Jean-Noël Senne at the RITM Economics Seminar

Jean-Noël Senne (RITM-Université Paris-Saclay), will present his paper “Opening Schools to Parents to Promote Migrants’ Inclusion and their Children’s Achievement,” co-authored with Flore Gubert, Elise Huillery, and Alexandre Touw.

Abstract: This paper studies the effects of the OEPRE programme (Opening Schools to Parents to Promote their Children’s Achievement), a large French national initiative jointly implemented by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Interior. The programme targets allophone immigrant parents with children enrolled in the French school system, offering free in-school training that includes French language courses, sessions on the functioning and expectations of the education system, and sessions on the principles and values of the French Republic. Building on a survey targeting first-generation immigrant parents from 150 French primary schools, we study the effects of this programme on three domains: (i) parental involvement in their children’s schooling; (ii) socio-economic integration of parents, including civic engagement, institutional trust, and sense of belonging; and (iii) children’s learning and academic outcomes [forthcoming]. Our survey covers approximately 720 allophone parents across treatment and control schools. We find that access to the OEPRE programme significantly increases parental participation in school activities. Effects on French language acquisition and broader integration outcomes are more limited in intention-to-treat specifications, though estimates on actual programme participants point to larger effects consistent with partial compliance.