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Over the last 45 years, two major trends have characterised French educational policies: a voluntary move towards widening access to upper secondary school and a related diversification of the diplomas available at the end of it, especially through the creation of the technological baccalaureat in 1968 and the vocational baccalaureat in 1985. In the context of educational expansion, to what extent are these successive reforms of upper secondary education curriculum associated with changes in classed and gendered trajectories through the system? Our empirical evidence is derived from four large-scale longitudinal surveys, which have never been analysed together yet: the 1962-1972 [Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques] INED survey (N=15,154), 1980-1990 Panel study (N=19,701), 1989-2001 Panel study (N=20,524) and 1995-2006 Panel study (N=17,157). We use advanced log-linear and log-multiplicative models on contingency tables. We find that, when baccalaureat is measured as a dichotomy between holders and non-holders, class inequality has decreased since the 1960s. However, when subtler differentiations between baccalaureat types are taken into account, the strength of class inequality is shown to be constant over time, supporting Lucas's (2001) 'Effectively Maintained Inequality' hypothesis. Further results related to change in the pattern of inequality at the baccalaureat level, especially gendered class inequality, are also presented and discussed.

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