Éva Lelièvre, Célio Sierra-Paycha, Loïc Trabut

What is the schooling situation of senior high school students in French Polynesia? Why do a third of high school students there no long live with their parents? What kinds of plans for their working lives do seniors in Polynesia have? INED researchers Éva Lelièvre, Célio Sierra-Paycha, and Loïc Trabut did a statistical study of the Polynesian education system and the profile of young, soon-to-be high school graduates in Polynesia.

(Interview conducted in April 2025)

Could you tell us about the survey you conducted with seniors at high schools in French Polynesia?

In April 2023, at the request of the Department of Teaching and Education, the ISPF (Statistics Institute of French Polynesia) together with INED conducted a statistical survey of seniors across all of French Polynesia’s high schools. We questioned them on their living conditions, activities, preference of study or training area, and their occupational and possible migration aspirations for the following five years. The survey method chosen was an anonymous self-administered questionnaire that students filled in electronically on the school premises.

How does the Polynesian educational system function?

A wide range of authorities are in charge of education in French Polynesia. The French state covers most education expenses, while the country of French Polynesia, through the education ministry and General Education and Teaching Department, “is in charge of educational policy and strategy, and of implementing them through teaching organization and teacher distribution” The Polynesian education system draws heavily on the system in metropolitan France and confers almost exclusively French national degrees. Primary education is available locally on inhabited islands. Middle schools were opened in the distant archipelagos in the 1980s and 1990s. It was only in 1992 that schooling was made compulsory to age 16. Then, as middle school became part of mass education in France, educational attainment rose in French Polynesia. According to the findings of our “Middle school and me” survey of 2019 (Lelièvre and Jedlicki 2000), slightly over three-fourths of 11th grade students continue their education to the last year of high school.

How are schools distributed geographically across the territory?

Public and private schools alike and general education, technological, and vocational schools are concentrated on the Society Islands[1]: 15 out of 20 are in Tahiti and Moorea, 3 in Raiatea, 1 in Bora-Bora. The Saint-Athanase agricultural high school in Nuku Hiva (Marquises Islands) is an exception.

Because most high schools are on the Society Islands, virtually all French Polynesian high school students live there. Middle school students from distant archipelagos move to attend high school, but usually stay in their home archipelago if it has a middle school. While 93% of students already living on the Society Islands pursue their schooling there, approximately 50% of the others leave their home archipelagos to attend high school, a move that drastically changes their environment and living conditions.

What can you tell us about senior high school student profiles?

There are more girls than boys (45%), and they’re usually in general high schools; boys are more likely to be in vocational schools (training in construction or cooking, for example).

Most seniors (67%) live with their parents (either biological or fa’a’amu, a term referring to an indigenous type of adoption), while one-third live in other contexts, either with family members or friends (10%), in a student housing center or boarding arrangement (12%) or in some other structure. Ten percent (10%) have no stable home and move back and forth between several places of residence.

Over one-fourth (28%) of these seniors report working, and 35% say that work takes up a great deal of their time.

Thirty-nine (39%) of seniors receive financial aid or scholarships. A greater proportion of occupational training students receive financial aid than students pursuing other types of education (62% of the former during their schooling and 56% of senior students as a whole).

What do these seniors say about their plans for the future?

A considerable part of the questionnaire is about just that. SISE data (Student information tracking system) (MESR-SIES [French higher education and research ministry-Subdepartment of information systems and statistical studies) can be used to apprehend the profiles of Polynesian students enrolled in French higher education in Polynesia, mainland France, or other any of France’s other overseas territories (Cordazzo and Monicole 2020; Bréant 2022). One aim of our survey was to learn these students’ aspirations for the short and mid-term at the time they indicated their higher education preferences (via France’s national platform for pre-enrollment in higher education).

It’s precisely our findings on those future plans that our team chose to make widely available, via the Shiny system. That system can be used to explore the aspirations of French Polynesia high school graduates of 2024—to start working life, to continue their training—and their moves within the territory and beyond.

(1) The Society Islands are an archipelago of 14 islands, the best-known of them being Tahiti and Bora-Bora.

Sources : Bréant, H. (2022) « Becoming a Student in a French Overseas Territory. Mechanisms of the Segregative Democratisation of Higher Education in French Polynesia ». Lien social et Politiques no. 89 (2022) : 150–177

Cordazzo P. Monicole C. (2020) « Bacheliers polynésiens et études supérieures ». In : Points études et bilans de la Polynésie française [en ligne]. n° 1219, p. 1 4 [FR]

Lelievre Eva et Bamet Thomas (2025) « Être élève de terminale en 2023 en Polynésie française », Points Études et Bilans de la Polynésie française. 1464 [FR]

Lelievre Eva et équipe ATOLLs (Collab.), 2025, « Être élève de Terminale en Polynésie française Une enquête (Le Lycée et après (Ined, ISPF, DGEE, 2023) et quelques premiers résultats ». Documents de travail, 302, Aubervilliers : Ined [FR]

Lelièvre Eva et Jedlicki Fanny (2020) « Être élève de 3e en Polynésie française ». Points Études et Bilans de la Polynésie française. 1220 [FR]