Ideas, Institutions, and School Curricula: Explaining Variation between England and France

This study raises the question of why the French secondary school history curriculum introduced in recent years included more plural histories than secondary school history curricula for English schools. Both countries share similar societal diversity. This outcome of more 'pluralism' in France than in England is puzzling because the reverse pattern holds in most other domains of minority/migrant incorporation, including in some aspects of life at school such as dress-code. To explain the variation in curricula content, I argue that one needs to supplement a focus on ideas about appropriate modes of minority/migrant incorporation with an institutionalist perspective. England and France have different institutional frameworks for curricula creation, with roots in the nineteenth century when mass education began: 'laissez-faire' and decentralization for England, and 'faire' and centralization for France. The research shows that these unique national education institutional legacies are significant, and that institutional contexts matter in the diffusion of ideas.