Twenty Years of “Closing the Gap” Policies in New Caledonia: Democratization of School, Persistence of Ethnic Inequalities[Vingt ans de politiques de rééquilibrage en Nouvelle-Calédonie : Démocratisation de l’école mais persistance des inégalités ethniques]

Using data from the last four censuses (1989, 1996, 2004, 2009), we find that the skill level of the New Caledonian population rose sharply for all communities. However, ethnic inequalities remain important and increase with the level of the diploma, e.g. most university graduates are non-Kanak. This implies that inequalities, which already appear in primary school, may widen over the lifecycle, a finding that has implications for policies aiming to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous people. However inequalities decreased between 1989 and 2009. This suggests that the "massification" of access to diplomas may be accompanied by a "qualitative democratization" of school in New Caledonia.