The college that grooms France’s governing class is to be abolished in favour of a civil service school that trains students from more diverse backgrounds, President Macron has said.
A year before the next presidential election, the move to replace the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) is a response by Macron, a graduate of the school, to popular scorn for an institution deemed to perpetuate a caste of brilliant but out-of-touch mandarins, politicians and corporate leaders. A diploma from ENA, which turns out fewer than 100 graduates a year, almost guarantees a high post for life in the state sector and a fast track into politics and private management.
The replacement will be called the Institute of Public Service. Macron said he was introducing a “deep revolution” in the way that the civil service recruited its top managers., bringing in candidates with profiles that are less determined by social origin.
The ENA was created in 1945 by Charles de Gaulle and it has produced four of the past six presidents. Macron, who was elected in 2017 on a reform agenda, promised an overhaul two years ago after the yellow-vest revolt against France’s establishment. He appeared to backtrack in favour of a revamp, including changes to the selection tests that ensure most entrants come from the higher social classes.
The ENA’s replacement will “give the French a public service that is closer, more efficient, more open and more friendly”, Macron’s office said. Each year’s “promotion” will still be ranked on graduation but no longer hoisted straight into high-ranking posts.
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During and after their training they will have to work as interns in small and medium businesses rather than the old system in which they served embassies and multinational corporations.
The gruelling entrance system will still require a master’s-level degree but will abandon the emphasis on deep culture and improvised speaking skills that favour the rich.
Macron’s decision comes after a scandal that has engulfed Sciences Po, the Parisian political science college that feeds ENA about 80 per cent of its students. The downfall in January of Olivier Duhamel, 70, chairman of governors, after allegations of sexually abusing his stepson, exposed dysfunction in the institution’s management.
Defenders of the ENA said that Macron was scrapping an institution that was envied around the world. Daniel Keller, head of the alumnus association, said: “Would the UK erase Oxford with the stroke of a pen?”
