Not French here, but it’s a common tendency across many western countries. Public education means higher expenditure and some countries are choking with debt so they have to brutally cut funds (education and healthcare are the preferred target, with education being at the first place because consequences are not immediately visible). The problem is not the elites anyway, it’s the rest of people letting them do it and justifying it. If their children will become cheap workforce, their parents will be to blame too.

Totally agree. It’s a tendency in all European countries: national healthcare is seen as public expenditure negatively affecting national balance, and private clinics are on the rise. Let’s hope, at least, that taxes will be cut as well, otherwise we’ll end up with a system that has the worst of the European model combined with the worst of the American one.