Public, private and priority education: an analysis of social mix according to the sector of the college.

Summary In this article, on the basis of statistical indices of segregation (entropy and exposure indices) covering the period 2004-2014, we analyze and compare the degree of social mixing of schools belonging to the private sector, the public sector outside priority education and the public sector covered by priority education. We also look at whether, at a given level of social mix, highly advantaged students remain highly concentrated in certain schools or not. Our results show that the private sector is slightly over-represented among the schools located at the extremes of the distribution of entropy levels, i.e., among both the most "mixed" and the most "segregated". However, the nature of this mix varies according to the sector. For a given level of social mix, the private sector has relatively fewer students from disadvantaged social backgrounds. By focusing on the most "segregated" schools, the complementary use of the standardized exposure index shows that there is a tendency in the private and public sectors outside of priority education to separate "highly advantaged" students from other groups. In contrast, the priority education sector is homogeneous and concentrates a large majority of disadvantaged social groups.