France aims to improve quality

TAKING over a new "super" ministry embracing education, research and technology last week, geophysicist Claude All gre promised there would be "no shocks" to the education system, but "reforms to adapt it bit by bit to the 21st century".

M. Allegre, one of prime minister Lionel Jospin's oldest friends and closest advisors, worked with him on the new government line-up and has taken over a priority area for M. Jospin.

M. Allegre was reputed to be tough and authoritarian as M. Jospin's advisor for higher education from 1988-92. He recently caused ripples by dismissing concern over asbestos pollution at Jussieu campus where he works as "collective psychosis".

At the handing-over ceremony, he promised: "Now that demographic pressure has lessened, we will also face the challenge of quality ... to win jobs, to win international competition, to make this country one that is at the front of the European and world stage".

Before the election, M. Allegre recommended sweeping reform of the grande ecoles and called for a "new European university system", enabling students to study "like in the Middle Ages - one year in Paris, two in Heidelberg, then Oxford".

During the election campaign, the new prime minister Lionel Jospin and M. Allegre had emphasised that education and research, as "an absolute priority", should not suffer from budget cuts.

In his first statement as minister, M. Allegre confirmed that a research recruitment policy would resume. France's public research institutions are coping with budget cuts and face a programme of job cuts for next year.

But the new minister went on to warn that "one of my greatest concerns is to de-bureaucratise research". Reform of the cumbersome Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, which has some 12,000 researchers, was planned by the previous government but not carried out.

The Left's election win was greeted with relief in research circles, where there is widespread alarm over decreased resources and poor job prospects for new doctors of research. There has also been resentment at the previous government's policy of defining priority research programmes aimed at wealth creation.

Before the elections, the main researchers' union, the SNCS, called on scientists not to vote for "the grave-diggers of research". Its general secretary, Jacques Fossey, has now called for the recruitment rate to rise by up to 4 per cent.

On the university front, M. Allegre has added technology to his portfolio, but opposes his predecessor's plans to set up a distinct technology pathway.

Before the election, he said that such a plan for universities would not repeat the "mistake made in schools 40 years ago when technology was separated from general schooling". He argued: "Without professional training, it is hard to find a job, but without a general education, retraining is difficult".

In the same policy statement, he also promised "a major reform of our grande ecoles", with new forms of access. Recruitment is based on highly competitive entry examinations taken after two or more years' preparatory class.

M. Allegre also recommended reforms to enable the many preparatory class students who do not get a place in a grande ecole to transfer to university with their studies credited towards a degree.

The pro-communist student union UNEF warned M. Allegre that students expect new measures now and do not want to wait until the autumn.