LEGAL SYSTEM

According to the French Constitution, "The State has the responsibility to organise free and secular public education at all levels."

The State's mission is:

- To define the training routes, national programmes, organisation and content of curricula. The framework and programme law for the future of the School of April 23, 2005, creates a common base of knowledge and competence, which defines the cultural and civil benchmarks for the content of compulsory education. Schooling is essentially dispensed through public educational institutions, in which eighty percent of all students are registered. However, the principle of freedom of education is one of the fundamental principles of the laws of the Republic, allowing for the existence of a certain number of private institutions. Having signed contracts with the Ministry of Education, the vast majority of these institutions also support the public education programme.
- To define and issue national diplomas and grant university degrees and academic titles.
- To recruit and manage the personnel under its authority.
- To attribute the means assigned to education in order to ensure, in particular, the equality of access to public service. Concerning the schooling of disabled students, the law of February 11, 2005 on the equality of rights and opportunities, participation and citizenship of disabled persons states the right of disabled students to education and the responsibility of the educational system in guaranteeing the continuity of their individual schooling routes.
- To control and evaluate educational policies in order to ensure overall consistency of the educational system. Since the 1980s, the State has implemented measures to decentralise responsibility and reinforce the power of local authorities.

Thus the regions are responsible for:
- Building and maintaining high schools for general, technical and professional education
- Funding their equipment and operations budgets
- Recruiting and managing high-school administrative, technical, school care and health personnel
- Organising educational, sports and cultural activities on school premises
- Partially financing university infrastructure
- Defining the regional vocational and professional training policies for adolescent and adults in search of employment or redirecting their professional orientation

The departments are responsible for:
- Building and maintaining secondary schools and funding equipment and operation of these schools
- Recruiting and managing secondary-school administrative, technical, maintenance and school care personnel
- Organising educational, sports and cultural activities on school premises
- Organising and operating school transportation

The municipalities are responsible for:
- Appropriately locating, building, equipping, operating and maintaining nursery and elementary schools
- Managing the schools' equipment and operating subsidies
- Organising educational, sports and cultural activities on school premises
Municipalities have authority to modify school schedules. For example, they can apply a four-day week.