EVALUATION OF THE
SKILLS INVESTMENT PLAN
(PIC)
(2018-2023)
Public thematic report
January 2025
2
Executive Summary
In September 2017, in his report commissioned by the Prime Minister, the economist
Jean Pisani-Ferry considered that France was suffering from a number of structural
weaknesses, among which the lack of skills in its workforce was proving particularly crippling.
This reduces the country's ability to overcome the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and
prevents it from meeting major future economic challenges, notably the digital and ecological
transitions. In his view, the country needs to make its economy more competitive in order to
ensure future growth. It recommends a
Grand Plan d'Investissement
(Major Investment Plan -
GPI) based on four axes, the second of which aims to
"build a society of skills"
based on the
notion of human capital. According to this concept, training is a
continuum
to be enriched
throughout life: training can no longer be approached as a simple tool for getting people back
to work. With this in mind, the aim is to improve the level of initial training, reduce failure at
school and university, and ensure a better match with the future needs of the economy, by
bringing together and even integrating public training and employment policies in order to
reduce the likelihood of high unemployment and low employment rates, which are weighing on
the French economy and reducing its performance in relation to its competitors.
The four pillars of the Major Investment Plan
Source: Government, official launch of the Major Investment Plan
Under the title of Skills Investment Plan (SIP), the report
proposes that €15 billion be
devoted to building this
"skills society"
to complement the other reforms in the Major Investment
Plan. This structural reform is first and foremost an interministerial one, but it must also involve
local authorities, primarily the regions, which are responsible for vocational training for young
people and jobseekers.
In addition to structural and long-term reform, the
Pisani-Ferry report
adds a more
immediate and cyclical dimension, aiming to address as a priority the situation of two million
young people and long-term jobseekers with few or no qualifications, who have suffered more
than other workers from the effects of the 2008 crisis and who, unable to find work, are
weighing on the performance of the French economy. However, the report stresses that these
3
people need to be supported in new ways: long training courses leading to certification and
qualifications, to ensure long-term employment.
The PIC was deployed between 2018 and 2022 and then extended by one year until the
end of 2023. It comprises a national component and a regional component in the form of
agreements called
Pactes régionaux d'investissement dans les compétences
(regional skills
investment pacts - Pric), signed with all the regions, with the exception of the
Auvergne-Rhône-
Alpes
and
Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
regions, which have been replaced by the regional
offices of
Pôle Emploi
–
now France Travail.
The evaluation work took account of two specific aspects: substituting specific
quantitative approaches for monitoring the impact on each of the beneficiaries of PIC training,
which had not been provided for in the plan; and avoiding any unnecessary duplication with
the work of the PIC Scientific Evaluation Committee. The evaluation was conducted with a
view to answering the following two evaluation questions:
1. Has the Skills Investment Plan transformed the training system?
2. Have the target audiences of the Skills Investment Plan been reached?
The first two chapters of the report are structured to answer the first evaluation question,
while the third chapter is devoted in its entirety to the second evaluation question.
Has the PIC transformed the training system?
The evaluation by the financial jurisdictions shows that the goal of structural
transformation was abandoned immediately.
An investment plan that quickly became a financing plan
In the absence of an interministerial budgetary framework and the definition of precise
objectives and target groups, and in the absence of players whose involvement or positioning
could have ensured that the transformative nature of the programme was preserved, the €14.6
billion PIC (€800 million of which was earmarked for the M
inistries of National Education and
Higher Education and Research and was implemented separately) became a funding plan for
vocational training implemented by the Ministry of Labour alone.
Half of the funds allocated to the national segment of the programme were used to
protect against a possible reduction in the resources available to the statutory schemes, and
to finance a number of new schemes and national calls for projects aimed at a wider public
than initially planned. The focus on training and skills for people with few or no qualifications
has given way to a more social and global approach aimed at people who have been excluded
from the workforce. The other half of the appropriations was used to implement a territorial
segment (the regional skills investment pacts), the main characteristic of which is that they are
a repeat of the "
500,000 Plan
", i.e. the training plan that preceded the PIC in 2016 and 2017.
Admittedly, the PIC is a more accomplished version of its predecessor, giving greater visibility
to stakeholders through a significant, multi-year budgetary commitment. However, the PIC,
which is highly regionalised, is still mainly geared towards jobseekers and school dropouts, i.e.
a much narrower scope and public than those initially targeted by the
"skills society".
The PIC was therefore unable to fulfil the ambition of the
Pisani-Ferry report
to transform
the training system. It has not been a transformative, temporary investment with lasting
structural effects. It has been diverted towards a more traditional scheme of financing a return
to employment through training for people who have been excluded from the labour market.
4
No effect on the structural weaknesses at the origin of the plan
The deteriorating economic indicators of the French economy in 2017, which had fuelled
the proposal to build a "skills society", have improved thanks to a more favourable economic
climate, but at the end of the PIC, France is still lagging behind its best-performing comparable
neighbours (Germany and the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain).
Employment rate of non-graduates in France, Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy from
2005 to 2022
Source: OECD - Data, Education at a Glance
From the point of view of the initial macroeconomic objective, the result of the PIC is
clear-
cut: €13.8 billion in new funding was mobilised for a project that never saw the light of
day. A PIC 2 has been validated for the period 2024-2027: despite its identical name, it is
based on the model of the first PIC, and will fund training schemes that are, for the most part,
already in existence, thus confirming that these credits are part of common law and confirming
that the 2018-2023 PIC was first and foremost an ordinary funding plan that met a need for
increased resources in this area.
A plan to modernise support for disadvantaged groups
The evaluation of the PIC, as it was deployed by the Ministry of Labour, shows that while
it has not transformed the system in line with the initial structural objective, the unprecedented
volume of funding it has mobilised has, on the other hand, made it possible to modernise the
methods used to support people who have been excluded from the workforce, in particular by
making it possible to implement highly individualised follow-up methods that were previously
difficult to envisage and relatively costly in terms of operating resources.
Three areas of modernisation
This modernisation, which has been fairly successful, thanks in particular to the resolute
commitment of the High Commissioner for Skills (HCC), who is responsible for its design and
negotiation with the regional executives, has taken on three complementary dimensions:
5
- greater individualisation by systematically diagnosing the skills possessed and taking
into account the need to acquire basic knowledge or brush up on skills through a preparatory
phase prior to training;
- changes in professional practices: due to a lack of time and resources, training had often
become occupational, with the aim of getting people back to work quickly through short courses
in low-skilled trades. With the fall in unemployment and the increase in resources, professionals
are turning to training as a tool that can build more structured career paths and lead to more
sustainable employment. They are better able to organise "outreach", build a relationship of trust
through more intensive monitoring, finance more appropriate and therefore "tailor-made" training
and avoid discontinuities, thus offering "seamless" career paths. As a result, the regions and
France Travail have changed the way they purchase training;
- the profitability of training organisations that have been providers under the PIC has
improved. According to them, this has enabled them to modernise their model by taking into
account additional social support needs, which are now considered inseparable from their
educational role.
Insufficient investment by the State in steering the PIC
and regional skills investment pacts (Pric)
By making its funding conditional on that of the regions, through an additionality
mechanism, the State has avoided the risk- a real one in 2017 - of seeing regional vocational
training appropriations fall. In addition, even if it was less than announced, the unprecedented
volume of funding from the regional pacts has led to a change in jurisdiction in the field of
vocational training, if not legally then at least in terms of budget: what was once a regional
responsibility is now a shared one. This was reflected in the design of the pacts by the
existence of three axes, identical across all the regional pacts, designed to ensure a good link
between national employment policy and regional vocational training policy. But the reality,
too, has fallen short of the rhetoric. In fact, the State has not given itself the means to ensure
effective deployment of the PIC. It has essentially contented itself with the role of funder, largely
disinterested in strategic management and leadership. So, as far as the national section is
concerned, once the statutory schemes have been removed, the remaining, very small, share
has been entrusted to the
Caisse des dépôts et consignations
to fund national calls for projects
focusing on very remote sections of the population
("identification", "100% inclusion", "digital
marauding").
Similarly, with the exception of the
"Prépa-compétences"
scheme, which has
been improved on the basis of an evaluation carried out in 2021, no work has been carried out
to adjust or discontinue the schemes in the light of their effectiveness, even though the Prime
Minister was supposed to make an annual decision on the basis of feedback from the PIC
steering committee and precise evaluations.
Insufficient decentralised government resources for effective coordination
of regional pacts
As regards the management of the regional pacts, the devolved services were involved
in negotiating them without being in the front line, with the High Commissioner for Skills acting
as project manager and maintaining direct contact with the regional executives. During the
deployment phase, the prefects and regional directors of the economy, employment, labour
and solidarity (
Dreets
), as well as the departmental directors of employment, labour and
solidarity (
Ddets
), played a more assertive steering role in terms of achieving the objectives
and reaching the most disadvantaged target groups. They have also played an active role in
coordinating the players and creating new synergies. However, field visits revealed that this
had been achieved at the cost of over-investment on the part of
Dreets
and
Ddets
staff, as
their numbers had been drastically reduced during this period. This situation is not only
6
unsatisfactory from a management point of view, but also leads to disparities between
territories. To be effective, a public policy must integrate its own deployment costs. This was
the case for central administrations, for operators through the allocation of management fees,
and for training organisations through the mechanism of training purchase contracts, but it was
not the case, quite the contrary, for the State's devolved services.
The promising principle of an assessment integrated into the plan
The
ad hoc
scientific committee's evaluation of vocational training policy during the PIC
deployment period has produced high-quality and highly useful annual reports. There are two
areas where improvements could be made in the future: the first concerns the composition of
the committee, which would have benefited from including practitioners in the field; the second
concerns the limitations of the available databases. Improvements have been made to
information systems, in particular thanks to Agora, a data platform for steering vocational
training policy, and a tool (ForCE) created to evaluate the career paths of people monitored by
the public employment service. However, the delays in deploying the former, and the limitations
of the latter, have hampered the ability to manage the PIC and its evaluation as an overall plan.
Capitalising on experience without disseminating good practice
Lastly, although the General Delegation for Employment and Vocational Training
(DGEFP), the High Commissioner for Skills and the Scientific Committee have carried out a
significant amount of capitalisation work through the evaluation of the Pric or certain schemes,
no method of spinning off has been developed to perpetuate the achievements of the 2018-
2023 PIC.
Have the PIC's target audiences been reached?
Volume effect
During the period of deployment of the PIC, the increase in training enrolments cannot
be explained by its effect alone and is essentially the result of the implementation, outside the
scope of the plan, of the autonomous personal training account (CPF), which can be mobilised
by jobseekers. There is even a substitution effect between the CPF and training courses
previously provided by France Travail. The Scientific Committee's work has not identified any
massive enrolments attributable to the PIC. It also points to significant regional disparities and
a wide variation in the number of enrolments depending on the training category. On the other
hand, the implementation of the PIC has been accompanied by a sharp increase in training
leading to qualifications, although no causal effect has been demonstrated.
No significant impact on target audiences
Access to training for the least qualified has not improved in comparison with
baccalaureate holders and higher education graduates, as shown by the stability over the
period of the proportion of unemployed people with low qualifications among those entering
training. Furthermore, access to training for long-term jobseekers has certainly improved since
the implementation of the PIC, but it is impossible to detect any visible effect of the PIC on the
career paths of these jobseekers. As far as recipients of the RSA (
revenu de solidarité active
- earned income supplement) are concerned, there has also been a marked improvement in
their access to training, including training leading to qualifications, although the link with the
PIC cannot be demonstrated.
7
Imprecise objectives, disparate follow-up
Several explanations can be put forward to explain this mixed record. The national
objectives of the PIC were defined in an imprecise manner, even though the statistics available
from
INSEE
and
France Travail
show that it was possible to rigorously define the categories
of priority groups for the PIC. As a result, they have not been rolled out at the regional level
and have been monitored
after the fact
. These inaccuracies resulted in a wide variety of
regional monitoring indicators, which were not always consistent either with each other or with
the objectives of the PIC, while the training contracts published by the regions defined a very
broad priority target audience, often differing from one region to another.
Short-term focus on training
Although it has improved the possibilities for individualised support, the PIC has not
removed all the structural obstacles to building pathways and guidance towards training. The
proliferation of calls for projects and schemes has led to territorial competition that is
detrimental to the successful implementation of the PIC. Long-term improvements in access
to training and the construction of coherent pathways continue to come up against the priority
given to a rapid return to employment. However, the data provided by the financial jurisdictions
show that the effectiveness of this short-term priority remains low in terms of meeting
employers' needs: new training enrolments do not correspond to recruitment needs in shortage
occupations.
⁂
In accordance with the method used for public policy evaluations, the financial
jurisdictions answer the two evaluation questions in the negative.
Has the PIC transformed the training system?
No. The PIC, which is very similar to its predecessor ("
Plan 500,000
"), has, by virtue of
its multiannual nature and unprecedented budgetary volume, made it possible, mainly at the
regional level, through agreements with the regions (Pric), to modernise support methods and
carry out a number of experiments. But it is a plan to finance the modernisation of support into
employment for people excluded from the workforce, deployed thanks to
its €13.8 billion
budget. On the other hand, the PIC has not achieved its primary objective of far-reaching
structural reform affecting the acquisition and enhancement of skills throughout life: the
"skills
society"
has been left by the wayside. The relegation of the PIC to the ordinary law of training
policies for jobseekers and those excluded from the workforce is confirmed by the launch of a
second edition of the PIC for the period 2024-2027, which is based solely on regional pacts
similar to the previous ones and to the "500,000 Plan".
Have the PIC's target audiences been reached?
No. The volume of training enrolments has increased, but access to training for people
with fewer qualifications than for those with a baccalaureate or higher education qualifications
has not improved, as shown by the stability over the period of the proportion of unemployed
people with few qualifications in the number of training enrolments. Furthermore, access to
training for long-term jobseekers has improved since the implementation of the PIC, but it is
not possible to detect any visible effect of the PIC on the career paths of these jobseekers.
There has been a marked improvement in access to training for RSA recipients, including
training leading to qualifications, but no link with the PIC can be demonstrated.
8
Key figures
"Building a skills-based society": a goal without a tomorrow
-
Youth employment rate: 28.7 % in 2017 and 34.9 % in 2022
-
Employment rate of non-graduates: 52.7 % in 2017 and 54.3 % in 2022
-
Rate of non-graduates aged 18 to 24 not in education or training in 2010 (11.3 %) and
2022 (7.6 %)
In the absence of transformation, modernising support through training for people
excluded from the workforce
-
Priority target groups for the PIC: 2 million young and long-term jobseekers with few or
no qualifications
-
Average annual expenditure on vocational training by the regions between 2013-2017
and 2019-2022 has increased by 13.3 %
Reaching target audiences: results still uncertain and fragile
-
6 % increase in training enrolments for jobseekers between 2017 and 2022 (excluding
autonomous CPF)
-
Stability (52 %) in the share of unemployed people with low qualifications in training
enrolments (excluding autonomous CPF) between 2018 and 2023,
-
The rate of access to training for the least qualified young people has increased by
2.7 % between 2017 and 2022 (+ 1.8 % for the entire under-26 jobless population)
-
Between 2018 and 2023, the number of unemployed RSA recipients entering training
rose by 12.8 % (+1.3 % for non-recipients)
-
Between 2019 and 2022, there will be a 30 % increase in recruitment projects for
occupations in shortage, while the number of training courses associated with this type
of recruitment project will fall by 12 %.
9
Recommendations
1.
In the context of multi-year reform plans involving investment, systematically produce the
documents (impact study, needs assessment, budget breakdown) needed to translate the
transformative ambitions of these plans into the State's annual commitments
(Prime Minister)
.
*
2.
To ensure historicised monitoring of the enhancement of existing training courses and new
training courses relating to the ecological and digital transitions
(Ministry of Labour and
Employment, Network of Centres for Leadership, Resources and Information on Training
(Carif) and Regional Employment and Training Observatories (Oref))
. *
3.
Organise governance to ensure coordination of the actions set out in the regional skills
investment pacts (Pric) 2024-2027
(Ministry of Labour and Employment)
. **
4.
Develop a common method for disseminating local and national good practices identified
between 2018 and 2023
(Ministry of Labour and Employment)
. *
5.
Accelerate the deployment of tools for steering and evaluating the training pathways of RSA
recipients:
-
by ensuring that the files of RSA recipients are linked to
Agora
;
-
by matching data paid into the ForCE system with MiDAS.
(Ministry of Labour and
Employment, France Travail)
**
* public policy
** management