René Haby

Reforming French education minister

René Haby, politician: born Dombasle, France 9 October 1919; married (one son, two daughters); died 6 February 2003.

Rene Haby was a former Minister of Education under the presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. He was the author of an important reform of the French education system which has always been called the "réforme Haby" and which is still the subject of much discussion.

When Giscard d'Estaing became President of the Republic in 1974 he wanted everyone to know that he was going to be a reforming president, determined to remove social injustices. He showed this by including in his first government individuals who were not well-known in political circles and who were not products of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. One of these was René Haby, who had worked in every section of the educational system.

Demand for education had increased dramatically in France; at a time of economic prosperity families sought a better future for their children as the government required a trained workforce for the modernising economy. But with this demand there was the preoccupation of many that the educational system benefited prosperous, bourgeois families more than it benefited the children of workers.

Haby was an ideal man for this situation. Born in Dombasle, a small town near to Lunéville, he was educated in Nancy. At the age of 19 he began teaching in a primary school. But he returned to Nancy to qualify as a secondary-school teacher and then, returning to the University of Nancy, passed the competitive examination of the agrégation and rapidly became head of a succession of four lycées. This career caught the attention of the Ministry of Education and from 1962 to 1965 Haby became an adviser to the ministry, being appointed an inspector-general for schools. It was a success story.

But Haby remained ambitious. He returned to Nancy in 1965 to lecture at the university and to submit a thesis on the Lorraine coalfields, thereby becoming a doctor of the university. He served again at the Ministry of Education in Paris, he lectured at Paris-Sorbonne in 1970, and in 1972 he was appointed Rector of the Academy of Clermont- Ferrand which meant that he was in charge of all education in the region. At Clermont-Ferrand, he made the acquaintance of Giscard d'Estaing. His appointment as Minister for Education followed in 1974.

The "réforme Haby" set out to establish a comprehensive system of secondary education, one that would ensure that social origins should not prejudice educational opportunity. After having had the possibility of nursery classes to meet with special deprivations, six-year-olds went to a primary school, and from there to a "collège" at the age of 11 or 12, where there was a common syllabus. Then, at 13 or 14, children with a technical inclination would take vocational classes alongside the normal curriculum for the next two years. At the age of 16, the pupil's formal education was complete, and they could either leave school or proceed to a technical college that was a springboard for apprenticeships or go to a lycée to prepare for the baccalauréat.

In order to establish this system, Haby had to abolish the "transition" classes which had existed to provide different options between primary and secondary education, and this aroused considerable hostility to his reform. So strong was this opposition, voiced by the unions, that Giscard d'Estaing decided not to reappoint Haby when he reformed his government in 1978.

Haby was a Giscardian deputy for Meurthe-et-Moselle from 1978 until 1986 and played a role in regional politics, becoming vice-president of the departmental council.

He was a modest man. Once, when invited to speak at the Protestant Centre in Paris, he pointed to the names of great French Protestants of the past who are commemorated in the lecture hall. "I am not like them," he said. "I'm no orator. I will simply speak to you about schools."

But he took part in discussions about the 1975 law even when, after 1998, he had retired from all political activity. In 2001 he appeared both in Le Monde and in Le Figaro, making the point that French society had changed since 1975. It was more varied culturally, and there were both pupils and their families who were unwilling to accept the disciplines of school. He still believed in the "collège unique", but he saw that changes were necessary.

Douglas Johnson