Each year 122,000 pupils—17% of the total—leave school with no high-school diploma. Last year the French army evaluated national levels of reading and comprehension during a compulsory day of military and civic service for 17-year-olds. It found that one in ten attendees could not understand basic French. Such difficulties are concentrated in the outer-city banlieues, where family support is minimal and schools tend to get the least experienced teachers. But even the average is dropping. According to PISA, an international comparison of education standards run by the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, French 15-year-olds’ standards of written comprehension and mathematics have fallen since 2000.