Grande école
Grande école
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Grande école

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Grande école

A grande école (French: [ɡʁɑ̃d ekɔl]; lit.'great school') is a specialized top-level educational institution in France and some other countries such as Morocco and Tunisia. Grandes écoles are part of an alternative educational system that operates alongside the mainstream French public university system, and are dedicated to teaching, research and professional training in either pure natural and social sciences, or applied sciences such as engineering, architecture, business administration, or public policy and administration.

Similar to the Ivy League in the United States, Russell Group or the Golden Triangle in the UK, Designated National Universities in Japan, C9 League in China and German Universities Excellence Initiative in Germany, Grandes écoles are elite academic institutions that admit students through an extremely competitive process. Grandes écoles primarily admit students based on their national ranking in written and oral exams called concours, which are organized annually by the French Ministry of Education. While anyone can register for concours, successful candidates have almost always completed two or three years of dedicated preparatory classes (classes préparatoires) prior to admission.

As they are separate from universities, most of them do not deliver the undergraduate degree of the Licence (the university bachelor's degree in France) or the university master's degree, but deliver :

Admission to the grandes écoles is extremely selective. Grandes écoles are generally publicly funded and therefore have limited tuition costs. Some, especially business schools (Écoles de commerce) and specialized schools, are organised privately and therefore have more costly tuition.

The term grande école originated in 1794 after the French Revolution, when the National Convention created the École normale supérieure, the mathematicians Gaspard Monge and Lazare Carnot created the École centrale des travaux publics (later the École polytechnique), and the abbot Henri Grégoire created the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers.

The model was probably the military academy at Mézières, of which Monge was an alumnus. The selective admission opens up to higher education based on academic merit.

Some schools included in the category have roots in the 17th and 18th centuries and are older than the term grande école, which dates to 1794. Their forerunners were schools aimed at graduating civil servants, such as technical officers (École d'Arts et Métiers, renamed Arts et Métiers ParisTech, established in 1780), mine supervisors (École des mines de Paris, established in 1783), bridge and road engineers (École royale des ponts et chaussées, established in 1747), and shipbuilding engineers (École des ingénieurs-constructeurs des vaisseaux royaux, established in 1741).

Five military engineering academies and graduate schools of artillery were established in the 17th century in France, such as the école de l'artillerie de Douai (established in 1697) and the later école du génie de Mézières (established in 1748), wherein mathematics, chemistry and sciences were already a major part of the curriculum taught by first-rank scientists such as Pierre-Simon Laplace, Charles Étienne Louis Camus, Étienne Bézout, Sylvestre-François Lacroix, Siméon Denis Poisson, Gaspard Monge (most of whom were later to form the teaching corps of École Polytechnique during the Napoleonic era).

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