “Rarely has a subject raised such disapproval,” the paper editorialized. All told, classes participating in the program can hope to win up to €10,000 over the course of the school year, to be held in a collective pot that can be used pay for school trips, computer and classroom upgrades, and drivers’ ed.

Then, over the weekend, it was reported that truancy at the lycée Frédéric-Mistral in Marseille has hit crisis levels.  Last year’s running average was 25% of students absent. In desperation, the principal of the vocational school in this southern port city purchased season tickets at the local professional soccer club and has begun awarding them each month to the class with the best attendance record. “We’ve never had such good attendance,” the principle effused in the regional paper La Provence. “It’s a bit of a shame that things have gotten to this point, when you consider that in other countries, like Vietnam, children dream of going to school but can’t afford to. But it’s the results that matter.”

Well, a single school in Marseille and a few outside Paris hardly make a trend,  but it sufficed to get a lot of French folks really riled up. Angry, angry people descended on media outlets. “With protests coming from every direction,” noted Le Monde, “from politicians, unions and educational associations.” Most were simply indignant at the idea, the general feeling being that paying a student pollutes the purpose of education, and undermines an institution that many feel forms the bedrock of French “republican” values. Some politicians, like Valerie Pécresse, the Minister for Higher Education, saw it as a slippery slope. “Should we be paying teenagers for something they ought to be doing anyway?” she worried, “I’m afraid of what that might bring.” Others, such as opposition socialist spokesman Bruno Julliard, argued that focusing on student attendance was like obsessing over the symptom, when “the real emergency is an educational system in need of a major overhaul.”

Though, what exactly is it a symptom of? A study released by the Ministry of Education on Tuesday concluded that absenteeism affects only 5% of French students nationwide—so not quite an epidemic. In reality, the problem is restricted to a small subset of vocational schools, the bottom 10%, where more than 30% of students are absent on a regular basis. These kids are on the bottom rung of the French educational system; school administrators are no doubt trying to keep them from simply dropping out altogether. It seems like a lot of hubbub over a couple of programs at a tiny minority of troubled schools. Yet in France, even minor changes in school policy can provoke an hysterical response, so much so that education reform has become the third rail of French politics. If anything, this is a symptom of orthodoxy smothering debate.

Perhaps instead of raging against bribes, it would be more productive to consider whether soccer tickets and driving lessons are actually good bribes.  And indeed, there may be some truth to the “slippery slope” argument: a pilot program can succeed initially, but fail over the long run, if students  start to feel entitled to awards once considered special. As behavioral economists have shown, people tend to forget about maximizing their own self-interest when they are thinking in terms of charity or duty. But the minute you start talking money, people start acting like consumers.  So, if you’re gonna bribe somebody, you gotta keep incentives in mind.

Clothing retailers have discovered to their chagrin that when they hold sales on a regular basis, they just train their customers to delay  purchases until the sale rolls around. Shoppers stop paying full price; “full price” becomes a meaningless convention; and the only way the retailer can boost revenues is to extend or deepen the sale. What works better is a system that employs the right kind of “feedback”, à la Nudge.  It takes a little daily something to reward customer loyalty.  In lieu of dangling the distant promise of tickets or class trips, which, as an approach, relies somewhat precariously on imponderables like class participation, why not take a cue from the grocery store Carrefour? During a promotion, standing at the checkout in Europe’s largest grocery chain can feel like playing the slots: every few minutes, one lucky shopper wins free groceries.

So how about a school lottery, where the price of a ticket is attendance? Every day the pot grows, so would attendance. If you could win €2000 just for showing up to class, you’d be a fool not to go. A couple different schools join together, you got a Powerball. Look—there’s no limit, here. Readers, feel free to submit your ideas. True, the French state hasn’t really asked for our advice, but then again, what is the interweb, if not a giant machine for sharing uninvited opinions?