Agrégation

In France, the agrégation (French pronunciation: [aɡʁeɡasjɔ̃]) is a competitive examination for civil service in the French public education system. Candidates for the examination, or agrégatifs, become agrégés once they are admitted to the position of professeur agrégé. In France, professeurs agrégés are distinguished from professeurs certifiés, recruited through the CAPES training. The agrégés are usually expected to teach in sixth-form colleges (lycées) and universities, while the certifiés usually teach in secondary schools (collèges), although there is a significant overlap.

The examination may require more than a year of preparation. The difficulty and selectivity (quota) vary from one discipline to another: there are about 300 such positions open each year for mathematics alone, but usually fewer positions are made available for humanities and social sciences (for example, 61 positions for philosophy were offered in 2018) and perhaps only one seat in some rarely taught foreign languages such as Japanese.

In addition to the vast majority of agrégés teaching in lycées, some agrégés teach in the preparatory classes to the grandes écoles or at the university level. Some agrégés teach in regular universities but do not, nominally, do scientific research as other university academics do; the positions are known as PRAG. Some positions including research (agrégé préparateur, AGPR) exist in the écoles normales supérieures, but they are very few.

The agrégation is typically open only to holders of a five-year university diploma (master's degree) or above. There is also an internal agrégation for professeurs certifiés, but it lacks the prestige of the external one although it remains selective (90 laureate/215 who passed the writing exams/873 who tried the writing exams/2001 candidates in 2010 in History-Geography). The following discusses the external one.

The competitive exam generally consists of a written section (admissibility) which, for humanities and social sciences, is composed of numerous essays and analyses of documents up to 7 hours in duration. This stage is when most candidates are eliminated.

The remaining candidates then have to go through an oral session (admission), composed of different exams in which candidates must demonstrate their ability to prepare and give lessons on any topic within the scope of his discipline. The oral exams provide the opportunity to verify that the candidates possess the appropriate speaking skills and have mastered the main exercises of their discipline; for example, in the Agrégation of Classics (French, Greek, Latin), candidates have to translate and comment on classical texts and texts from French literature. It is a way to establish whether candidates are able to fulfill requirements that they are going to need to satisfy.

In most disciplines, the lessons expected extend well above the secondary education level; indeed, the candidate may even have to present a lesson appropriate for the second, third, or even fourth years of specialized courses at the university level. One reason is that the agrégés should be able to teach in special undergraduate sections of high schools, known as preparatory classes to the grandes écoles and very similar in nature to grammar schools, and the level may be far above the normal level of the first or second year of college education.

The agrégation is also used as an unofficial national ranking system for students, giving a fair comparison between students of different universities. That is especially true in the humanities, for which the agrégation is highly selective and supposedly demonstrates erudition of the candidate.

Students of the écoles normales supérieures, as well as graduate students who have just completed their master's degree, often dedicate an entire year of their curriculum to prepare for the agrégation.

List of agrégations
Enseignement des langues vivantes
  • Agrégation d'allemand (Agrégation of German language)
  • Agrégation d'anglais (Agrégation of English language)
  • Agrégation d'arabe (Agrégation of Arabic language)
  • Agrégation de chinois (Agrégation of Chinese language)
  • Agrégation d'espagnol (Agrégation of Spanish language)
  • Agrégation d'hébreu moderne (Agrégation of Hebrew language)
  • Agrégation d'italien (Agrégation of Italian language)
  • Agrégation de japonais (Agrégation of Japanese language)
  • Agrégation de polonais (Agrégation of Polish language)
  • Agrégation de russe (Agrégation of Russian language)
  • Agrégation de portugais (Agrégation of Portuguese language)
Lettres et sciences humaines
Économie
  • Agrégation de sciences économiques et sociales (Agrégation of economics and social sciences)
    • option histoire et géographie du monde contemporain (history and geography of modern world - from the industrial revolution)
    • option science politique et droit public (political science and public law)
  • Agrégation d'économie/gestion (Agrégation of economics and management) :
    • option A : économie et gestion administrative,
    • option B : économie et gestion compatible et financière,
    • option C : économie et gestion commerciale,
    • option D : économie, informatique et gestion.

Although both Agrégations are labeled as Agrégation of economics, the Agrégation of economics and social sciences is more oriented towards political economy whereas the Agrégation of economics and management is more oriented towards business economics.

Enseignement des sciences naturelles et physiques
  • Agrégation de mathématiques (Agrégation of mathematics)
    • option informatique théorique
    • option statistique et probabilités
    • option calcul scientifique
    • option algèbre formelle
  • Agrégation de sciences de la vie - sciences de la Terre et de l'Univers (Agrégation of biology-geology)
  • Agrégation de sciences physiques (Agrégation of physics-chemistry)
    • option physique
    • option chimie
    • option physique appliquée
    • option procédés physico-chimiques
  • Agrégation d’informatique (Agrégation in computer science) which was created in 2022 [1]
Enseignement professionnel et technique
  • Agrégation de biochimie - génie biologique (Agrégation of biochemistry - biology)
  • Agrégation de génie civil (Agrégation of civil engineering)
  • Agrégation de génie mécanique (Agrégation of mechanical engineering)
  • Agrégation de génie électrique (Agrégation of electrical engineering)
  • Agrégation de génie informatique (Agrégation of informatical engineering)
  • Agrégation de mécanique (Agrégation of mechanics)
Enseignements artistiques
  • Agrégation d'arts : (Agrégation of arts)
    • option arts plastiques (Agrégation of visual arts)
    • option arts appliqués (Agrégation of applied arts)
    • option histoire des arts (Agrégation of arts' history)
  • Agrégation de musique (Agrégation of music)
Enseignement d'éducation physique
  • Agrégation d'éducation physique et sportive (Agrégation of physical education and sports)

In higher education

In some disciplines of higher education such as law, legal history, political science, economics, management, there exists an agrégation for the professorship positions, called agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur. In this competitive exam, the candidate also has to give several lessons in front of a committee.[2] Usually there are three lessons, spread over several months, except in economics, where there are only two lessons. The first and the last lessons have to be prepared alone, during eight hours, in a library of basic titles selected by the committee. For the remaining lesson, when it exists, the candidate has a full 24 hours to prepare for the examination, and may use several libraries as well as a team of "helpers" (usually doctoral candidates or fellow candidates, but never full professors).

Some anticonformist sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu have argued that this exam measures a candidate's social connections as much their ability to present a lesson, especially considering the composition of the examining committee.

  • Agrégation de droit (Agrégation of law)
    • Agrégation de droit privé (Agrégation of private law)
    • Agrégation de droit public (Agrégation of public law)
    • Agrégation d'histoire du droit (Agrégation of legal history)
  • Agrégation de science politique (Agrégation of political science)
  • Agrégation d'économie (Agrégation of economics ; not to be confused with the agrégations for secondary education that are the agrégation de sciences économiques et sociales and the agrégation d'économie et de gestion)
  • Agrégation de gestion (Agrégation of management ; not to be confused with the agrégation for secondary education that is the agrégation d'économie et de gestion)

Some well known agrégés

See also

References
  1. "Page of the ministry of education on the creation of the Agrégation in computer science". Devenir enseignant. Retrieved 22 November 2022.
  2. Official text organizing the French "agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur"
  3. Jacob S. D. Blakesley (2018). A Sociological Approach to Poetry Translation: Modern European Poet-Translators. Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Routledge. ISBN 9780429869853.

Further reading
  • André Chervel. "Les agrégés de l'enseignement secondaire. Répertoire 1809–1950" [List of successful agrégés by subject matter and year from 1809 to 1950]. Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes. Retrieved 23 June 2014.
  • Chervel André, Compere Marie-Madeleine, "Les candidats aux trois concours pour l'agrégation de l'Université de Paris (1766–1791)", juin 2002
  • Verneuil, Yves, Les agrégés: histoire d'une exception française. Paris, Belin, 2005, 367 p.
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